Performance reviews are something that most organizations require staff to complete. The timing of these reviews can vary. Some organizations have the reviews once a year, some twice a year, and some have them every three months. In my previous degrees the closest I came to performance reviews were the annual meetings with an academic adviser to discuss my course schedule. And I only ever went to two of those meetings. In my working life I had performance reviews once a year at each of the organisations I worked for, though the most recent organisation was moving towards a quarterly review process when I left. Both organisations required me to fill out a self-evaluation before the performance review and I hated it. Now that I'm in my PhD, the performance review is once again rearing its head and I'm dreading the meeting.
I appreciate the importance of a performance review, and the self-assessment that usually accompanies one. I think both are important to making sure that the employee isn't struggling and that the appropriate work is being completed. I'm usually quite happy with the results of performance review meetings as they allow me to express my needs as an employee without feeling like I'm doing so inappropriately. After all, one aspect of the performance review is to ensure employee needs are being met (or at least this has been an aspect of all the performance reviews I have attended in the past). It is the documentation leading up to the performance review that I dread. Despite being a self-professed writer, I don't enjoy writing self-reflective pieces that are going to be evaluated by other people. If I want to be self-reflective I do so in my personal journal or hide it under the guise of fictional characters, so writing a document detailing everything that I've done over a set period of time and how I feel about it is difficult for me. This is not to say that I don't think the self-reflective aspect of the performance review is bad. It often is a good way to combat my guilt of not doing enough because it shows me exactly how much I have completed over a set period of time. There are times when it doesn't assuage the guilt because for one reason or another I haven't made much progress, but in general it helps me see that even if my tasks have been different than those I maybe should have been focusing on, I have done a lot. It isn't the results of self-assessments that I don't like. It isn't the purpose of writing them. It is the actual writing of them. l have been taught my whole life not to "toot your own horn", which can be detrimental when trying to write a self-assessment. I tend to be unsure of the balance between being vain/arrogant and stating my accomplishments. For my past self-assessments as an employee, I was never sure how much of my daily tasks to include. After all, if a task is listed in my job description isn't it assumed that it is being done as long as there are no complaints against me? Do I need to include it? If I don't include it is it assumed that it wasn't done? If I do include it will it seem like I'm "padding" the l to make myself seem more productive than I am? Some of you may look at the above questions and say that merely by having that response it indicates that I'm probably on the right track and my supervisors will take that into account when they write up the documents for HR. But that doesn't actually address the issues I have with the writing of self-assessments. I tend to freeze and second guess myself. And in terms of the most recent self-assessment I wrote for my upcoming PhD performance review, I was second-guessing myself all over the place (how I was writing it, whether I had included unnecessary information, how I could not include that information and still make it to the appropriate length, etc.). The point is not whether or not I'm capable of doing a job/PhD and able to show my capability in a performance review. It is that I feel incredibly anxious every time I have to write a self-assessment or have a performance review meeting. And I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. Which brings us back to the title of this post: a love-hate relationship. I fully acknowledge the importance of performance reviews and self-assessment. I think they do a lot of good. But I have a very hard time going through these reviews myself and so have complicated feelings on the topic. That being said, one thing that has helped me a bit is to re-frame how I think of these reviews. I try to remind myself that the self-assessment is a socially acceptable medium for "tooting your own horn". Your supervisor (whether in a PhD or in the workplace) probably already has an idea of whether you do good work. The self-assessment is there so you can remind your supervisor and yourself what you do above and beyond the good work already inherent in your job description. And it never hurts to remind them of the daily tasks that are actually in your job description. This isn't a perfect solution for me. I still get anxiety about these documents and meetings. But it does help a bit, and I have hopes that continually reminding myself of this fact will gradually decrease my overall anxiety surrounding performance reviews. Happy Reading!
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A Second Blog Page?This is the part of the blog specifically about my PhD. It will include updates, musings, and advice. Archives
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