Get More from Your Annual Review

Managers maintain supervisory files for their staff. They use these files to track the achievements and challenges of their staff throughout the year. This helps with the annual performance review and allows the proactive manager to look for ways to help their staff grow.

Being a manager, I knew how difficult this task could be. Managers do not always know or remember everything their staff do in the course of a year. Recency bias skews the memory to only those events happening in the last few months.

Some managers asked me what I wanted in my review. I found that I sometimes did not remember everything I did or remember if I did it in this review period or the last.

So, throughout the review period, I provided my manager with copies of certificates I had earned, positive emails, and anything else I wanted to be included in my annual review.

On a few occasions, a manager did not want to include the information I provided. For instance, the year that I earned my masters degree, my manager failed to see the reason to include that in my review. I stood up for myself and insisted that it be included as it showed my growth and development.

And, it told me that this manager did not value education and that I needed to find a new job.