Maybe it’s a school of fish?
I work for a university, and our evals are loosely related to raises. The process involves the employee filling out a form and reading it to their supervisor during one meeting, then the supervisor fills out a different form and reads it to the employee the following week, and the employee’s goals are firmed up in the second meeting. So, between filling out the form and meeting, the process eats up hours.
In 2020 they were very insistent that despite the pandemic, we really really needed to go through the process anyway. So we did.
Then they announced several weeks later that there’d be no raises in 2021.
My department was super appreciative to have spent hours on a meaningless activity at a time when the pandemic travel ban greatly increased our workload as we helped our staff give trainings online instead of in person…
Sorry, I assumed the “art school on Columbus Avenue” referred to NYC. I didn’t connect your wry quip to “my” business card.
Or, I’ve opened a school on a teensy tiny island…
BUT… back on topic: Every time I see the thread title, I get a twinge of PTSD. I’d always ask: Wouldn’t it be SO much better for the company if I just kept working? Let the managers go to meetings and fill out paperwork, so I can be left alone, and then you can bill ALL my hours to clients? You can’t be happy to see two hours of “Code 312: Internal Meeting, Non-Billable” on my timesheet!
During the intro to the process this year, our HR staff told us they polled the company and that they were surprised to learn a majority of employees wanted something like a traditional annual review.
I can only conclude from this we have some combination of brown-nosing would-be ladder climbers and HR who only report the opinions of the important (read: C-suite) people.
Or a lot of managers that only talk to their people at annual review time, so that is the only time the peons get told how they are doing. The company I am now contracting for apparently has mandated monthly 1-on-1 meetings for everybody (except contractor, thank Ares). Much griping from both my manager (who is actually good about letting people know his expectations) and the peons, who for the most part would rather work than spend time talking about work (and filling out forms about talking about work).
“Practice!” — trad.
Somehow I misread this as mediated monthly 1-on-1 meetings 