I don’t think we were told that we should share the results of the session with our direct reports.
And honestly if any of my colleagues had any substantial feedback on my direct reports I would be somewhat surprised.
Anyway the ask was that we share our thoughts on our own reports.
This is very normal as a part of the performance review process. Some managers are tougher or more lenient than others with giving positive ratings and reviews, so there is often a “calibration” process where a bunch of managers get together and calibrate the ratings to make sure they’re fair and consistent across teams. This is also where (good) managers fight for their employees to get good ratings and either implicitly or explicitly fight for their raises. I’ve seen this in both insurance and consulting. The managers don’t always tell the employees this meeting is happening but most people know about it. For example at one company, we all knew it was on the day where all the managers randomly travelled from their respective offices into the main office one day every January.
But if you’re being asked to do this as a bonding exercise and not as part of the year end review process, then yeah, that’s weird.
For performance review and calibration, yes. But this doesn’t sound like that per the OP. This sounds like some manager kiki and shit talking. I mean, I had experience with the reverse situation, where the analysts gathered and talked shit about the managers, we were told it’d be anonymous, but it all gets weird when you have managers that are friends with analysts.
Does your company do performance reviews?
I think it’s safe to assume that any midsized+ company that’s been around more than, i dunno, 5 years, is going to have sets of analyst/manager friends.
But yeah, gossiping about your staff as a team building exercise is weird.
Well that sounds pretty counterproductive, no? Unless it’s just a company-sponsored gossip session.
Well, the usual timing at my employer is that the level setting among managers would happen around now, and the employee reviews wouldn’t happen until next year, and managers wouldn’t share anything until the employee review. So it might just be poor communication about the goals of the event. Or… it might be a really weird, counter-productive employee bonding exercise.
makes sense, I’ve always had my review in mid to late January and then we find out numbers in mid to late Feb and bonuses in late March.
I like the idea of a really weird, counter-productive employee bonding exercise though.
Definitely normal in a rotational actuarial development program; required, even.
I like this. It’s a totally normal thing, made weird for no obvious reason.
Actuaries, you gotta love 'em.
Seems like one of those attempts to make things transparent, but I can see how it can go horribly wrong. Like, in communist nations like North Korea they got these things called “self-criticism” sessions where everyone gathers around and admits their shortcomings or something. Seems to get culty real fast…next thing you know you’ve got enemies of the state being paraded around in dunce hats.
Oh yeah, I remember now. There was a Black Mirror episode on this. Man it was really grinding my gears until the end. OP, have you seen the episode Nosedive?
OP, how often does this happen?
And, are there any actions taken, or required to be taken --“Hey, Anne, have a talk with Jimmy about yada-yada-yada” – after the meeting?
I dunno. Hasn’t happened by me before.