So I am still time travelling. My EER is for the period I actually worked, but apparently it will take me a year to make it effective. Sigh.
But it could be worse.
A friend got hers done LONG before I did.
She JUST got it bounced back. Apparently the program spit out all her changes and replaced them with upside down question marks.
Awesome.
Really wish I could write the rating statement for the person getting credit for the ePerformance rollout.
ON EDIT: Just found two upside down question marks in mine. Fabulous. Now, do I pull it back and try to fix it, risking more crap getting inserted (since I KNOW it didn't have those when I submitted it because it had done the same thing when I pasted the test into ePerformance, so I combed it thoroughly for errors) or do I just say f*ck it?
Showing posts with label ePerformance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ePerformance. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Senioritis
I has it. Seriously.
It is like I am days away from summer vacation. I haven't had it this bad since I joined the Foreign Service.
Even when I left Jerusalem, I knew I had only 5 weeks of home leave (ONLY! Home leave is awesome!) and then I had to return to work.Even though it was a (thankfully) different job.
And this time, I am not even getting time off. At least not until August (when I will be abandoning you for an Alaska cruise...it occurred to me there might not be internet on the cruise, which sort of frightens me).
But I will be back in school. And though I will probably be tired of it with about 5 minutes, right now, it seems like vacation. 17 more working days until I can wear jeans to work.Until I can work a normal length work day. Until I can sleep just a little later. Until I don't have to schedule my running days around my "short" days at work. And I am finding it hard to work at all now...really, what can I accomplish in so little time?
Plus, my EER is done. So anything I accomplish won't do me any good!
Speaking of my EER, apparently I am one of the 10% of the Foreign Service who got it in on time (and ePerformance crashed on Friday, so people shooting for getting it in at the last possible minute are screwed). I find that kind of funny, considering how long I procrastinated. I look positively responsible!
Of course, my EER is still set in the future. The dates covered are now correct but it is still effective in 2011. Too bad I can't go back and add "Time Traveller" to it. Surely THAT is worth getting promoted! On the down side, I can't tell you anything about the future, because it would cause a shift in the space-time continuum and we would all explode.
It is like I am days away from summer vacation. I haven't had it this bad since I joined the Foreign Service.
Even when I left Jerusalem, I knew I had only 5 weeks of home leave (ONLY! Home leave is awesome!) and then I had to return to work.Even though it was a (thankfully) different job.
And this time, I am not even getting time off. At least not until August (when I will be abandoning you for an Alaska cruise...it occurred to me there might not be internet on the cruise, which sort of frightens me).
But I will be back in school. And though I will probably be tired of it with about 5 minutes, right now, it seems like vacation. 17 more working days until I can wear jeans to work.Until I can work a normal length work day. Until I can sleep just a little later. Until I don't have to schedule my running days around my "short" days at work. And I am finding it hard to work at all now...really, what can I accomplish in so little time?
Plus, my EER is done. So anything I accomplish won't do me any good!
Speaking of my EER, apparently I am one of the 10% of the Foreign Service who got it in on time (and ePerformance crashed on Friday, so people shooting for getting it in at the last possible minute are screwed). I find that kind of funny, considering how long I procrastinated. I look positively responsible!
Of course, my EER is still set in the future. The dates covered are now correct but it is still effective in 2011. Too bad I can't go back and add "Time Traveller" to it. Surely THAT is worth getting promoted! On the down side, I can't tell you anything about the future, because it would cause a shift in the space-time continuum and we would all explode.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Now I am apparently a year early...
So my EER made it through panel and got posted. And the deadline isn't until Friday.
Great right?
Well....
Apparently this EER is evaluating me from June 15, 2010 to April 15, 2011 and was posted on April 15, 2011.
See anything wrong with that picture?
Great right?
Well....
Apparently this EER is evaluating me from June 15, 2010 to April 15, 2011 and was posted on April 15, 2011.
See anything wrong with that picture?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Of course
I'm ready.
I have the document started in ePerformance. I have all of the information in a word document.
Everything has been scrubbed by two senior Foreign Service Officers who I respect (one of whom I would work for again any time, any place. He walks on water...and not in an EER kind of way).
I have my bosses proxy, so I can actually move things through ePerformance pretty quickly (seriously, NOT efficient to move it back and forth between the employee and supervisor that many times. Dumb. We are busy people...did you notice the uptick in hiring we are doing? It is because we have too much work for too few people. This silliness is a collassal WASTE OF TIME).
But no matter. I'm ready.
And of course...
HR Online is down. And I will not be here tomorrow or Monday.
And it has to be signed sealed and delivered by next Friday.
So it needs to be done today. Really two weeks ago. But definitely today.
Just shoot me.
I have the document started in ePerformance. I have all of the information in a word document.
Everything has been scrubbed by two senior Foreign Service Officers who I respect (one of whom I would work for again any time, any place. He walks on water...and not in an EER kind of way).
I have my bosses proxy, so I can actually move things through ePerformance pretty quickly (seriously, NOT efficient to move it back and forth between the employee and supervisor that many times. Dumb. We are busy people...did you notice the uptick in hiring we are doing? It is because we have too much work for too few people. This silliness is a collassal WASTE OF TIME).
But no matter. I'm ready.
And of course...
HR Online is down. And I will not be here tomorrow or Monday.
And it has to be signed sealed and delivered by next Friday.
