How do you feel about the IPP process these days? Are they fair and unbiased? Are they used aggressively to lay groundwork in case the organization needs to downsize further? Do end-course evaluations play a role in IPPs? Do faculty still compete for service roles to meet the demands of their IPP?
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I was told by a supervisor that your IPP rating does NOT correlate to your raise. Annual raises are based on salary and location, etc.., Not feeling especially motivated now that I know that my raise is not indicative of performance.
This topic has come up for discussion before. What I can’t figure out is whether there really is a system-wide conspiracy, driven from the top, to suppress ratings in order to minimize raises and build supporting documentation for future layoffs, or if this isn’t instead a regional policy pushed by specific managers in some locations. Maybe someone out there can shed some light on this.
A few years back, I was one of a very few who got exceeds across all categories. I had been recommended for it twice previously, but had actually obtained it. Then, my manager was fired, I was realigned with a group, and under a new set of managers found myself struggling for minimal respect. I left not long after.
I left a few years ago but my recollection was that the IPPs were a political tool. The group president had “his people” and after the mergers of the old regions was protecting them with higher ratings...or at least giving the rest of us lower ones. That was how we felt, anyway, based on who got what. “Not everyone can be an exceeds” was the message...but for those of us merged into the new combined group, it seemed a bit one-sided—at least if you seemed to be expendable. He knew that some faculty were vital to running particular programs so that was also a factor. But this was also before almost everything went online. I’m glad I didn’t stick around for all the latest craziness with automated metrics—but the fear had already been there due to years of downsizing. To be fair, I’m sure that protecting of favorites happens elsewhere, part of the great human psychological baggage of “us vs. them”...but I still recall several faculty completely blindsided by “developing” ratings when they had previously received “exceeds” prior to the new regional president and the region merger. And guess who got all the promotions? Not us “newbies” (some of whom had been with the company for decades under previous leadership). In speaking with colleagues who had previously been already under the new president, we learned that they had, as a group, gotten better ratings. I’m sure that annual raise percentage was also a factor in deciding who was a “top performer”, as rewarding one’s own “people” financially also seems relevant...but the talk in our merged-in campus was about politics and protectionism. And future layoffs....