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The purpose of the end of year conversation between a team member and his or her manager is to review the year’s achievements, successes, challenges and personal development. Ideally, this conversation should also help identify the key priorities, objectives and new skills to strive for in the upcoming academic year.

Preparing your end of year conversation

As part of the end of year preparation, you are asked to complete a self-assessment. This means:

• Review each objective and collate evidence by providing specific feedback on own performance (i.e. what did you do particularly well? What was difficult and why? What were you able to achieve and how did you go about achieving it? Be specific.)

• Complete a rating per objective (evaluating WHAT you have achieved and HOW you went about achieving the objective)

• Complete the overall self-assessment feedback and ratings. There are two parts to this:

o   The overall WHAT rating

o   The overall HOW  rating

Guidance on completing a self-assessment effectively

Rating values and behaviours (the HOW) and providing a detailed written self-assessment effectively isn’t easy. Rating SMART objectives is generally easier, mostly because you have put specific measures in place which indicate whether you have or haven’t achieved objectives, the clearer your measures are, the easier it will be to rate afterwards and complete an effective self-assessment.

HARD standards and objectives - The “WHAT” element:

•       Specific
•       Clearly defined
•       Measurable

SOFT standards (values and behaviours) – The “HOW” element:

•       Intangible
•       Difficult to define

When assessing behaviours, it is not as easy to make them specific, but it is not impossible. These examples of behaviour based evidence​ explains what evidence looks like, and this is the level of detail expected when completing a self-assessment.

Understanding our ratings

There are five ratings and descriptors for ‘What’ and ‘How’.

To view our rating descriptors, consult the My Review Ratings document.

After the team member and his/her manager have met and have each updated their comments and discussed ratings, the performance review cycle can be completed. In order to identify the final overall rating, use the rating matrix below - the first step is to identify the overall WHAT and the overall HOW rating, then the final overall rating can be identified using the matrix:

For example:

          a.       Overall HOW = Exceeding expectations

          b.       Overall WHAT= Achieving expectations

          c.       Overall rating = Achieving expectations​

We have the following system guides available to show you how you can complete the End of Year activities in the system:

•         ​System Guide: How to complete your End of Year activities
•          Line Manager System Guide: How to complete the End of Year activities for your team members

Before you start completing the End of Year activities in the system, you would revisit your objectives and add progress updates where required, this guide​ shows you how you can do this

For further support, training and guidance on Objective Setting and the My Contribution process, please visit our My Contribution Support Guidance and Training Page.

Disagreement over ratings

Please refer to the My Contribution Guidelines​ for a description of what to do over a disagreement of ratings.

The templates used by the Reviewers Manager to formally respond to and conclude the appeal process can be downloaded below:

• Confirmation of appeal letter​
• Outcome appeal letter​

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