Yep. PED's (Performance Excellence Discussions) are done yearly for all dept. heads/managers, and filled out by your direct boss (for me thats the Food dept. Manager) and then you have a part to fill out as well. Everyone else just gets a yearly review done by the section head/manager. Basically its just "What did you achieve, rate yourself in the following areas, what can you improve upon,etc." And every section you can grade yourself 1-4, 1 is bad 4 is perfect.
What sucks is that these are the basis for raises. Which nobody at Fred Meyer as a dept. head ever gets. Ever. I mean sure we get our contract raises but nothing performance based at all. I suppose if you scored an overall 4 you MIGHT be CONSIDERED for some paltry 25 cent an hour raise or something, but nobody is allowed to score a 4. You get a 3 if you're doing a good job, and no raise. Rather ridiculous, considering that this is the process that is SUPPOSED to lead to a yearly performance-based raise for a dept. head.
I've oftened asked what's the point? If you get a good review you don't get anything in return for it, and if you get a bad review all it does is make you mad.
I worked at WalMart before coming in from the dark side to work at Kroger. At the time of my 90 day review at WM, my dept. mgr. told me I deserved Excellent ratings in all categories and that he had never had an employee he could say that about but...it was, and maybe still is, WM policy to never give Excellent ratings to any employee, for any reason, never, never, ever, no matter how well deserved. My Kroger dept. mgr. told me a similar story but did give me an Excellent in one category because I've never called-off and have never been late for a shift and because I make myself available to work whenever all the other dept. employees call-off. Anyway, this idea of never giving Excellents must be something they teach all retail mgrs. regardless of which company. Only reason I got the one Excellent was because attendence is a matter of recorded fact while all the other categories are subjective and the ratings given are based on the mgrs observations, thinking, feelings, likes & dislikes. So always try to make your mgr. have warm & fuzzy feelings about you as you get close to review time. Many mgrs suffer from the "recency effect" and only remember the things you do, good or bad, for about 2 months prior to your review time.
