What I mean vs What I say

So it’s review time where I work, which means that, yes, the entire company gets reviewed at once. This year management has stated outright that there will be zero pay increases at this review, companywide. (COLA in AZ: ~3.78%) Also, as has been true for every company I have worked for, the review is final and goes in your permanent record, whether you feel that it is accurate or not. You just have to be allowed to see it, you’re not allowed to address it. In fact, signing it just means you’ve seen it. Oh, and if management says there is some area where an employee could use improvement, then the company takes no steps to improve the employee in that area, or even to guage the employee’s improvement until the next review a year later. Hooray company!

As part of the review process, employees are asked to write a self-evaluation to hand in before they go over their review with management. I wrote one. Then I remembered that I don’t like trouble, and wrote it again from scratch. Click “more” below to read both copies.

EMPLOYEE SELF-EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE

This self-evaluation will be of help to both the employee and the company in reviewing your progress during the previous year and in future planning. It provides an opportunity to compare your view of performance with that of your manager’s. After completing the evaluation questions below (use additional paper if necessary), submit this form to your supervisor prior to your performance evaluation session.

1. List responsibilities and goals of your job.
To handle incoming technical support calls and respond to technical support voicemails when assigned to me.
To generate ACD Reports for the technical support department on a weekly and monthly basis.

2. Describe your major performance accomplishments within the last year.
While I have had some difficulty censoring myself when customers and fellow employees directly attacked my character or abilities, I have made significant ground in just keeping my mouth shut when people insult me.

3. What have been your major disappointments with your performance in the last year?
I am disappointed in my ability to properly guage my managers’ opinions of what the focus of tech. support should be, leading to misunderstandings when my focuse is on the wrong thing (call time, honesty, supporting only USSC products, etc…).

4. What are the personal development areas in which you most need to improve?
I still have some work to do on how I handle customers and employees who insult or outright lie to me; I am still prone to realistic human reactions.

5. What other comments or suggestions should be addressed in this review?
Maybe the fact that the review process is worthless since we already know there will be zero increases for employees who worked hard & zero follow up for employees who needed improvement.

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EMPLOYEE SELF-EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRE

This self-evaluation will be of help to both the employee and the company in reviewing your progress during the previous year and in future planning. It provides an opportunity to compare your view of performance with that of your manager’s. After completing the evaluation questions below (use additional paper if necessary), submit this form to your supervisor prior to your performance evaluation session.

1. List responsibilities and goals of your job.
To handle incoming tech. support calls and respond to tech. support voicemails assigned to me, attempting to provide a satisfactory resolution for questions and issues relating to products sold by USSC.
To generate ACD Reports for the tech. support department.

2. Describe your major performance accomplishments within the last year.
In the last month or three I have made significant improvements in handling the most difficult customers and in knowing when to have someone else take over for me.
When I was told that the focus of the desk was handling calls quickly, no one was more effecient. Now that the focus has changed, my behaviour has also changed.

3. What have been your major disappointments with your performance in the last year?
In two instances where I was confronted, insulted, and/or had my abilities called into question by an employee, instead of taking my concerns to a manager and trusting that the situation would be handled appropriately, I confronted the employees directly. Just because another emplyee is behaving badly doesn’t mean I should, too.

4. What are the personal development areas in which you most need to improve?
When there is a known issue with our software that the company refuses to admit/address and a customer confronts me about it, of when an employee calls my abilities into question, verbally attacks or insults me personally, I react emotionally. I need to work on my ability to mask or remove all emotional responses in the workplace so I can focus on a more appropriate course of action.

5. What other comments or suggestions should be addressed in this review?
I feel that there should be more communication between management and employees than when a mistake has been made and at annual reviews, to help prevent mistakes and to keep employees on the correct focus.

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So, the second one is the one I’ll be turning in a little later today. Typing it in here, I can see that it is still a little cynical and harsh, but … without avoiding contact with management entirely I’m not sure I could really allow myself to not express my discontent with management. Of course, this sort of attitude is why I lost my last job, a little over two years ago. Some people would tell me that I have a problem with authority figures. I would probably say that the authority figures have a problem.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.