A suggestion for folks, especially those who work in an office-sort of environment

[xiphias]

. . but really, for everyone:

Whenever Lis gets an email thanking her for doing something well, or praising her for a job well done, she saves it to a particular file.

Her primary reason for this is so that, at annual review time, she can go to her manager with a printout of the file, and say, "See? THIS is what I do for the company, and how much I'm worth to people." For Lis, it's all about the Filthy Lucre, which is great by me, since that's what pays the bills.

But I can see, for some of you, (*cough*Ny*cough*), it might be additionally useful to have, just to LOOK at sometimes. It's ONLY the good things, because the purpose of it is to show to managers at Raise Time. But I think that, for some folks, it'd be nice to not only show the people who are in charge of raises how good you are -- it'd also be useful to show to YOURSELF how useful you are.

Comments

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Heh, the part of this you thought of as advice for me is not the part I needed. I have a folder like that, for cheering myself up. But I never thought of printing it out and showing it to my boss next November (that's when my annual review is).

So, danke. :D Seriously, thank you for thinking of me.

[blairette.livejournal.com]

yeah I think it is nice to do that. I save good feedback so I know which projects I have got a good handle on, and which I might need to spend more time on next time around. It helps me plan. But on occasions when someone's bombarding me with corrections, it is nice to pop back into the archives and remember that there's good stuff out there too.
i don't think of it even as a way to plump for money at review time - more a mental reminder of the bits of my job that make me smile and want to do more of. that's what I tend to bring to my bosses at review time - 'I really dig this stuff, and I seem to do okay at it! Moar plz' which helps them train me and keep me happy and efficient. So it's a good thing for management too.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

The fact that I deleted my "Warm fuzzies" folder from my email inbox when it only had one entry after over a year of work says a lot about why I'm leaving this job. I know it isn't because I've been doing a bad job; far from - apparantly the manager of my department praised my work (a recording of my work, anyway - phone customer service wheee) quite enthusiastically to my supervisor. Again, that praise is mitigated by the fact that I was never told what exactly I was being praised for, and that it was filtered through my flakey supervisor, rather than being delivered or acknowledged by the department manager.

*writes more, deletes* I will stop bitching about my job now.

[navrins]

Huh. Excellent idea. It never occurred to me, but I believe I may adopt it.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, this is also why it's a good idea to put your praise in writing if one of your colleagues has done something exceptionally well.

[fauxklore]

As someone who works in a matrixed organization, I make a point of writing letters of praise for my engineering support people to their managers when they do well. This is more effective than an email in my organization because those letters go in their company file.

[cellio]

I always save such messages, and have been known to quote from them when responding to manager comments in reviews. I also make a point of sending written comments about coworkers who go above and beyond, particularly when I know their managers would never ask me otherwise.

I also keep a log of everything that happens that might be relevant in s performance review -- verbal feedback of either sort, incidents where I think I went above and beyond, incidents where someone else was being a problem and either I dealt with it or I suspect it could come 'round to bite me, etc. I started this to defend against a sub-par manager, but I have found it helpful in figuring out just what I did this year that's noteworthy, so I continue the practice even after moving on from that manager.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

That assumes you get such comments in email. Over 15 years and three positions I've only gotten written 'thank yous' for one thing I did (admittedly, in that case, I did get more than one comment, but still).

It's not that I don't do good work; I just don't get praise in writing for it... and when you don't have anything (or much) to stick in the folder, it sort of defeats the purpose... either purpose, in this case.

Kiralee

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Huh. I usually delete those, after I enjoy them for a moment, but this is a good idea. :-)

(Note that I get MORE emails of this nature at my current job than I EVER have before, anywhere. I think it's a point of culture. Which is maybe why I've kind of taken them lightly, but still.)

[nitoda]

I work in the UK civil service and we are encouraged to print a copy of all appreciative emails which is then kept in a team "compliments" file. We also need to seek feedback from "customers" (these can be internal as well as external) to use in our annual appraisal system. It's not about what we do, folks, it's about what we can prove we do. Shame it takes up time that could be used doing actual useful stuff. ;-)

[sethg]

My first reaction to this was “wow, people actually send her email praising her when she does well?!” My second reaction was, “maybe if I had a folder to save that kind of message in, I would notice receiving such messages”.

Right now, instead of that, I send my manager a monthly email with the subject line “how I enhanced shareholder value, $MONTH $YEAR”.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Excellent suggestion. It also can be helpful to save copies of e-mails containing communications leading to resolution of a problem or achievement of a goal. These can come in handy when updating a resume as well as when needing to remind someone of your contributions.

One other thing: In addition to saving copies of these things on your computer at work, it's a good idea to save copies on your personal computer. Just make sure you're not saving confidential or proprietary information at home. Not only does this give you a safety copy in case of computer failure, but if things should suddenly go sideways at work, you may not have access to your work computer when you really need the information.

[temima.livejournal.com]

I do that--whenever I complete an adjustment, and get word on which ones they decide to delete or rework, I save them.