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Performance Tutorials
What do I do if I disagree with my supervisor's appraisal opinions?
Sometimes an employee and supervisor cannot agree on what should be recorded as part of the employee performance review. At some point it's counter-productive to argue endlessly. What to do?
The best thing to do is ask to append your own comments to the performance appraisal documentation, so they will become part of your permanent record, along with the supervisor's opinions, evaluations or ratings. Most companies should allow this. Keep your comments short, as calm as free from angry rhetoric as possible, and to the point. To the extent possible use specific examples and situations to support your side of the argument. Be business like.
Beyond that, you have some tough decisions to make. How you handle this depends on how the evaluations are used. For example, you may want to work harder to remedy a performance evaluation with which you disagree, if that evaluation is going to be used to decide whether to keep you as an employee, or fire you, and you care about that job. The first step, though, is to see if your company has any policies on how to handle performance evaluation disagreements, and how the evaluations are to be used.
If it's a battle worth fighting (and only you can decide), you can talk to human resources (if there's one) about the issue, or even go over the supervisor's head and talk to his or her manager. However, these actions, particularly the latter, create bad feelings, and you risk completely ruining having a decent working relationship with your boss.
Remember that however you approach the problem you must conduct yourself in a business-like way, and avoid making any personal attacks, or comments directed towards the supervisor.
Pick your battles carefully. Pick winnable ones, and ones that you can win without damaging yourself.
See also: If I don't agree with the appraisal, should I sign it?