Archaic and Dysfunctional - Accounting Director Indiana University Employee Review

In general everyone at IU gets the same pay raise annually which makes performance planning obsolete since there is no real motivation to work hard and be rewarded for it. Any colleagues who who have direct reports are still listed as "individual contributors" in the HR ststem and do not have the training, skills or motivation or expectations from their managers to perform people management functions such as holding individual touchbases with direct reports, holding team meetings, asking for continuous improvement ideas, etc. In my experience disagreeing with your manager's perspective has resulted in punitive consequences such as being passed over for promotional opportunities. The understanding is to stay in line, do as you are told and don't disagree. Managers are too concerned with their own individual performance that they do not have a solid understanding of what their direct reports do and whether or not they have capacity to work on other tasks that may help them grow in their role. When I first started at IU, I immediately observed that people work in silos. When asked if there are better ways to do their work or taking into consideration streamlining processes, the general response has been, "this is how I've done it for years and I don't want to change. I've been in team meetings where performance improvement training has been provided where the HR instructor has basically said, "if you are near retirement in a few years, this probably doesn't apply to you". IU's eay of working appears to be very similar to government work where systems are antiquated, processes inefficient, manual work abounds, no desire to improve and a signicant lack of leadership skills all the way up to Provosts.