#performance

Looks like last year was a very good year. Bonus should be good this year, cannot wait. RTO is working. Thank you all for doing the needful.

Thank you for all that you’ve done! Here are your impossible deadlines, and here’s your Meets Expectations. For some, here is your pip instead of layoffs with packages

Ram led a beverage turnaround, earned the credit, and was rewarded with a promotion and a massive pay increase. We delivered a beverage turnaround too—so why did we receive only 69% of our bonus target? At some point, we have to stand up and say: enough is enough.

Dell has changed, they are no longer the company we once knew and loved.

When a system shifts risk to employees, the experience changes and the job starts to su-k more.

Stress becomes structural, not situational

The math starts working against the us

Even big wins can feel diluted

Over time, effort and reward drift apart, and trust in the model breaks down.

Great sales organizations create environments where performance, ownership, and outcomes stay aligned. When that alignment exists, people do their best work.

We have to ask ourselves, are we doing our best work or just trying to survive a broken system?

The positive side with Ai. Now I can pretend work with useless Ai trainings. I am working with fake POC with Ai. Ask ai for some dummy implementation and call it as my poc.
I can watch Netflix whole day and still get good performance review, because everything now must have Ai, regardless if is useful or not.

With stagnant Medicare rates and increased cost of care are certain business lines just at the point where they won’t make enough revenue to be worth it any more? From the sounds of it UHG is letting go of many folks who has been performing well overall and the only reason I can think of is what they were doing is no longer profitable enough. I’m not privy to these sort of numbers but I would interested to know if anyone has any insights. This is not meant to be an excuse for the lay offs and the distress to individuals and families they have inevitably caused.

"Our multi-factor analysis indicates that the time to sell FISV stock might be approaching. We maintain a generally negative outlook on the stock, and a price of $43 could be feasible. We believe there is a near-equal balance of positives and negatives in FISV stock considering its overall Moderate operating performance and financial health. Therefore, despite its Low valuation, this contributes to the perception of the stock as Risky.".......Forbes

My team lead, a nice guy but not the sharpest, decided to do my appraisal this morning. As usual, everything was “fine.” Lots of fluff and no real substance, except for one thing. He kept stumbling over words and mispronouncing them.

It was obvious he had no idea what he was saying. It sounded like a seven-year-old reading their first chapter book, except the words were not even difficult. It was honestly embarrassing to sit there and deal with him.

At that point, it became clear that he did not get the position based on performance.

It was pathetic. I understand using AI to clean up grammar or help organize your thoughts, but having it actually write the whole thing for you? No.

If anything, AI will replace low-level managers before it replaces the people actually doing the work. That is crystal clear to me now.

Cigna no longer looks at performance anymore. You either are a stellar performer or a terrible one, if you make too much that’s thier budget they need to cut. If you make a little less they’ll keep you and pile on that other persons work they just let go. They layoff based on budget now so if you make a lot be warned.

Seems that the only thing that might save the stock going to $60 would be a CEO announcement, on the other hand, that might just send the stock to $50. Especially if someone internal gets promoted, cause these execs here are WORTHLESS.

What does the team team team think? Team? AAR that please. LOL.

Let's just bring in another 50 ex-Cisco sellers and a few more CAPidiots. Cause we have made a strategic investment to pump you up.

• CNBC: Peanut butter raises
  More companies are adopting or considering “peanut butter” pay raises, which are across the board increases given equally to all employees rather than tied to performance. While 48 percent of organizations plan to continue performance based raises, 9 percent already use uniform increases, 16 percent plan to implement them this year, and 18 percent are considering the shift.

Companies cite tight compensation budgets, cost cutting pressures, concerns about bias in performance ratings, and administrative simplicity as reasons for the approach. Some also see it as more equitable, ensuring frontline employees are not overlooked.

Experts warn that equal raises can demotivate high performers and create long term retention risks. Although a weaker job market may limit immediate departures, dissatisfied top talent may leave when opportunities improve. During the Great Resignation, low pay was a major factor in record quitting levels.

