The manager sent round requests for us to fill in all the forms. The deadline was last November. He's taken on a lot of the 'interviews' himself and as far as I know hasn't done any. Or perhaps he's just scared of me. He's only spoken to me once (apart from a nod in the corridor) since last September.
Well, they were the ones who became managers. There's always one.
MM
It's much too late, but again I can't sleep (having problems with the old insomnia again) so here's a brief recall: You meet up with your manager on a one-to-one basis, similar to an initial job interview. You and he are supposed to take on the role of being best buddies together during the appraisal. Then there are various forms to fill out, like the "mission statement" one I mentioned. There are "goals" to set, "opportunities" for improvement (made me think I should shower more often), and finally the manager would offer some words of advice in order to become a better drone. A few days later you'd get a printed report, i.e. "the appraisal", or even better, "The Appraisal", with capital letters to show how really, really important it was. You and he would sign it as a token of mutual love and understanding for each other and for the fabulous company both of us worked for. Then it was over for another year.
I believe some managers (the fascist tendency) enjoyed the process because it gave them the opportunity to speak down to the employee and tell him how he should pull his socks up.
Appraisals are all about self-aggrandizement -- for the management.
F**k knows what work feels like today, as I have been out of the rat-race for 14 years. As I can avoid the rush hour now, I never see workers going to work. They have become an invisible army. I know they exist, because Cameron keeps telling us they do, but I never see them any more. The only change I notice is when the schools are off and Sainsbury's car park is full. (Usually there are plenty of free spaces.)
Gonna have another stab at sleeping now...
MM
In academia, you might find the dept run more or less day to day by some "administrator" who slides in sideways and has no academic qualifications at all. Boy does that piss people off.
Is the right answer :)
Well, better than than leaving administration to academics. And yes, academics are very status concious, really messes them up when the admin have better academic qualifications then them.
That happens particularly when the head of department is an academic who
*may* be a good researcher but is hopeless at management.
It's more than admin.
Nothing puts a professor's nose out of joint than having an admin person approve his annual leave request.
More seriously, the admin person does not understand the business of the department and thus frequently comes up with stupid pronouncements.
I am lucky - my current place (at least my dept) does not have this problem. For all our faults, it still feels like a university.
That reminds me of assessments indicating an area where scope for improvement was identified, when the concept that I might not actually have the slightest desire to make any moves in that direction was met with incomprehension.
My response during my annual review at age 59 to "Where do you see yourself in 12 months' time?" was "Retired!"
Shortly afterwards the opportunity arose to apply for voluntary redundancy. I thought that they would turn it down, as it would cost them almost as much as keeping me, but my luck was in.
One of the best bits about my last few days at work was being able to say to certain parties who had, whilst pressing me to make progress on certain matters, singularly failed to engage in enabling discussions in any meaningful way "If you really want to talk about this, you've got X days left to do it."
Chris
Best crack I got when on my last day in a particular job dealing with inevitably obnoxious members of the public was in taken one aside and telling him to f**k off. 'Ill tell your manager' "Tell whoever the f**k you like. I'm off"
Having read this sub-thread, I feel very lucky to have had a number of very good managers in my career (not all, but many of them), and I believe I have been a good manager myself, learning from the better ones, and also from the bad ones (what not to do;-).
A good manager is a leader whose job is to get the best from the team, understanding what drives each team member, what hinders them, and as far as is possible/reasonable, pushing the former and removing the latter. As a manager, you should be on sufficently familiar terms that your staff can share their issues with you, and you should know what their longer term aims are, and providing it matches the company's direction, you can help them move towards those, even if it means losing someone good from your team to another role in the company (which is always better than losing them to a competitor).
If you get an unexpected resignation, then you weren't working well enough with that staff member. Equally, if you get to an appraisal, there shouldn't be any surprises on either side - everything mentioned should have been covered in regular conversations and/or regular 1-2-1s in the period since the last appraisal. It's also where the staff member gets a commitment from the company on things like training needed over the following year.
Your manager rarely has complete control of compensation (pay, bonuses, etc), and the appraisal is used to justify compensation changes higher up the management and to HR, where they are not going to know the staff member as well, if at all. (It's also necessary to protect companies from discrimination cases which staff might bring if they think they have been unfairly treated, if this was not the case.)
Companies which take management leadership seriously will usually have some type of 360 degree appraisal system, where the staff also appraise their manager via some type of anonymous or protected feedback (and sometimes also their manager's manager). A poor manager/leader can seriously reduce the productivity of whole teams, and that is an enormous unnecessary cost for a company - indeed it is often the cause for a company to fail.
Someone once asked me how I determined if a salesman was any good. I replied, put him on the road for a month and you will know!
IME appraisals are not worth the hot air they are written on. They're about as reliable as 5 year business plans.
I see my mistake (not having entered anything on MFP for a while).
I appraised yesterday and today's meals.
I was 800 cals over 1600 yesterday - that would be the amount I drunk in alcohol.
Yesterday and today - 2nd mistake. I thought buying a M&S salad and lobbing some pickled herrings on top would be good. It's not. The fish is 500 and sadly they do not do smaller portions (and no i do not trust the decrepit old fridge at work).
Today - a ramen snack cost me 380 cals.
On the plus side a fruit salad pudding for lunch is great at 75.
I am constantly surprised at some things. I had a nice creme caramel from Sainsburys and it was only 110. Low fat sandwiches aren't all bad. And the Be Good To Yourself range from Sainsburys is pretty nice.
Today (for lunch) I am having four Ryvita, butter, Ardennes pate, cucumber and spring onion, and a mug of coffee. 391 calories.
Yes aren't they just, here in Cambridge we've got more than our fair share of 'em;!..
Yes used that stuff for gout before, and its not shall we say one of the nicest drugs around...
Discussed Allopurinol with the doc and she dint think it was a good idea either. Local pharmacists and two retied hospital consultants living locally who have much the same problems reckon it, Ibuprofen, is one of the lesser evils in that line of drugs NSAIDs that is..
All that is the main reason I packed up working for someone else 30 years ago and although its not the easiest occupation running your own business its much less stressful in so many ways oddly enough as you are more in control of it.
Never looked back and still like what I'm doing, OK some days can be a PITA but thats life!...
Can't be arsed to retire, sounds like getting olde and boring!..
As I said, academics are status concious, not always with good reason.
Some do, others know a lot more than the academics.
There you go! A fairly healthy lunch, yet 391 cals quick as a flash! ;)
Before I started seriously counting cals I didn't have a clue how many were in any foods. No idea. But now, I look at a slice of bread and it grows horns before my eyes. An egg OTOH always seems acceptable as it contains so many nutrients. Right now, I reached the stage of the day when I need to plan something for supper. So much for my 1500 cal restriction this week! I've already consumed 1448 today. A small portion of rice, mushrooms, spring onions and ham wouldn't be more than around 300 cals (cooked from scratch, not a ready meal). So that will come in at around 1750 for the day. Plus another 72 if I eat a smallish Pink Lady.
Also I reckon the *vast majority* among the general public don't have a clue either how many calories foods contain, and I also reckon most people, despite the obesity epidemic, which can't have escaped their attention, do not check the labels on the front of food packages, tins etc.
MM
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