Rating your co-workers: Is honesty really the best policy?

Question: “The one thing I don’t like about my new admin job is that we have to rate our co-workers every year! I’m dreading filling out that form. It asks us to rate people on a scale from 1 to 5 in a number of different work categories. The ratings are anonymous, but I’m afraid being really honest will cause resentment and strife if someone receives an accumulation of mediocre ratings. Realistically, wouldn’t it be better to avoid giving 1s and 2s no matter how I feel, and just let our manager deal with visible performance problems?” – Monty, Tech Documentation Specialist

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