Best Metrics for Annual Appraisal/Review of Technical writers

In the office, I hate doing three things firing, interviewing, and appraisal. Unfortunately, these are an integral part of people management and we have to live with them. Can we make the appraisal process stress-free?

Through this post sharing my views on the appraisal process and the parameters to be considered while appraising technical writers. Hope this can help you to set your goal as a technical writer.

This is a very vast topic to discuss, so this post is limited in scope and depth.

Most of my HR friends admit that they never find perfect metrics or parameters for any role which can satisfy both employee and employer during the evaluation process.

The surprising fact revealed, according to a recently released survey by the Society of Human Resource Management and Globoforce, an employee recognition company nearly half of human resources managers don’t think annual performance reviews are accurate appraisals of employee performance

During Chanakya era (2000B.D) doctors would puncture their patients’ veins and let them bleed out in order to rid them of their diseases. Today we laugh at the practice of bloodletting. I’m sure our future generation will come up with some new formula (or maybe it is existing I’m not aware) and laugh at ours, but we have to face appraisal as it is one of the necessary evils of the company.

Why I don’t like to do the appraisal?

Few things which I never able to understand and still searching for answers. Do you have it?

•  5 Point Someone: How can I measure myself on a scale of 1-5? I believe 5 can be assigned to Lord Krishna, not to me.
• Why these processes of appraisal happen once in a year, half-yearly or even quarterly: My manager has a bad memory he forgets what I did ten months earlier.
• Why matrices are so generalized for technical writers, where shorter is better.
• How can we do the appraisal on the basis of a 10-20 odd objective that is vague and subjective?
• Why most appraisal matrices revolve around writers’ attributes while their effectiveness is almost ignored.
  

  Basic appraisal metrics for a technical writer

An appraisal is a very delicate issue, and setting detailed, measurable, holistic, and well-considered objectives, in the beginning, is very critical.

The following are samples of rating factors and example standards taken from a variety of sources for a technical writer.

Please feel free to combine or modify them to fit your needs. The below list is indicative only, however, if you can be specific and tailor expectations and results to custom fit your team, by all means, that is the perfect way to go.

The toughest part is coming up with specific and correct ways to measure these parameters, those are very much variable by the organization and role.

Broadly dividing the attributes into four competence:

• Project  Execution Competence

• Knowledge/Functional competence

• Behavior competency

• Management competency

Task/Core/Project execution Competence

• Dependability/Initiative
• Tool Knowledge
• Language Knowledge
• Timeliness in Deliveries
• Productivity

Knowledge/Functional competence

• Subject knowledge
• Technical competence
• Process compliance
• Understands requirements
• Ability to capture technical depth accurately
• Feedback from tech / editorial reviews / clients
• Develops and implements new solutions, procedures, and concepts
• Demonstrates accuracy, thoroughness, and reliability
• Pays attention to detail
• The quantity of Work The volume of work produced by the employee, along with his or her speed, accuracy, and consistency of output.
• Produces necessary results in spite of unforeseen changes
• Alerts appropriate team member if deadlines need to be re-negotiated to accomplish work with higher priority

Behavior competency

Communication Skills

– Oral communication/Body Language
– The effectiveness of written communications (emails, status reports…)

Self Development

– Enhancing Product and Domain knowledge
– Training and development (passionate about continuous learning)

• Adaptability: Efficiency with which employee works under stress and responds to change.
• Assertiveness/Motivation
• Attendance
• Judgment
• Interpersonal Relations

Management competency

• Problem Solving & Decision Making
• Clearly defines the responsibilities and authority limits of subordinates
• Makes effective assignments to subordinates based on demonstrated skills and knowledge.
• Motivates employees to think and work independently
•  Recognizes individual capabilities and assigns work accordingly

Each of the above parameters can be given low to high ranking, which can be appropriately tweaked as per the seniority of the writers.

For example, for a Junior writer, Management Skill maybe 5 or 10, while for a Doc Manager it can increase substantially.

Let us make a culture where we sit to discuss regularly how to improve and avoid waste basically effective retrospective culture.

Where is customer satisfaction? Ooops!!! I might be missing many, Please let me know in the comment.