Alaska News

Lynne Curry: Performance review failures and data breach scares

Q: I supervise a talented, touchy woman. When I give her compliments, she takes them as her due. When I give her suggestions for how she can improve, she argues and sulks.

About six months ago, I got tired of the drama and stopped trying to give her feedback. That worked until last week when it came time for her annual performance review. Even though I gave her an "exceeds expectations" rating in one area and "meets expectations" ratings in the rest, she became extremely upset. She felt she deserved "exceeds expectations" ratings in all but one area.

She apparently stormed into the HR office, claiming I'd unfairly rated her. They called me on the carpet. Although I was able to back up each of my ratings, the fact that my employee sought out HR made me look bad.

The HR manager told me she would sit in on a follow-up performance review meeting and told me to plan at least two hours. Apparently I'm to listen while my employee rates her performance and then to either change my ratings or convince her I rated her fairly. I didn't -- I rated her more than fairly. Fair would have mean several lower ratings. Any suggestions?

A: You and your employee share a common goal. She wants "exceeds expectations" ratings. You want her to perform at the level where she achieves those ratings.

You both have a second chance to get what you each want. Although you bristle at HR's involvement, a neutral third party can point out to your employee that she debates or pouts when she doesn't like hearing how she can improve.

Next, when you gave up on your employee six months ago, you helped create this problem. Managers who avoid giving constructive criticism create a feedback vacuum that allows employees to assume "I'm not hearing any improvement-oriented information, I must be doing great."

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You can cut through this stalemate if you outline your employee's responsibilities and clearly tell your employee what "exceeds expectations" means. When she describes why she thinks she merits "exceeds expectations" ratings, truly listen. If your employee says you weren't clear about your expectations or didn't provide the training she needed to succeed, learn from what she tells you. You may need to improve so your employee can. If your employee presents new information that would have impacted your earlier rating, ask yourself if you rated her fairly.

Finally, you and your employee may both benefit from coaching. She needs to learn how to take criticism; you need to learn not to let a sulking employee dictate what you say.

Q: Our company works with customers in a trust relationship and maintains considerable personal data on each of our customers. As a result, if we hire the wrong employee, we place our customers at risk.

Despite all our normal precautions, we recently hired a dishonest employee. Once we realized the situation, in part because she gave us a phony Social Security number, we fired her. She then abruptly left the state and left no forwarding information.

We hope we acted in time. We haven't told our customers about this situation as we don't want to scare them. What do you suggest?

A: Any company that inadvertently places its customers at risk needs to let them know. Your customers depend on you to protect their interests. If you failed to fully protect them, despite trying your best, you need to admit the truth so they can take precautions. To do less lets your customers down and puts you in collusion with your former dishonest employee.

Given what you've said, your next call needs to be to the police, When you communicate with your customers, let them know the extensive precautions you put in place to prevent this occurrence and that they may not experience problems but you stand ready to help if they do. Given the reality of identity theft, you may also want to offer your customers a year's paid monitoring with one of the organizations that monitors credit reports.

Lynne Curry | Alaska Workplace

Lynne Curry writes a weekly column on workplace issues. She is author of “Navigating Conflict,” “Managing for Accountability,” “Beating the Workplace Bully" and “Solutions,” and workplacecoachblog.com. Submit questions at workplacecoachblog.com/ask-a-coach/ or follow her on workplacecoachblog.com, lynnecurryauthor.com or @lynnecurry10 on X/Twitter.

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