Day 209 - 25 Jan 96 - Page 16
1 employment and then every four months.
2
3 Q. So I will read it as you have corrected it.
4 A. Yes.
5
6 Q. "These were supposed to be completed three weeks after
7 commencing employment, and then every four months"?
8 A. Yes.
9
10 Q. "To my knowledge, reviews were almost always late (in Bath
11 usually between one to six months overdue). PRs were often
12 done in large batches normally before or after an audit
13 from Head Office. These PRs were often rushed and from
14 reading through many myself and as an experienced Floor
15 Manager administering prewritten ones, I found that certain
16 Managers would use stock phrases to write on some PRs they
17 had to complete. These comments would often bear little
18 relevance to the employee in question; this being
19 consistent with the general attitude of apathy on the part
20 of salaried Managers to completing PRs satisfactorily".
21 A. Can I say something about that? On there I have not
22 mentioned that a lot of the batches that were done, they
23 set up a system where there was a file and it had people's
24 -- everybody had a little sleeve in this file, and they
25 would have had a set of their PRs not completed, but with
26 their name and dated at the top. So, no matter what time
27 they got their PR, it would appear that they had their PR
28 at the correct time because they were all written at the
29 top.
30
31 This was when Dave Wynn became the Store Manager. I think
32 he set up that system, that the name and the date were
33 written at the top by somebody else earlier on, whenever,
34 and a whole file was completed with people's, you know, two
35 or 3 PRs for each person with the correct dates for the
36 next, you know, for months in advance. Then all you would
37 do at the time, or if it was late, was take out two and
38 sign them. You know, I have had to sign two in one go that
39 had the correct dates and everything at the top, but, you
40 know, were done on the same day and long after the second
41 one was dated.
42
43 I knew that happened with, I would say, about 80 per cent
44 of the people there did not get their PRs on time and
45 everybody complained about them a lot, because they were
46 never -- they would be done and then they would fall behind
47 again and then they would be done and then they would fall
48 behind again. But they were never done as a performance
49 review. They were done because somebody had told them to
50 get all the PRs done. So, they would get all the PRs done
51 and rush them through and everybody would get their 5p, but
52 it had no relation to what their work was, what, you know,
53 what they did as a job, what their performance was.
54
55 Performance, to me, was the wrong word to use for what they
56 were doing, and they were supposed to be assessed on your
57 OCL marks, but OCLs were quite often not done. So people
58 would have no OCL marks, so, therefore, they would have no
59 performance ranking.
60