Employees disappointed with uniform raises are advised to explore other benefits, update job materials, and monitor the market, while carefully weighing any decision to leave.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/22/peanut-butter-pay-raises-could-cost-companies-their-top-performers-according-to-experts-its-such-a-shortsighted-strategy.html

More companies are adopting or considering “peanut butter” pay raises, which are across the board increases given equally to all employees rather than tied to performance. While 48 percent of organizations plan to continue performance based raises, 9 percent already use uniform increases, 16 percent plan to implement them this year, and 18 percent are considering the shift.

Companies cite tight compensation budgets, cost cutting pressures, concerns about bias in performance ratings, and administrative simplicity as reasons for the approach. Some also see it as more equitable, ensuring frontline employees are not overlooked.

Experts warn that equal raises can demotivate high performers and create long term retention risks. Although a weaker job market may limit immediate departures, dissatisfied top talent may leave when opportunities improve. During the Great Resignation, low pay was a major factor in record quitting levels.

Employees disappointed with uniform raises are advised to explore other benefits, update job materials, and monitor the market, while carefully weighing any decision to leave.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/22/peanut-butter-pay-raises-could-cost-companies-their-top-performers-according-to-experts-its-such-a-shortsighted-strategy.html

How is he here for so long ? I'm sure he must have had his wins.

What exactly were they ? What's his story ?

The latest version of the presence report contains a significant error. It assumes that all employees require 5 days of office presence; however, some organizations require only 3 days.

This tool fails to account for this variability and applies the five-day requirement uniformly. As a result, it inaccurately lowers the overall office presence percentage for teams operating under a three-day model. It is time to retire this ineffective tool, as it has repeatedly failed to produce accurate results.

When I was ranking my people, I was specifically told I had to rank on a curve and could only have so many people at the top and had to have a specific percent below a three to allow for lower rating and merit. I didn’t agree with this, but did as I was asked only to receive my review and while it was numerically fine , the commentary was definitely neutral this year versus positive as it has been over the past 8 years of my being here. It seems this is deliberate and my guess is this is a way to have layoffs in the future and justify lower merit overall. Welcome to the GTM strategy of CDW. Let’s take that unlimited PTO while we can because soon enough we won’t be here anyhow. It’s just sad.

has anyone actually been appropriately placed within their "position in range" per descriptions sent out last may? expected it to happen during the rewards cycle...

Instead of layoffs, let’s talk rewards. How was your raise and RSU this year, compared to last year?

If this company truly wants to grow its market, it must take a hard look at the people directors leading its teams. These leaders have a direct and measurable impact on team performance. Ignoring this level of leadership has not produced meaningful gains so far, and it will not do so in the future. You have leaders that do not show up for work or for their teams. Why would any company pay leaders not to show up? It would serve the company well to undertake the necessary, perhaps uncomfortable, work to address this now, unless the intention is to continue falling short with full awareness of the cause.

And to be clear, this post is not intended to solicit responses from people directors who may feel personally offended by this perspective. The focus should remain on results, accountability, and the long-term success of the organization, not on individual sensitivities.

Yes, that's the message

That's the EPS

This is true so please brace yourselves. Look for jobs now or try and negotiate the biggest package. Save yourselves. Reviews here are all fake.

Has anyone heard their AIP number for the year? Previous posts indicate the 100% will not be 100%.

Well actually, I heard BB is only allowing 7% of us to get promoted.

In 2024, it was close to 30%. In January 2025, BB told all the managers - you know all those people you decided in December 2024 to promote? Cut that in half.
As a result, promotions happened for only 14 percent of the company.

Not very energizing! Why stay?

ABB ELIP just got rid of 48 positions on 2/17/26. They said they needed to downsize because of poor sales numbers

3wks working my ar-e off, and seeing zero chance of getting to 100%. While the past wks revenue wise have been fairly promising, not a single cent has shipped. This SCP su-ks and they can shove these 25% draws. The irony here is that I will owe them money back when indeed they really owe that to me.

1. Sec has had hundreds of people working for years and is a sh-t show. Don’t lay off the Nike IC’s. Fire the leadership and the vendor. Nike IC’s have the knowledge and drive and care about Nike. Posting that system performance is good and everyone cheering is embarrassing, only to have issues within hours.
2. Fire the frontline support managers or only keep the ones that pass an IQ test or a 360 review from their direct reports.
3. Dissolve resiliency team who just fumble through pretending like they’re bringing real AI benefits with egos that take up 2 workspaces.
4. Fire the guy that is apparently sleeping with all the HR folks.
5. Make all the slack channels where people post news articles, sell tickets or peddle their secondhand cr-p only available after biz hours.

