January 18, 2006
Dear Everyone:
It’s that dreaded time of year again: PMP. PMP stands for Performance Management Program and, before I say anything else, let me say this: It’s a hundred times better than the evaluation system (such as it was) that preceded it.
BPMP (Before PMP) some employees would go for years hearing nothing from their supervisors about how well they were doing their jobs. Other supervisors used evaluation time as a way to play “Gotcha!”, pouncing on unsuspecting employees with various “You didn’t do this right” scenarios, often months after the alleged incident. Other “evaluations” were more like character assassinations.
With the introduction of PMP, some 15 or so years ago, each supervisor is required to sit down with each employee and “agree” on what would be expected of the employee for the coming year. There should be at least one interim meeting and then the final meeting, when you go over what you were supposed to have done and compare it to what you actually did get done.
This seems fairly simple. And they even provide you with a form to use. Only trouble is, they change the form each and every year. Not once has the form been the same two years in a row. They’re constantly “improving” it.
So I’ve been working on my PMP in preparation for next week’s meeting with the boss. This is the final meeting for 2005. We started out with such high hopes. And a form all filled out. But then, we changed operating companies last May, moving from “Boring & Really Expensive Services” (BRES) to Information Technology Company (ITC). Guess what: ITC’s form is completely different from BRES’s form. Did I mention each operating company is free to monkey with the form as much as they want?
So I’ve been looking at the projects I was assigned and how many I actually completed. The number is a rather dismal one. I mean as in one (1) project that actually came to an acceptable close. That was the Facility Drawings Audit. All of the others are still ongoing, or were cancelled by the customer. I don’t know what I’ve been doing to frighten people off, but it’s going to make for an interesting conversation next week.
Of course, the majority of my time has gone to the document management system and my being the primary (often the only) trainer available. So I’m trying to figure out how many classes I conducted and how many people I trained last year. Management is big on numbers. They like metrics like “Efforts made” and “Results”.
I’m even supposed to come up with actual safety and diversity “moments” I shared in staff meetings. Like I’m going to remember when I said I saw Mythbusters on TV and they proved that you can’t really start a fire in a gas station with a spark from your cell phone. Well, I’ll do the best I can.
Last Saturday, we got “Jeannie’s” new iPod installed on her computer, but that was as far as we got. Evidently, she’s not interested in downloading any of her existing CDs and hasn’t had time to check out what’s available from the Internet. We also made some more adjustments on that pesky layout in her deposition transcript application. Seems the first line was a quarter-inch too high to suit the office.
Hopefully, we’ll get some tunes downloaded next weekend. I’m curious to see how well it works.
Love, as always,
Pete
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