I unfortunately am one of the people who received a completely unexpected (and imo undeserved) NI on my recent performance review. I was shocked to say the least as my manager had never brought up concerns in my weekly one on ones, I’d received many positive feedback from peers (even two silver shield awards this year), and had met all work goals. When I expressed my frustration with my manager, she claimed she had brought it up. All that leads up to today when I try to have a meeting with my manager and turn co-pilot on so we can start actually documenting our conversations. She immediately signed off and said we can’t have any meetings with co-pilot or recording enabled. Are you hearing that from your managers too ?
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@2tf Haha what a legend.
@2t9 yes, I am lucky. The look on a manager’s face with my response of “interesting” to some fear mongering toxic request is priceless. I actually pulled a “Peter” ignore and walk around when lundburg type boss tried to stop me in hallway (from movie office space)
@2t8 one hundred percent in agreement here about financial independence oozing that confidence to say and do the right thing. Cr-p managers hate it as they cannot control such employees.
The world is brutal. There is no benevolent entity or organization enforcing fairness and ethics.
HR and bank Ethics group will 100% back management despite obvious untruths. Have ef you money, generate multiple revenue streams. Break free of the salary trap
By the grace of God, I did. I exude quiet confidence and the power of financial independence. Management picks it up clearly, and oddly enough, they now pay me more. I kid you not.
Salary, lifestyle creep is slavery.
@OP Management has been given a quota for NI's. One brave manager in our group is filing a complaint-I am not sure at what level. Federal or state. This is a terrible, terrible institution.
Same here. 6 shield awards, 3 gold, 2 silver, one bronze. Not a word for my manager, who I got mid year, about performance etc. even had a clear error on the review about not meeting expectations on something that the report said was not only met but exceeded. All the manager said was sorry, missed that, cannot change it. Feels like I'm being pushed out for being remote and a grade 14+. Sad
@f3 & @f0 Could you please share what exactly the new guidance was that management received regarding NI performance ratings? I would truly like to understand the legitimacy.
I don't doubt there were justified NI ratings assigned as appropriate, but in my case it seemed to be an opportunistic we-ponizing of the performance review process to take out a highly skilled and consistent top performing employee, whose competence is a threat to the inept leaders' fragile egos. From other related comments on this site, it appears I'm not alone in this perception.
@OP Haven’t you figured it out. They are required to put people in distributions. Problem is that it’s a knee je-k reaction and no one wants to deal with delivering bad news during mid years, why because they have no reason to rate you low. Because the performance metrics are a joke. So basically you are at the whim of the good ole boys club.
I wonder how many people that received a N-P’s were laid off shortly after?????
A shockingly large group exemplary co-workers got put on Nips last year. After many months of digging i found that the higher managers in order to meet a N-P quota (i was told "it's statistically impossible to have that many meaningful employees"). More importantly, less bonuses for N-P employees, means higher bonuses for managers and their buddies. simple math.
@f0 thank you for sharing this! For a lot of people these changes felt brash and unjustified. The performance expectations have changed and the messaging was not you must give X number of needs improvement. If someone told you that, they themselves weren’t interpreting the directive right. The directive was that “these are the performance standards, and leader you need to take a critical eye on who’s actually meeting that. We can’t just play nice and hope they improve”. So yes, there was an expectation to SEE more needs improvement because it’s necessary. How that cascaded is where a lot got lost in translation! I will agree that the emphasis and communication of changes came a bit late. So if leaders weren’t already coaching and holding accountable, they likely scrambled and that’s what a lot of people saw and felt.
I have many reports under me, and we weren’t purposely giving needs improvement to meet quota. But rather truly challenging who needs to improve. I do not want to PIP those individuals, but they truly do need to improve to operate at their level. So rather than giving a barely meets, we gave an improvements needed based on new guidance. And to be frank, some of those conversations were towards the end of the year and didn’t give my team time to meet with those individuals to communicate that message as much as one would like (however there were NO situations in which it was skipped completely - some people chose not to listen to the severity of the feedback).
These people would have been a “barely” meets before. And change is hard, and I wish this was communicated early in the year.
Management was given Needs Improvement quotas to hit this year and your manager was likely forced to choose somebody. Chances are that is the reason you got a surprise rating but that also serves as a warning. If you were chosen you are the most expendable. Get your resume ready.
If you got a surprise needs improvement, you need to point blank ask that person why you are never informed before the performance review? Ask it and then go quiet.
Any “Real” leader would say that a “needs improvement” should NEVER be a surprise and should be able to explain it in detail. I understand the meeting recording though. When I was there it was policy not to record meetings unless you had granted access to do so. If I were in your shoes I would see if your manager could provide it in a email response. Example - request the things you need improvement on so you can take a proactive application approach / get the info you need. The most important thing you can do is document everything! This may important if you are let go without severance. Keep your head up and keep doing your best as someone will see your hard work.
That’s not necessarily accurate. It says you have to be “in good standing” in your current role. If you have a NI, that could be seen as not in good standing.
HR is only here to protect the Company. Former head of reputation risk had a rap sheet that was make any HR dept cringe except here. JR paid out a large settlement to silence an auditor who identified significant issues with AR’s programs.
For those saying you can’t move departments on a NI that is false. You can’t move departments on a PIP. If you get an undeserved NI try to move departments or leave us bank.
As others have said, contact HR. Which, somewhat jokingly, is copilot at this point anyways...
The brutal truth is that HR will back manager decision 100% of the time. Ethics is there to protect company and information will pass to the manager.
It is simply a money/risk formula for the bank
Person in this situation should quietly move on and find new job and make no waves. Smile a bit, do the minimum, and leave with integrity .
That su-ks. Maybe try to report it or just find a job elsewhere at this point
I had a coworker in a similar situation. Multiple awards, nothing but positive meetings from the manager. Then at the end of the year, he picked two employees to receive NI and destroyed them on their review. Based it entirely on who he liked the least and backed into the justification. My manager decided to take the hit and see what happens. He changed nothing about how he gives his reviews. Not all managers are bad, but the bad ones are now worse.
Open a case with Ethics hotline
OP - you need to document, and contact HR.
I was shock to received my NI this year toô, no prior warning in all previous month to month meeting, the worse part is getting a 2 can’t even transfer to another dept, I have received a few Best in Us from colleague and RM toô, oh well, nothing is gonna change that NI , I surely not deserved. I do believe in Karma
Our dept uses Copilot
for all meeting and my manager encourages it. The bank wants us to use it. I would push back on that.
Contest it. sounds like your manager is a bi--h
This sounds like your manager knows they're about to get caught doing something that HR would be interested in.
Sorry to hear, OP. If you received two silver shields you do not deserve a NI rating. Simple. Your Co-pilot meeting experience clearly backs it up that your boss is afraid of your progress. My advice is to reach out to your skip level manager.
Wow. Two silver shields in 2025 results in a NI? Sounds like you were done pretty dirty. Sorry to hear