Performance reviews, IT projects, and corporate culture - EIS Applications Developer SunTrust Employee Review

SunTrust rates you on a scale of 1 to 5 in your performance review (5 being the best). I was told by one manager that he/she was not allowed to give me a 4 or 5 even though my performance rated such an evaluation due to the fact that SunTrust allows only a certain number of 4's and 5's, and requires a certain number of 2's. So if everyone in your area is doing a fabulous job, somebody is going to get a low rating anyway and very few will get above a 3 (acceptable). No surprise that this does not boost employee morale. I doubt this is widely known among most employees. I have never heard this from HR. But it would explain some evaluations I have received in years where I have done an exceptional job. There are too many IT projects with such aggressive timelines that many projects are simply scheduled to fail. More than 1 manager assumes when these aggressive dates are in danger, it is time for staff to work nights and/or weekends. Strong emphasis on the efficiency ratio tends to drive up the working hours and stress. SunTrust has a corporate wide employee opinion survey in which employees rate many parts of their job, their managers, and the company. I have heard that managers in multiple areas tell their teams to give them high ratings. (I myself have heard the implied "or else".) In my opinion, that survey is a joke. Too many managers only deal with low ratings by telling their employees to give higher ratings, or it is the employees' fault for not doing a better job improving their managers. SunTrust is wasting money paying some company to do this employee opinion survey that has no validity. Like most companies, SunTrust has stopped the pension and keeps cutting back on health insurance. When SunTrust dropped the pension, the company did increase the 401K contribution. While SunTrust keeps saying how much the company cares about employees, the corporate actions have convinced me that senior management really cares about their bonuses and the stock price.