I just need to formulate my Personal Goals that will help us to meet the Hub Goals for the year (not department, you understand, hub), which all align to the corporate Strategic Drivers. And, of course, I need to come up with a Development Goal that will allow me to Be My Best Self. Then all I need to do is load them in PeopleCloud

Shoot. Me. Now. Or, alternatively, as my employer, just f___g tell me what you want me to do. As I expressed to the other guy I work with, imagine getting a plumber in and asking “So, Dave, what are you hoping to achieve with this bathroom refit?”

I think you should lean into the idea and make strides despite the current market headwinds to enable a strategic synergy orsomesuchbollocks

When faced with such horrors at work I recommend this tool to my team. As line manager I apporve them too

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012014302/http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi

Nearly a quarter of the year has already passed.

My Great Hub of Peopleness has one goal entered for me. “Evidence your contribution on the business unit success. Make a tangible contribution to all performance objectives to include:
Description: Against Orders, Revenue and Entity Contribution: 28.7%”
I work in the IT department.

Are you not worried about how your role contributes to the success of the organisation?

Do you not care about how you can develop and improve to become better? Even plumbers must develop and learn new stuff!

db (HR Manager ;-))

My current department manager has a thankfully quite relaxed view of these things.

My previous manager was the pointy haired one from Dilbert. I once got hauled in for a telling off for scoring myself 7 out of 7* for Integrity as according to their own definitions you could only ever achieve the standard, or fall short. They demoted me to 4/7, meets expectations and I still maintain that if meets expectations and the highest level of integrity aren’t synonymous then that explains the great big chonkin SFO fine we’re paying off.

*lets leave aside the question of what sociopath creates a scoring system 1-7, of which 1,2,6 and 7 were only theoretically achievable if you were in the wrong job or had been fired mid year.

With anything like this, ask yourself ‘what would Siobhan say?’…

@db – one of my favourite quotes was from someone in the Business School at a Russell Group Uni who said that “HR has industrialised the art of being unhelpful“. Nobody in the room disagreed with them.

🙃

Are you not worried about how your role contributes to the success of the organisation?

Is it not the organisation’s role to work that out, not mine?

Do you not care about how you can develop and improve to become better?

Honestly? Not really. I’m quite happy to just crack on with whatever I’ve been asked to do, a bit like plumbers

Genuine question though – is there any evidence that this approach actually improves organisational performance?

Christ on a shitty stick…. ^ She (Siobhan) is properly irritating. Which is, like, the whole point, OK, right?

@thelawman – I have genuinelly worked with people like Siobhan, which is why I love W1A. They absolutely nailed it.

They walk among us.

I suggest you cover the hub with your thought shower…

I encountered pretty much all the characters in W1A during my few years at Television Centre.

As for ‘personal goals’, surely a significant pay uplift or just resigning is the quickest way to ‘be your best self’?

So glad I’m retired! Was always a load of crap when I was working. Many years ago I was trying to do a review with someone reporting to me and a sign appeared in the office window saying “sack the ****” 😀

Nearly a quarter of the year has already passed.

And end of year reviews start in September to have everything signed off by mid-November.

Happens everywhere,  and it’s how it works in big organisations.   You don’t want training, promotions etc? Or you’re just happy with whatever till they find someone cheaper and more ambitious and park you in a corner?

Or you’re just happy with whatever till they find someone cheaper and more ambitious and park you in a corner?

Yes.

As no one else has come up with any decent suggestions try these:

my goals for this year are;

1. Get in a fight

2. Invent a new sandwich filling

3. Get you bozos to give me more money for doing **** all

Dunno, 2. might be tricky. Haven’t we already reached peak sandwich with the mighty ham, cheese, mayo, salad, pepper and cheese sandwich?

If you think that is controversial, you could fill 1. right now…

I was supposed to do this every year  Never once was the process completed.

IMO a completely useless waste of time.

