Just needing to vent. This may get long. I work for a major corporation, as one of 6 managers in our unit within my field. I’ve been with the company over 8 years and I’m good at what I do. My boss is interim, from a different department, and is clueless. I do most of the training, reporting, organizing in our team and am her back up for just about anything that may need support.
This past year I worked on a number of major projects beyond the scope of my position, proactively created materials for training, volunteered time to lead several pilot programs… and maintained numbers in line with my peers. My feedback from my direct reports is great, despite a lot of performance issues.
You see, we went remote when Covid hit and at first went in to massive lay offs, hiring freeze, offered early retirement packages… then things reopened and we were severely understaffed. They hired anyone with a pulse. Upper management has admitted they messed up, that we really do need our onboarding teams in an office for training/application weeks, and that they were assigning too much work way to fast to these folks. Unfortunately, our turnover rates are at an all time high because they just can’t keep up and are quitting, or are being terminated for failure to meet their performance goals. I had 6 (out of 19 total) direct reports terminated as a result of this fiasco, while 4 were able to successfully complete my own coaching program to improve (the rest have been good!).
I have been picking up the slack for another manager who has taken quite a bit of time off. She does not document her files; her reports are rude to customers and other staff without repercussion; she pushes her work to her mentee and then throws her under the bus when something isn’t done (mentee has her own work to do and is still learning the role). I received more complaints from customers about this person in 2 weeks than I have about anything else all year.
We just did year end reviews. I was given a “meets” score while this other person was given an “exceeds.” She will get a better raise and bigger bonus, and appears more desirable when applying for other positions in the company. in my review, my manager notes I am the strongest on her team and that is why I am her go-to and default backup when she takes a day off. The reason I have been give this score is because my team’s file quality scores failed to meet the target by 1.6% and I have a high number of customer complaints from early in the year.
There is no coincidence… that is when I had my whole team on an action plan. Doesn’t matter that of the hire group from which I received some of my team from only about 15% are still here . Or that they had to restructure their caseload after admitting they overloaded them all. It’s such an issue we are no longer hiring remote reps and will require anyone less than 6 months tenure to be in the office. The other teams in the unit are newer and did not go through this hiring fiasco.
I’m so put off, angry, and really don’t want to waste any more of my time giving to this place that won’t appreciate anything other than the numbers on paper but this is life I guess. I just wish they’d take some fucking ownership of their mistakes and acknowledge those of us who do their best all the time vs the ones who coast and meet numbers (via their tenured teams!).