The annual performance review season for nonrepresented employees begins this week.

Annual reviews provide an opportunity for meaningful conversations at many levels. Beginning with performance conversations between employees and their supervisors, then moving to calibration conversations among supervisors, and then the resulting merit allocations.

This is a time to celebrate accomplishments, evaluate performance and think about how we can grow professionally. It’s also the time when compensation is reviewed for the year ahead.

What’s new this year?

In response to feedback received last year, UC Davis has implemented improvements — and more are coming — as part of our continual improvement process, including:

Rating titles — They’ve been renamed using positive wording that better reflects the high quality of work performed by staff. Additionally, the categories have been redefined to provide clearer distinctions between ratings. For example, “Meets Expectations” is now “Fully Achieved Expectations” and the definition includes specific criteria related to goals, achievements, job functions, skills and behavior.

P4P outreach — The Pay for Performance outreach team is working with human resources professionals and leaders embedded in departments throughout the university to provide better tools and communication for employees and supervisors. The team is especially focusing on support for the practice of calibration, which places managers and supervisors in teams to work on ensuring rating consistency across the organization. Calibration is intended to help ensure that ratings are applied uniformly across schools, colleges and divisions.

New tools — In addition, the P4P outreach team is providing more easy-to-understand tools to help employees write self assessments and help supervisors write employee evaluations. For example, the outreach team has developed a list of action verbs to help employees characterize their work in more compelling ways. And examples are available to give employees ideas for summarizing their work in measurable ways.

Regular communications — The P4P outreach team is committed to providing more regular communications, including a new website designed to assist individuals during the annual performance review process. And if you’re feeling ready, you can skip it and go straight into the appraisal system and begin working.