At IBM, "Employee Reviews" (or Appraisals in the UK) Are a "Trojan Horse" for RAs (Mass Layoffs), a Waste of Time
"Appraisals" is a term we often hear here in the UK. Appraisals are in general a topic that I covered a lot in recent years; the real purpose of these isn't to "map" skills (a "skills matrix", "core competencies" and other MBA-heads' buzzwords) but to form or cement pretexts for dismissals or at least discrimination. Some people get relegated to "training" or get assigned frustrating tasks. Sometimes the intention is to cause frustration, so as to cause people to resign without severance pay. EPO workers will be very familiar with these processes, but the EPO uses different (for continental Europe) terminology, as the European laws are rather different and depend on the member state. We are a very fragmented continent, even law-wise, set aside culture, language, history and so on. The EU isn't really 'solving' this 'issue', it's just blurring what's legal and what's not legal (more manoeuvring room for lawyers).
The above new comments from IBMer serve to suggest that appraisals can be precursors; they can hint or signal RAs to come.
IBM has "forever layoffs" now (to overcome/dodge/bypass transparency requirements). IBM is disintegrating before our eyes. The media hardly ever mentions this. █