Comment your number out of 5 and your %.
How are you feeling?

Can manager or director reduce/increase STI assuming that Dan said "100%% and level is "performing"

Once again Intel is mighty again and DELL wins big from this! The new XPS 14 2026 with Panther Lake are kicking the a-s of MacBooks with M5 in terms of performance and battery life. DELL forever!!

When are we suppose to enter goals for 2026? I do not see portal open yet.

Ask co pilot what GK’s target bonus is for this year.

Putting this out here now for those of us who try to survive another year. Expect that merit will continue to be extremely minimal, and the company will move to more of a bonus/LTI system.
When they pay larger merit, they have to keep up with those increases year over year regardless of profits. If I give you a $5000 raise, I am now committed to paying you at least that salary as long as you’re around. Now multiply that times thousands of employees.
A bonus however is one time. I’m only committed to that amount THIS year.
LTI is worse, I promise to pay if you stay for 3 years, but if I lay you off, I’m freed from that obligation.

So expect the company to continue to lean heavier on bonus and LTI (aka paying it out at 90-100%), versus seeing larger merit pools going forward.

Was anyone told that merit increases were not going to be given to 3's this year? Was told it was company wide. Is that true?

Year Net Income* ROCE**
2015 $16,150 7.9
2016 $7,840 3.9
2017 $19,710 9.0
2018 $20,840 9.2
2019 $14,340 6.5
2020 ($22,440) (9.3)
2021 $23,040 10.9
2022 $55,740 24.9
2023 $36,010 15.0
2024 $33,680 12.7
2025 $28,884 9.3

• Reported As Millions Of Dollars
  ** Rate of Return on Capital Employed

How's your raise and bonus?

I got a low rating. When my manager sends the review to me should I add employee comments? Once entered who reviews them? Thanks in advance!

5 - 22%
4 - 21%
3 - 20%

There’s basically no incentive to do anything other than the bare minimum.

BY Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Integrity, understood as a disposition to behave in prosocial, ethical, and principled ways rather than corrupt or self-serving ones, is among the strongest and most consistent predictors of job performance and leadership effectiveness. The reason is far from mysterious. Leadership, whatever its context, is a collective enterprise. No meaningful goal, from building empires to running companies, has ever been achieved alone.

Across history, not just in humans but also other animals, cooperation has depended less on raw power than on trust. Ancient trading societies flourished precisely because reputation constrained behavior: Merchants in Phoenician city-states, medieval guilds, and Silk Road networks relied on repeated interactions and informal enforcement mechanisms to ensure that partners honored their commitments. Those who cheated were excluded, not merely judged. Trust, in effect, functioned as an early mechanism for coordination and enforcement.

The same logic applies in modern organizations. Teams perform better when members believe that leaders will act fairly, keep promises, and avoid exploiting asymmetries of information or power, or are so focused on their personal gain that they have little concern in harming the group. In line, research shows that leaders perceived as lacking integrity struggle to attract talent, elicit discretionary effort, or sustain collaboration over time. Conversely, leaders known for ethical consistency benefit from faster coordination, lower monitoring costs, and greater willingness among others to take risks on their behalf.

Given a choice, people prefer to collaborate with those they trust not because they are naive, but because distrust is expensive. Working with unreliable or unethical partners increases the likelihood of failure, conflict, and reputational damage. In business, this may mean backing leaders who misrepresent performance or shift blame. In politics, it can mean empowering those who erode institutions for personal gain. In both cases, the costs are borne not only by the followers but by the system as a whole.

This is why chronic corruption is one of the most reliable markers of institutional breakdown. As documented year after year by Transparency International in its Corruption Perceptions Index, countries that score lowest on integrity and trust tend to share familiar pathologies: weak rule of law, politicized institutions, capital flight, and persistent underinvestment, generally caused by parasitic governments and destructive leadership. By contrast, countries that consistently rank at the top of integrity and trust measures benefit from stronger institutions, more predictable governance, and higher levels of social and economic cooperation. To be sure, these societies are not free of self-interest or ambition; rather, they have succeeded in aligning incentives so that ethical behavior is rewarded and corruption is costly, censoring selfish short-term individual gains in favor of collective long-term benefits.

