#37 Period-End Assessments
Apr 15th, 2009 by pfi
After busy season (or in reality, after each assignment), accountants fill out a self-assessment form. The thinking here is that accountants can be honest with themselves and write down all the things that went well and all the things that can be improved upon. The reality is that it’s a non-stop fluff piece that wastes paper and more important – time.
A period-end assessment is a written, self-review of strengths, weaknesses, and ratings. After being submitted for approval by higher-uppers, these forms become lost in endless files. Ratings are important because accountants, as everybody knows, can be boiled down to a number.
When you see a review with statements about “a challenging opportunity,” “enjoyed working with the team,” and “glad to help out over the weekend,” you know the accountant is saying the opposite.
Still, you can’t blame an accountant when the whole point of a review is to gauge how much the accountant has sucked up to the person(s) reviewing them. Even if they made honest, innocent mistakes, they wouldn’t mention it for rightful fear of losing their job.
Accountants spend much of their careers filling out these self-reviews and assessing others. The smart one simply adopt a template and “rollforward” their previous review for the current one.
One reason accountants spend so much time on reviews, is that the review cycle is confusing and arbitrary. At first, reviews were done on an annual basis. Then reviews were due after each assignment. Now, reviews may be semi-annual, quarterly, seasonal, etc. As if that wasn’t enough, review deadlines are often changed around. If this all sounds backwards to you, it’s because it is backwards.
Reviews don’t have much purpose besides creating a paper trail for the HR department. Reviews are often rubber stamped through or an opportunity to throw someone under the bus.
If it’s not busy season or training, you can assume an accountant is filling out reviews.
An accountant can expect to provide more feedback (thru a friendly firm survey) to IT for fixing a printer than they receive for the year after billing 2000 hours.
Check out the Tax Men!
Tax Men – Tax Dat Ass from Tax Men on Vimeo.
The assessment program changes EVERY year, towards the end of the year..so you never really know what you’re being assessed on until it’s too late. For example, PwC has initiated a “1, 3, 4” rating (formerly 1, 2, 3, 4) where practically 90+% of people will be rated “fully as expected.” Thanks. Whatever that means anyway. There’s no raises.
This year it means you get to keep your job, which is the bonus.
Still waiting for the post about performance period end’s roundtable. Goes hand in hand with throwing people under the bus.
No, it doesn’t go hand-in-hand with throwing people under the bus.
In regards to the comment about PwC, while I agree that the change in the rating came late in the game, and I don’t agree with it because I think there are a lot of people who are above expecting, but not quite at the 1 level, I think it’s wrong to say that you don’t know what you’re being rated on. You are being rated on your performance. You might not agree with how you are rated, but in my opinion, what you are assessed on doesn’t really change. Now the point about no raises does suck, but as much as I hate to say it, we are kind of lucky to have jobs. Have you seen the amount of people being laid off elsewhere? Maybe when the layoffs hit close to home, it opens your eyes a little bit about the reality of the job market right now.
7. Trying to be positive – Don’t, we are overworked and typically underpaid, we have a right to complain
@ Taco Hammer – Of course, but Trying to be positive is right. There would be a lot more to complain about if you were laid off.
Figured the PWC change was a way to disguise layoffs as being performance based. It’s sort of like a course where the grading scale is changed to A, B, and F.
You gotta love PwC’s bate & switch change to the ranking system. It’s like changing the rules to the game at half-time. That firm has got to be the most sinister, untrustworthy P.O.S. out there. They are very much doing layoffs and they LIED about it.
Maybe it’s because I’m older and am used to doublespeak from management, but the signs were pretty obvious that PWC was going to do something like that for several months. This is a case where PWC really counts on the youth and inexperience of their new hires, who assume that everything they are told is on the level.
So glad to be out of there. A lot of my friends who remain are looking for other jobs, because they’ve lost all respect for the people in charge.
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