When  I used to work for Nortel (90,000 staff) we had all that drivel every year.

Only ever worked for startups since and it’s just so much simpler, the only process is:  people who don’t fit in or pull their weight get made redundant. Everyone else just carries on working….

This is my job for tonight’s Nightshift. I’m happy in the position I’m in and have no thoughts of progressing in the company. Every year it’s a waste of time for 90% of the people I work with.

I’m already getting grumpy thinking about it

Every single person in a company having to waste time doing this bollox is one of the contributors to the UK having such a shit low level of productivity.

I had mine today. By the time it’s complete I’ll have staffed away the best part of a day of time.  And my bos will have had to do this bollox x10 with the rest of the team. (He thinks it’s **** time wasting too, but will get a kicking and wasted even more time defending it if he doesnt).

After 30 years in my industry and work for paying customers coming out of my ears all the time (work that comes direct to me from the customers most of the time) mine could be be summed up in 4 words. “Well done. Carry On”.

I was reminded I had to “submit my Q1 Priorities before COP” yesterday.

Having already discussed that my workload is 100% dictated to me by my line manager (as my line manager’s is to her), I wrote:

P1 – do the tasks assigned throughout Q1

P2 – do the additional tasks assigned throughout Q1 that meet the requirements of P1

P3 – complete any ad-hoc tasks that time allows for considering P1 & P2

Email alert received this morning to say my Priorities were agreed…my LM is not a detail oriented person.

One job i had i had 40 staff reporting to me.  New starts had appraisals and target setting at 3 months and then tbe end of the year.  Other staff annually.   Policy said i shouls take two hours for each in prep time, doing the nonsense and debrief.  Works out at nearly 3 weeks of my time or 5% of my working year.  I told my boss i would start doing them after i got mine.  I never got one.  Never did one

Genuine question though – is there any evidence that this approach actually improves organisational performance?

Yes, if it’s done well. Too many organisation don’t do in well and focus too much on the tooling and process rather than the conversation.

However its like bikes and helmets, lots of arguments for and against. Like any tool it can be used the wrong way. However in large organisations it helps understand who are the solid performers, who are the people to invest in and who might be under performing and need more support.

Then there is the whole topic of if you should link Reward to Performance. Better performance = More compensation. Even more arguements for and against this but the idea is that for most employees (private sector) money incentivises them to hit their target. If the right targets are set and aligned with the organisations objectives linking them to an individuals salary/bonus should improve the overall performance of the organisation.

I could go on but fear most of you are already falling asleep. 🙂

Just photo copy last year’s bs and slap it down

Yes, if it’s done well.

But it never is, as the air gap between the aspirational meaningless twaddle touted by major corps as “strategy” and doing something actually practically useful in your particular field is so vast you could steer a malfunctioning container ship through it with room to spare

Previous job in, in an company of under 15 of us, my apraisal was: “you get on with your job don’t you yes good.”

Currently, still in a small company, but relatively larger company, I think still under 100 employees but not sure. Often wear jeans and t-shirt, and when it gets warmer definitely will be in shorts and t-shirt.

From the sounds of it I’m very glad I don’t work in a big corporation, not sure I could get used to it, the culture, wearing a suit…. shudders.

When I worked for one of the big 4 consulting firms, my boss and I had an agreement. He’d just roll over last years nonsense and I’d not turn up for my appraisal in a chicken suit 🙂 4 years, nobody noticed but sadly never got to out the chicken suit 🙂

All our stuff was client facing. If we screwed up we were done with all the due process a partner led/revenue is king company cares about, if we did okay then we got left alone.  Any objective setting seemed largely irrelevant as we were just cash cows for the partners.

I don’t miss it 😉

@db It would be nice if these development plans could be couched in plain English rather than corporate babble. I was involved many years ago in setting up QA as a director in a small company followed by Investors in People, both of which we found very useful. The IIP stuff was very simple and allowed that not everyone wanted to make huge personal advances or massive contributions to the business. They simply wanted to do their job well and be rewarded for it. Appraisal was as much about them as the business. My later experience in large corporations tended to colour my view that appraisals had become more stick than carrot.

who might be under performing and need more support.

