Writing your own performance review

At work, we have to write our own performance reviews every year. Not only do we have to evaluate ourselves against our goals (I have 7 of them!), we also have to rate ourselves against categories like "Create the future" and "Lead with character", plus the company's ethics like "Inclusion" and "Good citizenship". So we basically evaluate ourselves from three different perspectives. This requires over a dozen written paragraphs (not some sort of ranking system). But wait, there's more! Then we have to say what would have allowed us to perform better, create a three-stage "development plan", and our goals (7 of them!) for the next year.

The whole thing will take me at least 4 hours. If they made it simpler, they could have the managers do it (who should be doing it instead of us).

Do any of you (besides Forbin) have to do this? I think it's ridiculous.

pretty much every place i've worked has had something similar, nowadays of course i just get to point and laugh and everyone doing them

i still remember one place asking me how i'd improve my lot, they made a face when i suggested more money and less hours would do it...

I've had to in the past and I hate it. I'm not sure how people can look at themselves objectively. Perhaps that's just me. My current employer is more about my line manager appraising me, although we are supposed to say if there are any areas where we could improve ourselves.

The Army has annual ratings like these, called NCOER (non Commissioned Officer) and OER (officers).

You can knock one out in a couple hours if you're good at writing, and you have all the raw data. But ther are people reviewing it and critiquing the report for little admin errors (font sizes aren't uniform, don't like the way a sentence is phrased, margins don't line up, etc) and you have to change it at least a half-dozen times to finally get it approved. In theory there are regs on how to write it, but each Sergeant Major runs it his own way.

In the old days (15 years ago) you gave the facts to a clerk in your unit's administration office and they typed it up on a typewriter and if everyone agreed that the facts were accurate, it was a done deal.

Now that everyone has a computer it takes 10 times the amount of man-hours to finish an NCOER, because the Army figures it should be easy to just cut + paste a million times if neccessary until it's perfect.

The same applies for writing awards also....incredible waste of man-hours.
I have old awards that her HAND WRITTEN and got signed and approved in a matter of DAYS! Now it takes a minimum of a month.

Same here. We used to have a multipart (carbonless) form listing a dozen of categories and ratings from 1 to 5. The manager would check-off how you did in each area and optionally write a sentence for explanation. It took 1/10th the amount of time and was 10 times more useful.

I'm only partway thru mine. Problem is, I'm just a normal guy, and the Human Resourcesese language in this thing gives me a fucking headache.

Here's the thing: My job is to come in on time, draw charts all day, and go home.

Now, how the FUCK am I supposed to come up with three new "goals" to achieve every year, when my job remains essentially the same?

I have no clue what I did last year to "Create the Future," or "Lead with Character." 'Cause all I did was draw charts.

And I can't imagine how ANYone can come up with a "personal development plan" that specifically requires 10% training, 20% mentoring, and 70% experiential learning. I. Just. Draw. Charts.

This is just a way to keep the managers from having to pay attention to you all year. Used to be, "Did I do a good job last year? Did I cause any trouble? Okay, fine, can I have a raise?"

My brain isn't designed for this manager-speak shit.

I used to sing my own praises in those self reviews , then I started using them as an opportunity to bitch about the fucked up way our news department runs.

This year, I didn't do one at all and I told them that if I was force to turn one in, I was just going to turn in the same one I did last year, since nothing has changed since then.

They're not tied to our raises, so I don't give a fuck as long as I get an increase.

They make it worse every year by including more and more nonsense. And our raises have already been decided (but still a secret), so it really doesn't matter.

For the Inclusion category I'm thinking of writing, "I worked with a girl."

We used to do the same thing in the Navy, and then they'd go 'up the chop chain' until they read like your CO really wanted them to.

In my experience, the best way to do this is go home one evening, throw down a couple of beers, put on your Cheshire Cat Eating Grin, then sit down and bang the fucker out. Tell 'em (artfully) how you're the best thing since sliced bread and how you taught JC himself how to walk on water. Remember, if you don't look out for your own career, nobody else will.

And always, always save your first version....because they eventually change it (they have to justify their jobs) so many times it comes back to the way you wrote it in the first place.

I hate those things. All the consultants that invented them should be hung from the neck until their flesh starts rotting off.

There's a new first and second question this year (paraphrasing):
"Do you think you lived the company philosophy of ethics this year?" and
"What have you done to live the company philosophy of ethics this year?"



Well, I didn't kill anybody. Yet.

I'm thinking of using the Dilbert Mission Satement Generator to come up with an obscure phraseology that the bosses will think sounds like an answer.

Write your review, then remove all first person terms.

For example:

Another:

Sentence fragments and official sounding claptrap are key to a successful performance review.

May I suggest:
"Have you encouraged others to value and practice the company philosopthy of ethics?"

"Name three areas in which the company philosophy of ethics could be improved or revised."

"A train full of employess living the company philosophy of ethics is heading west traveling at 35 miles per hour....."

Anyway, The Army NCOER I mentioned demands putting all statements in the past tense, with action verbs:

o Sergeant Smith led his squad to achieve 100 percent on their widget inventory in the unit inspection

o Sergeant Smith displayed impeccable bearing and took care of his troops

So.....Sergeant Smith apparently used to act right but now he's a shitbag who mistreats his soldiers? I would read this and say "was this a one time thing? Why doesn't he do this anymore?"
Wouldn't "Sergeant Smith displays impeccable bearing and takes care..." imply a likely ongoing and future condition?

