It’s a simple question, and yet you’ll find that you receive very different answers depending on who you ask. Therefore, we decided to take advantage on our annual faculty engagement survey and ask the question of the entirety of the UAB Medicine faculty. We found that approximately 80 percent of the faculty reported that they had a performance evaluation in the previous year. We also found that there was a robust and statistically significant relationship between the global measure of faculty engagement and the self-report that an annual faculty performance evaluation had occurred. While we can’t say that having an annual performance evaluation will improve engagement, our survey suggests that there is an important relationship.
Dr. Vickers has been clear in his expectation that 100 percent of the faculty will have an annual performance evaluation. In my partnership with the department chairs, I see that some of them are already doing this extremely well.
We will continue to ask this question on the faculty engagement surveys with the goal that 100 percent of faculty members will report that they had an annual evaluation. As a first step, we thought it would be good to develop some guidelines about conducting an effective annual performance evaluation. We used an inclusive process in developing these guidelines and gained valuable advice from many individuals, including faculty members in the Collat School of Business whose scholarly focus is performance evaluations. The goal of these guidelines is to develop some principles recognizing that each department needs to have the flexibility to adapt these principles to the unique circumstances in that unit.
The first principle is that it needs to be an environment of openness, civility and mutual respect. Faculty are highly educated, professional individuals who are doing complex work. Department Chairs and all supervisors are responsible for advancing the mission of their group and use resources wisely. Both parties need to recognize that basically both of them have responsibilities as professionals. They can disagree and that’s okay; there’s a mechanism for disagreeing, but the annual performance evaluation process is an opportunity for the department chair or division director to think about where is their group going; for the individual faculty member to think about how is their work progressing; and for the two to work together to ensure those goals are coordinated and that resources are used responsibly.
The written annual performance for the School of Medicine has been posted to the Faculty Career Resource Office website. Some of the principles contained in those guidelines include the following:
- Productivity assessment. There were lots of questions from chairs and from the faculty about the forms. The forms can be helpful but there is never going to be a perfect way to measure the performance of a faculty member that can be captured on a form. For example, a research scientist on the forefront of their discovery may experience a period that would look like failure when evaluated using traditional measures. Thus, there needs to be sophistication and nuance around productivity measures used for faculty effort. We suggest taking advantage of the diversity of perspectives in the faculty group and developing performance measures using an inclusive process. The best result is an evaluation tool that the majority of people in that unit say this is fair and rational, even if imperfect.
- Professionalism assessment. Faculty members who behave unprofessionally have a toxic effect on the group, impairing its ability to accomplish the mission. This may be why an expectation for professional behavior by faculty is in the UAB Faculty Handbook. Behaving in a civil manner toward others is something that the larger UAB faculty has endorsed, and we felt like it was important to discuss this expectation with faculty in the annual performance evaluation, particularly when this may be a concern.
- Career development. We are in a turbulent period in academic medicine and so faculty members are regularly shifting their activities. It has always been true that one of the positive aspects of an academic career is the opportunity to recreate ourselves from time to time. However, these changes need to be done in communication with the departmental leadership and reflected in the annual performance evaluation. This is also a great time for more junior faculty to talk about where they are in the promotion and tenure process along with a conversation about the next steps in their career progression.
- Future actions. Success as a faculty member seems more uncertain than ever and we would hope that individuals can rebalance their activities to adapt. However, there are instances in which individuals may not be able to sustain their role on the faculty here. This can lead to difficult conversations but it is better for everyone involved if these conversations occur early. This allows an opportunity for departmental leadership to react aggressively to help a faculty member with challenges. At the very least, no one should leave the faculty here feeling that they have been ignored or misled.
- Compensation. The main motivation for including a discussion about compensation in the annual performance evaluation is that it is efficient. However, the recommendation from the literature about performance evaluation best practices is not to talk about compensation in the annual performance evaluation. This is because doing so causes the faculty member to focus on the salary more and less on alignment of activities and career development. If a department or a group decides to include the compensation conversation, one practical recommendation is just to do it first so it’s out of the way.
- Faculty input. Faculty need to be partners in their evaluation and career planning. When evaluating the senior associate deans, Dr. Vickers asks us to be involved in our own assessment and developing in our own goals, and this is the model that should be emulated. It is always a good practice to ask highly motivated and independent professionals, “How do you think you’re doing?” We’re pretty hypercritical and actually most people are much harder on themselves than their superiors may be.
- Record keeping. Keeping written records is required by UAB policy and very helpful in a number of situations. This includes when a leadership change occurs so that we can be certain that promises made to faculty members are kept. It should be the right of the faculty member to at least express their view if they don’t agree with the department chair on an issue and to reflect this disagreement in the written documentation.