Measuring integrity
So, how can we tell whether a person has integrity, or gauge someone’s moral reliability?

The question is especially consequential when applied to leaders, whose decisions shape the success, welfare, and future prospects of others. Fortunately, behavioral science offers several useful insights, even if it stops short of perfect certainty.

First, integrity is not directly observable. Unlike physical attributes such as height or hair color, it cannot be seen or measured at a glance. Instead, it is inferred or deducted from patterns of behavior, consistency over time, and alignment between words and deeds. Integrity is therefore an attribution rather than a trait we can observe directly, which makes assessment inherently probabilistic rather than definitive.

Second, short-term interactions are often misleading. Because appearing ethical brings clear benefits (trust, influence, reduced scrutiny, and access to resources) people are incentivized to signal integrity even when they lack it. This helps explain why superficially ethical environments can sometimes attract parasitic actors who exploit the goodwill and assumptions of others. In contrast, in persistently corrupt settings, distrust becomes the default, and even well-intentioned individuals are treated with suspicion. Context shapes both behavior and perception.

A parallel and increasingly robust line of evidence comes from research on the so-called dark traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Although conceptually distinct, these traits share a common core of low empathy, emotional coldness, and a tendency to instrumentalize others. From an integrity standpoint, this combination is toxic. Individuals high on these traits are less constrained by guilt or concern for others, more willing to bend or ignore rules, and more likely to justify unethical behavior as necessary, deserved, or clever rather than wrong.

Psychopathy is most directly linked to callousness and fearlessness, reducing sensitivity to punishment and moral emotion. Machiavellianism predicts strategic deception, cynicism about human motives, and a belief that ends justify means. Narcissism, especially in its more grandiose forms, adds entitlement and moral exceptionalism, the belief that normal rules apply to others but not to oneself.

Together, these traits reliably predict counterproductive work behaviors, ethical transgressions, and integrity failures, particularly in roles that confer power, discretion, and weak oversight.

Crucially, this is not because such individuals lack intelligence or self-control, but because their motivational architecture is misaligned with prosocial norms. Where integrity depends on empathy, respect for authority, and an internalized concern for collective outcomes, dark traits tilt decision-making toward self-interest, dominance, and short term gain, making them among the strongest dispositional red flags for integrity risk in organizational life.

Third, while integrity cannot be measured perfectly, it can be assessed meaningfully. Research shows that peer ratings are among the most reliable indicators, precisely because integrity is reputational: It reveals itself in how people behave when others depend on them. Longitudinal data, such as 360-degree feedback, is especially informative. Personality traits like conscientiousness, altruism, and self-control (including the capacity to self-edit) also predict ethical conduct, as does past behavior. Self-reports are often dismissed, but well-designed measures still differentiate reliably between individuals with higher and lower integrity. Track records matter, even if they do not render anyone immune to temptation. As Warren Buffett famously observed, reputation takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy.

Finally, the environment matters. Ethical failures are not only the result of “bad apples,” but also of “rotten barrels.” Weak governance, misaligned incentives, and tolerance for small transgressions can erode integrity even among otherwise decent individuals, while well-designed systems can reinforce ethical behavior by making misconduct costly and transparency unavoidable.

Sapping growth
Taken together, these points suggest that integrity is neither inscrutable nor guaranteed. Whether in governments, firms, or teams, integrity functions as an enabling condition for coordination and progress. When trust erodes, actors devote more effort to monitoring, hedging, and self-protection, leaving less energy for innovation or growth. In this sense, integrity is not merely a moral ideal, but a form of social infrastructure: largely invisible when it works, and painfully obvious when it does not.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the chief science officer at Russell Reynolds Associates, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University, co-founder of deepersignals.com, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab

https://www.fastcompany.com/91490509/3-science-backed-ways-to-measure-integrity

I wanted to see what the global experience is with admin staff? In my local office, there’s an assistant that complains all the time about having to take cover multiple teams (a bit over a dozen people). On paper it looks like a lot but it’s often very low touch, even no touch for some.

She says she only had to take care of a few people a few years ago. Which seems crazy. Is she being dramatic and inefficient maybe? Or is low touch assistant work for a few people with doing expenses for a dozen people too much?