But no, I lost the "past tense" battle all the time.

It actually says:

"Briefly discuss the [company] value(s) you think you did the best job demonstrating in your daily activities. Please give specific examples."

"Please describe how you might improve in living the [company] values in your daily activities. Please give specific examples."

I have no idea what to write for the second one. Maybe "I won't sell nightvision goggles to China"?

you could write "i have decided to selling crack to the local children as this would appear to go against company values. maybe i should discuss with my line manager its position on sex trafficking too."

I pity you all.

The worst I have to do is twice yearly thing of saying I'm going to do more reading (read: any) for my lectures, and improve my timekeeping.

I did sort of end up doing one of those for my last job voluntarily, but it was actually useful. I had a temping job in the IT section of this HUGE company, and was told I'd be helping on a project to increase information secturity awareness.

Turned up, was told everyone was busy, so I'd be doing it myself.

About half the way into the job, I was just completely stuck, because I'd only had a vague idea of what I was doing, no knowledge of information security, so I'd just been reading up on it, management techniques, and sent out a preliminary questionnaire to get an idea of what worked and what didn't, and what people knew.

So, sitting in the office, midly hungover, a couple of tactical chunders, no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Decided to blag my morning/ early afternoon, and wrote a "mid employment assement report". Basically found the job description I'd been given, copied it out with tick marks at the top of it where appropriate, and ended up writing about 1,500 words on what I'd done so far, how it had gone and what the results were, what I thought I needed to do and how I was going to do about it (and that I couldn't do anything until I had the results of the questionnaire back), and then emailed it at about 2pm to my direct boss and section boss. They were ridiciously impressed for something I'd simply done as an avoidance technique - turns out you learn a lot in university!

Spent the rest of the afternoon putting pretty colours into my spreadsheets, and playing on the "teach yourself to powerpoint/excel/etc" things.

And before I seem ubergeek - my dad was working a few desks away, it was the IT department, so I knew exactly how much was being logged and what the penalties were, and my screen was facing the boss a lot of the time. Plus, hungover. I'd spent 15 minutes wondering why I couldn't send email, until I realised I was pressing the "to" button on outlook.

raises hand, signifying I'm another corporate flunky.

Not much to add here. It does really seem to be a way of doing your bosses' job for them AND even more pointless than that because they've already decided how much they're going to give you and how they're going to rate your performance.

I guess if I was smart enough I'd have deciphered the scam scheme and weaseled my way into directing QA or writing mission statements or something but my usually bad attitude keeps me from saying that stuff with a straight face.

Oh you're going to hell for that one.

Perhaps, but remember that the people who illegally shipped classified information got promoted!

In my company the ones who ran illegal scams to win big sales got promoted while the rest of us had to take extra ethics courses.

We had to do 360 evaluations at my old workplace but where I am currently, we don't do them at all.

It's not so bad though as the boss (business ower) works closely with us all and so we pretty much know the score the whole time.

Years ago, they told us we'd get to evaluate our supervisors. That never happened. No big surprise.

A couple of years ago the boss handed out self evaluation forms. "Rate yourself 1 to 5 in the following areas." Since I was brought in as a change agent to do things differently, I knew that I had stepped on some toes. I gave myself high marks on performance, but marked myself down on getting along with everyone. It's not that I'm not a nice guy, there's just no way you can buck long standing organizational culture without rubbing someone the wrong way at times.

I liked one of my co-workers who gave herself 5's across the board. It was laughable, because the way the categories were drawn up there was no way to rate high in every category because they had built in conflict.

It's the kind of system that only works if you trust your boss. I did, but the others didn't and I really couldn't blame my co-workers because I've been on the side where I didn't (and don't) trust my bosses.

It's one of those seemingly good ideas that really just opens up Pandora's box.

That would be a big improvement compared to what we do here. We have to write over a dozen paragraphs about ourselves. "I continued to be a critical contributor to the X and Y programs. I completed all tasks on time blah blah blah blah..."

Well, it wasn't a bad approach. The problem is trust: if employees don't have it, the process is a waste of time. I had that trust, but my co-workers didn't and I understood why. They had a long succession of untrustworthy bosses and that's something that's not easily overcome. It takes more than "you can trust me, I'm different."

"I continued to scream obscenities at that boob who brings me an hour's worth of emergency last-minute work to do 15 minutes before my quitting time."

Oh, how I wish.

How about:
"I continued to do my job exactly the same way as last year."?

I just love the BS self evaluations.

1. What are your goals for the coming year? To survive another year at this hellhole of course.

2. What are your plans for self improvement? Well I keep sending out resumes but I'm not getting any bites.

3. What can management do to help you with your job? Give me the supplies I need to do my job, back me up when I'm right, and then leave me the hell alone the rest of the time.

I turned it in this morning and the boss handed it right back. For last year's goal results I just put "goal achieved; goal partially achieved, goal met." She wanted me to elaborate with a full explanation. Which ain't easy, 'cause I was lying, I didn't achieve a damn thing!