Universiteit Leiden

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Performance and Development Interview

Once a year a Performance and Development Interview (P&D) is conducted between you and your supervisor. The interview is the time to look back and evaluate the results of your work and your personal development. At the same time, the P&D interview provides an opportunity to look ahead by making work and development agreements for the coming year. Stock is also taken of any wishes for training or further education.

Initial review

Within three months after entering employment or after starting a new position your supervisor will set up an initial review. During this review you will make agreements on performance targets that you will need to achieve and skills that you will need to develop. These agreements will form the basis for your first Performance and Development interview.

Prior to a P&D interview

Normally it is your supervisor who takes the initiative to hold a P&D interview, but you can also do this yourself. Employees from at least scale 8 write an annual report in preparation for the P&D interview. In this report you look back at the past year. What results have you achieved? How have you developed? To what extent have the agreements from the previous P&D interview been achieved? If you teach, you also attach your teaching evaluations. Your supervisor will use the annual report as a starting point for the P&D interview.

To make it easier for you, the university has prepared some tools for you:

  • Format annual report
    You need to send your annual report to your supervisor at least one week before the interview.
  • List of suggestions
    This list includes questions and topics that either you or your supervisor can bring up.
  • Leadership and Toolkit Let's connect
    In the toolkit you'll find articles, videos and training on conversation techniques. With the leadership competences, you can reflect on your own development and what you want to achieve in the upcoming year. You can also find the competence cards in the Toolkit Let's connect

What can you expect from a P&D interview?

In the P&D interview your supervisor will talk with you about your performance and development over the past year. What went well? Where is there room for improvement? You also have the freedom to discuss your ambitions. What do you want for your career in the (near) future? Do you wish to follow a course? You then receive an evaluation from your supervisor about how you have performed. You receive a total score ranging from 1 to 5. And your supervisor makes concrete agreements with you for the coming year concerning results, competencies and training. In the interview, you can raise the issue of a promotion to a higher job level. Keep in mind that your manager is not always authorised to offer you a promotion. 

Following the P&D interview

Your supervisor writes up a report of the interview using an P&D form. Another part of the P&D form you complete yourself. In the manual you can read what information to fill in and how. There is a separate manual for supervisors. If you agree with the report, you sign that you agree with it or have seen it.

Disagree with your evaluation?

Do you disagree with your evaluation? Then you can send a written request to your supervisor to revise it. In your request, you need to indicate why you do not agree with the evaluation. If your supervisor agrees to revise it, you still sign the revised evaluation as agreeing with it or as having seen it.

If your supervisor does not agree or does not completely agree to revise it, his or her immediate supervisor will take the decision concerning the revision and thus also concerning your evaluation. In that case you are invited for an interview. If you ultimately disagree with the outcome of the revision procedure, you can file an application with the Arbitration Committee stating the reasons why you disagree with the decision. Or you can directly start a procedure with the subdistrict court (kantonrechter).

Pilot “The Annual interview”

Together with Leiden University’s central Human Resource Management department, we are introducing a simplified and improved ‘Annual Interview’. From July 2023 to December 2023, a pilot will be held in which the usual Performance & Development Interview (ROG in Dutch) will be replaced with an Annual Interview. We are conducting this pilot among academic staff. We will be communicating regularly about this in the coming months.

Following the Faculty strategic plan, this new Annual Interview touches on many different ambitions, but it mainly allows room for recognizing and rewarding talent and for further development. Furthermore, with ‘recognition and rewards’ as one of the spearheads, the focus is more on (team) cooperation instead of the individual. Development, (personal) leadership and giving and receiving feedback also play a greater role here.

The process has been simplified, clearing the way for a good dialogue. Our starting point is that everyone who works at Leiden University performs satisfactorily. The assessment standard used for the current rating (1-5) will be changed to a rating in words. For formal finalization in Sap Self Service during the pilot it is still necessary to fill in: ‘meets the requirements’ or ‘requires improvement’. The form itself will also be simplified – currently, it is too long and too elaborate. During the pilot, uploading one concise form ((annual report and interview report in one) in Self Service is all that is required.

There are useful checklists for supervisors and employees. This includes how you can prepare for and conduct the Annual Interview and how it works in practice. Interview cards can help you with ideas for questions to ask during the interview. You can also find the necessary forms here. First, make sure you save the forms under a different name on your laptop. Then you can edit the form and save it again.

For the qualitative evaluation, we are working with a number of focus groups within the Faculty. We are also asking participants to give feedback via a standardised questionnaire.

As mentioned, this new type of dialogue is a pilot. The outcomes from the evaluation will be included in considerations for University working procedures. Both the development of the pilot and the University roll-out are supported with input from the participation organs. We are pleased that our Faculty may experiment with this new procedure.

Your supervisor and the HR advisors are happy to discuss the pilot with you, so if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your designated HR advisor.

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