Justifying Your Job
One of the comments to my post titled “Should Employees Do Self-Appraisals” has been sticking with me. It talks about the downside of self-appraisals being that a person feels they have to justify their reason for being in the organization. While I understand there could be a fine line between constructive self-evaluation and creative writing to justify one’s performance, the commenter does raise an excellent point.
We all have to justify our work existence. Every. Single. Day. In all of our work, we justify our position with the company and the value we bring to the organization.
Regardless of the occasional self-evaluations, please remember companies are evaluating employee performance each and every day. And 
Maybe prior to the Great Recession, when we all had money and companies had profits, we didn’t think about it much. Businesses didn’t appear to be focused on productivity because they were making profits. Or employees didn’t focus on it because they could always find another job. But the reality is people should have been paying attention.
Now we’re forced to pay attention. There’s no room for fluff. We need to be profitable to survive. That means employees must be productive and produce results. Results that positively impact the bottom line.
Before I’m accused of being too harsh, let me add that in addition to companies evaluating performance, they also need to train, coach and develop employees to deliver that performance. I’m not suggesting by any means that 5-minutes at the water cooler is reason to terminate someone. I am saying that company managers need to set expectations, monitor performance and coach/recognize employees appropriately.
And employees need to remember what’s expected of them, deliver results and take responsibility for their performance. Both managers and employees have to constantly justify that what they are doing is proper and best for the company.
Image courtesy of I Don’t Know Maybe
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