It’s a yearly ritual and companies both big and small…the annual review. It starts with the self-evaluation form in which you have to balance your opinion of yourself – why yes, thank you, I’m spectacular; I’m glad you asked – with something that tempers that so your supervisor has room to suggest improvements in your performance – this makes your boss feel like he or she actually has something to do.
The next step is going through that review. Your supervisor has to reconcile your view of yourself with the feedback from your coworkers and with his or her own impressions of your work. Then the hard part: the confrontation. Your boss is forced to evaluate you to your face.
If that goes well, you get to the salary negotiation phase during which your boss tries to put a monetary price on your value to the company. And no matter how much it is, it’s never enough.
And no matter how much somehow there’s always this unspoken vibe that you should be grateful for what you’re getting, lucky to have made it through your review and still have a job. The entire review structure, making you evaluate your own performance, wondering what anonymous feedback your colleagues have given your supervisor, having to be polite while your supervisor details your perceived strengths and weaknesses and makes concrete suggestions for improvements, the whole thing is designed to put you on the defensive.
The thing of it is, your annual review is one of the few opportunities you have as an employee to get yourself on a better footing with your employer. Most people blow their primary opportunity which is at hire. The only other time, which is pretty dicey anyway, is if you have another offer from another employer. By then, though, you’re pretty much out the door anyway.
Today my boss offered me 5% which is nothing to sneeze at in this economy and in the state the organization I work for is in but in the spirit of expansiveness that has pervaded the country since the election I asked for what I wanted: more time.
Given that America is the only industrialized nation in the world that has no legal minimum for vacation, time is worth more to me at this point that money. After all, it’s the only thing you ever really run out of.
Very cool you asked for that… I tried negotiating a couple more weeks of vacation in lieu of salary. They wouldn’t go for it, even though it would have saved them money.