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| The dreaded time (PC: Google Images) |
Its that time of the year now, well that time has already passed if you are working in the private sector. Its Self-Appraisal time, yes that time of the year again when you are asked as to what you did and didn’t so as to remind you again of the insult you are to the organization you work for. Basically its all about giving you a pre-decided raise despite your diligent and painstaking efforts as an employee by first disparaging you and then handing that raise to patronize you by showing how magnanimous of a management there is in place. That’s how it works in the private/corporate sector atleast. In the Government sector, things are a bit different, people don’t really care about it but see it as an opportunity to know about the status of their peers and what’s the ROI on their flattery, showered on their seniors.
Earlier it used to be completely confidential, hence you actually never
know as to what irked or pleased your immediate bosses and hence there is no
way for you to be absolutely sure. A lot of the malpractices that had crept in
to the system as a result and it made the process just a means to favor the
sycophants and screw the hardworking employees. Apart from that, I was told by
some senior officers that true nature of biased office politics, favoritism and
casteism plays a major role in the overall performance review of the employee.
The Confidential report is never given to the concerned employee and the only
copy stays with the Establishment section( the Human Resources for all you
corporate snoots). So you can give your blood, sweat and tears but still come
up short because you didn’t arrange for a drink for your senior officer, or you
didn’t greet him or a million other tiny little things. Although there is no
appraisal in terms of salary as such in the government sector whether you are
extraordinary in your assigned work or not but there is a small little column
that asks for recommendation for transfers. Now there is only one thing that
the Government employees dread and that is getting transferred, because its
quite pragmatically challenging for the family to shift your entire lives to a
new city. In contrast you might be demanding a transfer to your familiar place
as well and that again would be largely decided by your confidential report.
Since promotions are based entirely on the seniority (date of joining equals
experience equals seniority) and the discretion of the Promotions committee
(the same people who have a lot to do with your Confidential report), but
suddenly you might find that your letter from the Ministry giving you the good
news of your promotion, is just buried under some other files and people
beneath you in seniority are getting promoted. Anyway to put an end to
favoritism and make the evaluation system more transparent the government
deployed the new Government officer Evaluation and Appraisal report system.
So now apparently this system is supposed to be more transparent and
unbiased which it actually is but that doesn’t change those parochial minds
from speaking their minds. I was lucky enough to be joining at a time when this
process was just put into place so I got to witness it in the truest sense. Now
there was a lot of ambiguity in this process because a lot of people thought
that this is just a new format but the underlying principle of confidentiality
would remain the same. That’s where they were wrong, as it backfired in one
particular case which cascaded into quite a few later. You see just because you
changed the overall format of the paper it doesn’t mean that senior officers
will suddenly become cautious, hence they presumed that the “Confidentiality”
clause will remain unchanged unfortunately after many discussions and meetings,
one fine day the employees started getting their respective appraisal reports.
This caused a havoc because suddenly they are given an insight into a
world that was totally unknown to them. Within a matter of days 3 people showed
up to our unaware Officer in Charge and caught him off guard. They slammed
their reports on his table asking “Why is it that someone else who is not even
showing upto work gets a higher grade in terms of accountability, hardwork and
dedication. Did I ever ask for any long holidays or showed up late to work?”
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| PC( Google Images ) |
The officer in charge was totally appalled and made the situation even
funnier by asking, “Who are you?” ( I think I burst out laughing when I heard
that). The disgruntled employee says “If you can’t even remember my name when I
am in front of you, then how did you grade my work?”. This went on with a bunch
of other employees as well a few employees even went ahead and filed an
official discriminatory complaint against the senior officials, which though
amounted to nothing still managed to scare the senior management a lot. When
the dust settled they learnt one thing that this new system needs to be dealt
with in a different manner now and hence they decided that employees like me
who are Gazetted officers won’t be handed their final assessed reports. But out
of nowhere a new Government Resolution enabled us to get a copy of our final
reports. So at the end of the it was people like me who actually got the
benefit of the earlier ruckus and got a good and sensible assessment. Though as
I mentioned earlier it doesn’t amount to anything but it certainly took the gun
out of the senior management which trust me is a huge step in being even
remotely just and fair in the current Government system.
This year we are going through that process again and I have submitted
my own appraisal for the senior managements’ assessment, but that
Officer-in-Charge, who was at the centre of this mess , has been stripped down
of his review rights and now its on to the direct supervisory officers like me
to grade those workers.
Do comment and follow for more insights of being a Government officer. Here's a link to my other entries-
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