Performance Reviews

According to the Academic Staff Policies and Procedures, Chapter 10.01 says, "Academic staff shall be reviewed annually in a manner appropriate to their work setting and responsibilities."

Units are encouraged to develop, implement, and maintain review procedures that best meet their needs.

Chapter 10.07 states that an academic staff member's annual merit increment shall take cognizance of the results of performance reviews.

The annual UW budget instructions, which change from year to year, contain further information about merit increases. [link]

Based on survey data, the numbers of departments that actually adhere to their responsibility in this regard are alarmingly low.

In that survey, we asked the following questions:

* Have you had a performance review in the past year? 35.5% answered yes.

* Have you had a performance review in the past three years? 43.1% answered yes.

* Do you want to have performance reviews in the future? 59.6% answered yes.

* Does your dept/unit have a policy regarding Performance Reviews? 39.4% answered yes.

In order to simplify the performance review process, a sub-committee of the L&S CASI met to discuss ways in which departments conducted performance reviews, to identify the best practices from across the college, and to develop a default performance review template.

It is hoped that departments without a clear policy or procedure could use these recommendations to establish one. It is also hoped that employees without consisent performance review policy can use this as a template towards initiating a discussion with their department about the procedure that should be used.

In Summer of 2007, we completed our work in creating a template which could be used to assist in Performance Reviews for Academic Staff. It has been reviewed by L&S administration, and approved as of August 2007.

In addition to forms to use in reviews, it also includes criteria lists for review, timeline considerations, and suggestions for approval of the document post-review.
It is available for download here. Performance Review Template.pdf

We would like to hear your comments regarding this template. Please feel free to contact the following members of the Performance Review Sub-Committee with your input.
William Heiss, Sharon Kahn, Victor Macaruso, Maggie Sullivan, Sara Ziemendorf