Introspection

Exciting fact of corporate life is appraisal. Salary appraisal and performance appraisal. When it is your time HR department starts asking you about what you did in the past appraisal period? What you did which was expected? What you did which was out of the way? What was the value add you have provided in the appraisal period?

If you have not kept a record of the things you have done then this is not a simple task. What you can remember is just the last project you worked on, just the last 15 days of your corporate life. Oh God! How to recollect all the things done in the appraisal period? There must be some things which were done above expectations, there must be certain things done below expectations.

There is one way to recollect these things in an indirect manner. Just fire your email software and start looking at the archives of corporate mail. Fortunately we retain each and every mail we sent and received at least for 2 years. Going through each and every mail you start recollecting the incidences and the projects you worked on. You also recollect the special request you received for attending a client meeting at 10pm in office. You recollect there was a mail asking about the low quality of documentation from SEPG. This opens the whole appraisal period in front of you and you just have to keep noting down the points to elaborate on them and here you go, you have all the data as was required.

But this shall be the last method to do this thing. We must maintain our own track record. Usually as soon as you have gone through one appraisal you already know what needs to be recorded on a day to day basis. We shall have a log book of our highlights and lowlights where we shall log in our accomplishments and also our learning points.

Appraisal is a time when we can introspect our work life. We can think and plan for better productivity and things which will add more value to our deliverables.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur


(Image courtesy Justin Hall)