Oddbean

I hate having to write negative performance reports. It feels good to be able to congratulate someone for their hard work and recognise them for it but I find it tough when you need to put the harsh feedback in writing. It's bad when you can't even do the old "compliment sandwich" because you don't have enough bread!

I have a hard time understanding why people don’t like writing negative employe reviews or firing people. You have the chance to give someone non-emotional feedback to better themselves and if they take it personally they have a bad way of approaching things and you should probably go ahead and turn that negative review into a a dismissal. Once I adopted “hire slow fire quick” approach to employees, and let them know my approach during the interview process, my productivity, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction have all increased. My belief is that if an employee can’t meet the expectations that were given to them, in writing, read to them and discussed during the interview process then they are stealing from me. Especially if I took time to train and coach them. If you tried to help this person and they didn’t take advantage of the help you offered then they are the ones who should feel bad, not you. It’s not your responsibility to fix people.

This is some good perspective. I think this would be easier for me to apply in a small business where the impact of an employee was actually felt but in a large company where you don't personally feel stolen from the impacts are so much less tangible. As you said at the end of the day people need to take responsibility for their own actions, attituded and abilities.

The last job where I was doing performance reviews I accidentally did honest reviews with my guys, hoping the feedback would help them grow. Unfortunately, I was the only manager who did that, everyone else gave all of their staff glowing reviews, even the lazy and incompetent ones. My boys were the hardest working of the lot and suddenly I had HR wanting me to put them on PIPs!

That is a real shme. In that world it does not pay to be honest. Everything is playing the game. Saying enough to cover yourself but not so much that you end up where you described. And then you develop a personal relationship with these people and its not nice to think about how you could be moving them closer to being out of a job.

Not enough bread for a sandwich 😂 👏 I've found that relationships are fundamental. Constructive criticism is easier to digest when it comes from someone we believe has our best interests at heart.