Mid Year Blues

It has been five years... And it happens at every mid year appraisal. This is when every staff will be assessed of their performance for the past six months. Subsequently, you may be redesignated and/or promoted. Simultaneously, you may also expect a larger digit in you pay-cheque. Well, it may only large in font size though... :).

Hmmm... Having mentioned all that, I believe that routines happen to almost everybody or rather every private limited company in Malaysia. Being nil experience in Government, I think SSB, SSM or PTK too are of this purpose. The system used to measure the performance may differ but the purpose remains intact. Henceforth, people are producing a lot of performance measurement tools namely, KPI and Benchmarking, to name a few. And not too outdated perhaps, our conventional measurement tool "gut feel" or some group of people address it as "pilih kasih". I am not into touching this anyway :).

Of all the methods available for measuring the performance, I personally think that it's hard to run away from these 2 essential elements which are tangible and intangible factors. Let me give one example in the context of IT Service Provider like us.

Tangible factor : Machines repaired per day per engineer.

Intangible factor : Attitude - remains vague. Worse if the staff used to receive best actor award :). That's where "gut feel" comes into play.

By the way what leads to "blues"?

1) Low increment - definitely :).

2) The staff thinks that he/she deserves more for what he/she has done.

3) Worse, when the other colleague who seems to be doing nuts, get more.

What we do when in "blues"?

1) Some will talk out loud. (Ni pemberontak punya kaki la..). Not so subversive one will just to talk to the wife/hubby expressing how disgust he/she is over the situation :).

2) Some will silently login to "Jobstreet" and change the status to "Actively Seeking Job" :)

3) Some will just smile externally and scream internally noting the fact that the fifth baby is due to arrive on earth very soon.

Why he/she is still in the same company even after 5 years? - :).

1) Everytime, the market standard shows no far deviation from what he/she got.

2) The total package that he/she got (salary, bonus, medical, insurance, oversea trip, etc).

3) The increment % is always above the inflation rate.

4) I have to say this in Malay, "tahap kemasinan mulut". At least, people listen to you in this company :). Useful especially when friend asks for favour. Eg. Aida asks to release the repaired machine before payment :).

5) Of course, job satisfaction is also a factor.

A lot more to justify. It's only you who can decide. As of this round, yet to see...

Cau Cin Cau...