So it needs to be done today. Really two weeks ago. But definitely today.
Just shoot me.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
From the Sounding Board: ePerformance
A friend pointed out this comment on the Sounding Board about ePerformance to me yesterday and I think it is brilliant. I got the author's permission to reprint it for you (I have removed the author's name).
"As I read the comments from my colleagues, I confess that I too used to be despondent about ePerformance. Last December, I worked with two PDAS’s for a week to try to enter my interim EER into the system, and finally just gave up because other issues were more pressing. At the time, I assumed that once Management realized the magnitude of the train wreck the Department was going to experience during the regular EER cycle, they would abandon ePerformance and go back to the less crappy form flow filler.
It was with a mixture of surprise and dismay that I witnessed HR stick to its guns. Not only was management going to use ePerformance, but it was actually doubling down its bet by spending money and time on classroom training, training tutorials, FSI Distance Learning Courses, Learning Labs and even ePerformance town hall meetings. Why, I wondered, would anyone is his right mind spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to install a computer program that not only doesn’t save time, but instead sucks up tens of thousands of additional man-hours across the Department? I could understand, perhaps, if it allowed us to hyperlink samples of memos we’d written, or family photos into our EER’s. If ePerformance actually wrote our EER’s, or at least had a hyperbole-checker, maybe it would be worth all this effort. But a software program to simply fill out a form? I simply couldn’t understand how smart people could persist in pushing such a stupid piece of software down our throats.
As my thoughts turned to locating a nice retirement community, I had an epiphany, of sorts, one that has cleared away this negative thinking. As one peels back the ePerformance onion, it’s obvious that it is not just designed to fill out our performance evaluations, but to actually improve our performance. As we all know, in a foreign service career, officers will often have to beat their heads against intractable problems (like Middle East peace), deal with mulish bureaucracies at home and abroad, and show flexibility in working across cultures. Over the years, HR has instituted all sorts of training regimes to help us do just that. I suddenly realized that ePerformance is like that exercise in A-100 where we all stood blindfolded in the woods, holding a rope and shouting at each other. It didn’t make any sense at the time, but we all learned from the experience.
HR has cleverly recreated that learning experience and team building exercise through ePerformance. For example, our team in Embassy London, faced with the ePerformance challenge, figured out a clever work-around, which apparently allows us to ignore most of the software’s features. Another team, stimulated by ePerformance and similar software, has actually formed an eHell working group (I’m not making this up) to try to bring some reason to the system. Both efforts are examples of team-building in the face of adversity – in the finest traditions of the foreign service – and neither would have taken place without ePerformance. Once I understood the real reason we’re using this system, I stopped cursing HR and began to think about how I, too, could use this adversity as a team building exercise for my office.
Unfortunately, the software itself still looks unfathomable, but maybe with enough blindfolds and beer, we’ll be able to conquer it. "
"As I read the comments from my colleagues, I confess that I too used to be despondent about ePerformance. Last December, I worked with two PDAS’s for a week to try to enter my interim EER into the system, and finally just gave up because other issues were more pressing. At the time, I assumed that once Management realized the magnitude of the train wreck the Department was going to experience during the regular EER cycle, they would abandon ePerformance and go back to the less crappy form flow filler.
It was with a mixture of surprise and dismay that I witnessed HR stick to its guns. Not only was management going to use ePerformance, but it was actually doubling down its bet by spending money and time on classroom training, training tutorials, FSI Distance Learning Courses, Learning Labs and even ePerformance town hall meetings. Why, I wondered, would anyone is his right mind spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to install a computer program that not only doesn’t save time, but instead sucks up tens of thousands of additional man-hours across the Department? I could understand, perhaps, if it allowed us to hyperlink samples of memos we’d written, or family photos into our EER’s. If ePerformance actually wrote our EER’s, or at least had a hyperbole-checker, maybe it would be worth all this effort. But a software program to simply fill out a form? I simply couldn’t understand how smart people could persist in pushing such a stupid piece of software down our throats.
As my thoughts turned to locating a nice retirement community, I had an epiphany, of sorts, one that has cleared away this negative thinking. As one peels back the ePerformance onion, it’s obvious that it is not just designed to fill out our performance evaluations, but to actually improve our performance. As we all know, in a foreign service career, officers will often have to beat their heads against intractable problems (like Middle East peace), deal with mulish bureaucracies at home and abroad, and show flexibility in working across cultures. Over the years, HR has instituted all sorts of training regimes to help us do just that. I suddenly realized that ePerformance is like that exercise in A-100 where we all stood blindfolded in the woods, holding a rope and shouting at each other. It didn’t make any sense at the time, but we all learned from the experience.
HR has cleverly recreated that learning experience and team building exercise through ePerformance. For example, our team in Embassy London, faced with the ePerformance challenge, figured out a clever work-around, which apparently allows us to ignore most of the software’s features. Another team, stimulated by ePerformance and similar software, has actually formed an eHell working group (I’m not making this up) to try to bring some reason to the system. Both efforts are examples of team-building in the face of adversity – in the finest traditions of the foreign service – and neither would have taken place without ePerformance. Once I understood the real reason we’re using this system, I stopped cursing HR and began to think about how I, too, could use this adversity as a team building exercise for my office.
Unfortunately, the software itself still looks unfathomable, but maybe with enough blindfolds and beer, we’ll be able to conquer it. "
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