Told to pull their socks up and put on an improvement plan.

I think the rot set in a long, long time ago when “Personnel” was rebranded as “Human Resources”.

These two would probably do

formulate my Personal Goals that will help us to meet the Hub Goals
My personal goals will be to remain productive and fully utilise my capacity to deliver against the hub goals assigned whilst ensuring they align to the corporate Strategic Drivers

Development Goal that will allow me to Be My Best Self.
I aim to achieve a better work life balance that will both optimise my work performance whilst remaining mentally focussed and happy.

They walk among us.

Sadly, often on their hind legs, which makes them more difficult to identify. Until they start attempting to communicate, which is a task they clearly have difficulty doing.

Dunno, 2. might be tricky. Haven’t we already reached peak sandwich with the mighty ham, cheese, mayo, salad, pepper and cheese sandwich?

Many moons ago I was in a sandwich shop when a bloke walked in and asked for “ham, jam, onion and mustard”. It was made up for him without even a slightly raised eyebrow. I have yet to try this delicacy.

I’ve had PDR plans to fill in for the last five years. I’ve simply changed the dates and slightly reworded them. Told the people who work under me to do the same. Nobody has ever noticed or questioned it. The whole process of these things is a tedious, pointless slog and doesn’t work. Funny how the only person on the thread supporting them in any way works in HR.

I left my previous long time  employer after a total clusterfhluck of a reverse takeover of the previously sucessful division I was in (how much utter incompetence or even willful damage is accepted at high levels within major international companies, is beyond belief).

Anyway…they decided that all us workers  having to do a (I paraphrase as I can’t recall the precise bollox) ” Personal health and safety pledge” and put it on our desk ( when we had desks before the office space cost reduction  ‘agile working’ was rolled out to make staff feel doubly unwelcome).

I did one that said I committed to more swimming, biking and even running in order to get back to a level of fitness suitable for another ironman. With  small images of me swimming / biking / running included.

None of the senior mismanagers ever came close enough to us profit making engineers to notice.  But little victories and all that.

I don’t work in HR, but they’ve been productive for me at my current work. Last time I expressed an interest in people management, so the company has started me on management training courses, which I can use to apply for management roles, leading to a decent pay increase, should I want to.

Maybe they ‘don’t work’ because people convince themselves that they don’t work before trying to make them work.

formulate my Personal Goals that will help us to meet the Hub Goals for the year (not department, you understand, hub), which all align to the corporate Strategic Come up with a Development Goal that will allow me to Be My Best Self.

Can’t chatGPT or whatever it’s called help with this crap?

My other moan whilst on about it was the HR eeejits decided to apply a ‘normal’*  distribution to the permitted scoring system – so irrespective of whether all team members were doing well, there had to be a distribution of good / average / bad / ugly scorings. .and that reflected on pay (+ redundancies when the time came after the business was ruined).

(* They didn’t actually understand the difference between a ‘normal’ distribution and binomial.  Duurh.)

I was in an industry-leading team that had grown with careful selective recruitment (managed by ourselves) of the best around over 2 decades. There was no dead wood or  dross – we’d made sure of that at the recruitment stage over the years.

Try explaining how a  (binomial) distribution is mathematically total bollox when the formation of the team  was not randomly selected from the populous at large, but was already skewed towards the best in the business.  Or,  as I put it to the eeejits who rolled it out from HR, “we need to go recruit a bunch of fhuckwhits, morons and idiots to balance out the team to make your scoring system valid”.

Thank **** I’m out of there. Many of the other good folks are out too.

Led by donkeys.

Just photo copy last year’s bs and slap it down

Pretty much the arrangement I have. It’s nice we get to have an hours chat and coffee on work time.