Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Human Resources Performance Management Systems Are Evil

I did a bad thing.  Two people at work have become ill with the flu after I infected the office on Friday and my assistant was off yesterday and will be off again today and another guy in the office is cursing me as hes booked into a 4 day business trip to Queensland and hes crook as I should have stayed home on Friday I think, but it’s a balance between meeting your deadlines and looking after your health.

The end of year rush also officially started yesterday when my boss at our fortnightly team meeting reminding us all that its only 9 weeks to the end of the year and that we should be looking at our own respective performance objectives and ensuring were on track.  Performance Objectives are the projects that in January look like good ideas and things you commit to complete by year end and then in hindsight in October realise that it was a shoddy thing to propose and that there have been a hundred and one things that have since become more important and that your objective now is to make it clear to your boss that that special project that was to go ahead was really a poor one and that you have done all these things instead.  This is all true of course, real working life ebbs and flows and things become more important whilst other things get superseded but when you go back to the very clinical HR system that records your objectives you need to justify your performance against them and in black and white terms, it may not look all that impressive.

In regards to my own, I know I have done generally well, but there is one project there that was pulled and sits there on my performance screen blinking in the white box that says Progress and taunts me with how it is stuck in the system.

Geez, I am being a bit surreal today must be all the Nurofen I am taking for my tooth ache.  Would you believe that I cant get a suitable dental appointment for 6 weeks at the local Glenbrook dentist?!  Six weeks!  Dont people drink tap water with fluoride in it anymore!

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