The Mining Man

For many of us at this time of year, performance reviews are just around the corner.  Depending on how well prepared you are, this could be a time to get final preparations done for the review, or a time of anxiety and trying to remember what you’ve achieved in the previous twelve months. 

You need to come to your review well armed with a range of examples of your achievements, and the best way to do this is to keep a record all the way through the year.

The key to a successful performance review is to present actual examples of things that you have achieved which match each of the criteria in the review document.  So when you are getting ready to prepare for your review, make sure you get a copy of the review document to see what the categories are on which you will be evaluated. 

In some systems there may only be three or four general categories (leadership, teamwork, personal performance etc), in others there may be dozens of more specific areas where you need to provide examples.

Keep a Record Throughout the Year

Your job of preparing for the review will be made so much easier if you have recorded little notes throughout the year about:

• Projects you have worked on
• Positive feedback you received
• Things you thought you did a really good job at
• Ways in which you contributed beyond your role
• Times when you went the extra mile

But how can we record all these things all the way through the year?  Maybe after last performance review you started doing it for a little while, but then forgot to write your little notes at the end of the day every day on what you’d achieved.  Or maybe you’ve never found a way to record what you’ve achieved and just try to remember twelve months worth of work and effort.

I’d suggest there’s two very simple ways to keep a record through the year.  Whichever way you choose, or a combination of both, make sure you record everything that might be important – you can always weed out those things that are not so important later.

1.  In Your Diary

Simply takes notes in your diary as things happen that you think you will be important to remember.  Either just make the notes as they occur to your through the day, or set aside 2 minutes at the end of each day to review notable events or achievements.

One good tip which will make going back through your diary much easier is to make the performance review notes stand out:

• Use a unique colored pen
• Highlight them the same color on each day
• Draw a box around them or put a big asterisk next to them
• Write them in the same place on your diary page

I write mine across the top of my diary page where I never write anything else, and I write them in red pen.  This makes it a breeze to go through the whole diary at the end of the year and make a summary list.

2. In Outlook / Email

The second way is to use Outlook or whatever email system you use.  Create a new folder called “performance review”, “feedback”, or “achievements”.  Now all you need to do is file everything into this folder.  And again, I suggest filing anything and everything that could be relevant – you can always sort or delete it later.

• When you submit a project or report, put a copy of the email you sent into your “achievements” folder. 

• When the boss replies with a one word email – thanks – put that in the folder too.

• When someone else gives you positive feedback or thanks - put that in the folder.

• When you do something that you want to record, but there’s no email associated with it – send yourself an email, and immediately file it into the “achievements” folder.  Now you’ve recorded what you did, and along with it the time and date on which is occurred.

TIP: If you want to file an email into another folder as well as your “achievements” folder, simply hold down CTRL while you drag the email and it will make a copy instead of moving it.

Review before the Review

Now that you’ve been keeping little notes or emails about notable things you’ve done all year, it only takes an hour or so before the actual performance review meeting to go through your notes and sort out the important things from things that turned out to be not so important.  Then align the achievements with each of the performance review categories and you are set to go!

Good luck preparing for your performance reviews, and if you haven’t kept a record over the last twelve months, today is the day to start keeping one for the next twelve months!

- Jamie Ross

Mining Man