It’s the beginning of May and all CERN staff members have now received the results of their performance appraisals.

Martina¹ comes to see me, rather put out: “My boss has landed me with a “fair²”. I’ve had it now!” Martina’s especially disappointed because she thought she’d done a good job over the year. Of course, she knows some of her colleagues do more than her, but isn’t that a personal choice?

Perhaps you’re one of those who’ve received a “fair”? It’s not the end of the world; quite the opposite: you’ll have had the chance to talk about your performance during your appraisal interview. A supervisor who awards a “fair” has nothing fundamental or personal against you: overall, you meet expectations. It simply means there may be room for improvement in some areas, as is true for many of us.

Don’t forget that your performance is assessed in comparison with that of the whole team. Take, for example, Formula 1: the drivers are among the best in the world. Nevertheless, at the end of the season, some of them have inevitably done less well than others. That doesn’t make them bad drivers, though: they’ll work with their teams to find a way of improving their standing next year, which will benefit both them and their teams. They’ll dissect their performance, analyse each individual race, identify their weak areas and work out how to improve on them. This is done with the team leader, but the drivers also need the support of the rest of the team: technicians, engineers and co-drivers. It’s a real team effort.

Have you had the opportunity to do the same thing at CERN? Your supervisor should have told you what he or she expects of you and worked with you to draw up an objective assessment: what’s worked well, what you should keep doing and what, if anything, needs to be changed and how.

Indeed, during Martina’s interview, her supervisor told her what she expected of her: “Martina, you’re an excellent computer scientist, but you ought to keep better records of your programs: it’s important for software maintenance and future development, which won’t necessarily be done by you. Talk to Mark¹ and Kate¹ about it. They’ve had experience; they can help you.” So Martina, armed with this valuable advice, knows what she needs to do!

If you’d like to comment on any of my articles or suggest a topic that I could write about, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at Ombuds@cern.ch.

Pierre Gildemyn

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¹Names have been changed

²“Fair: Performance generally meets expectations, but may need improvement in some areas in terms of results, quality and quantity of work, or behaviour.”