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I'm working at a European public university. While I don't have the same status as a researcher, I help social sciences researchers with the design of quantitative studies and with statistical analysis. This is a role similar to a research assistant, even though it's not my official job title. It's not unusual that I cowrite papers and train researchers and students.

For years, it has been a researcher (not always the same, they change every 3 or 4 years) who conducted my annual performance review. The university wants to change that and put an administrator in charge of it. The researcher who conducted my review last year and was also supposed to conduct my review this year is not really supportive and probably won't fight the uni about this, even though we planned to discuss this issue in a very near future. I think the researcher considers the performance review as a chore they're happy to get rid of; I somehow understands this, as everyone is overwhelmed with work, but this wasn't a problem with my two previous reviewers.

The admin person, who has been recently recruited by the uni, doesn't know anything about stats and doesn't have any knowledge of my domain of research. In fact, the person initially thought I had a secretary job, which is something I politely clarified right away.

Note that some other people at the university have roles similar to me. A few direct coworkers of mine will have the same "change of reviewer" applied to them (they'll be reviewed by the same administrator as me); but in other university departments, people with similar jobs will continue to be evaluated by researchers. So this is a policy targeting our specific group of coworkers.

First, I'm afraid this could impact my career negatively: where I work, career advancement is partly examined by peers, on the basis of what the performance reviews say; I'm also concerned about what a prospective other employer would think if they were to contact the uni and the person who conducts my performance reviews.

Secondly, I'm afraid the person would use irrelevant indicators to judge my work, which I think ethically is an issue relative to the context of scientific research. I think evaluating my work requires knowing the scientific value of what I'm doing.

My coworkers share the same concerns. So I wonder what is the experience of other people about that, to take a better informed decision on what I'll do next if this change is imposed on me/us. I'm OK with looking for a job elsewhere, but I want to examine all my options before taking what I consider an extreme decision.

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    Very good question. I linked here from the CV chat, maybe some of the statistical consultants there can chime in. I would say that you (1) should act in concert with your coworkers, and (2) it would be good to act ASAP to set expectations actively before the first review cycle. Who do you report to in managerial terms? Unfortunately, like it or not, those are the people that will be evaluating you, or delegating it, even if they don't understand what you are doing... Commented Oct 9 at 6:11
  • @StephanKolassa In managerial terms, my official direct supervisor is the researcher who is (was) supposed to conduct my annual review. In legal terms (this is written very explicitly in legal texts voted at the national level), they cannot delegate the annual reviews, which means the uni wants to makes the administrator my direct supervisor. Note that in practical terms, the researcher who currently supervises me leaves me a lot of freedom (but they understand what I'm doing), and my daily job is in fact rather organized by the different researchers leading the various projects I work on. Commented Oct 9 at 6:22
  • @StephanKolassa I should add that even if the researcher who supervises leaves me a lot of freedom, I regularly report to them (once every one or two months) about the various projects I work on. Commented Oct 9 at 6:25
  • Is the "performance review" structured? Does the reviewer have to complete a specific form, answering specific questions? Do they grade the performance, do they evaluate verbally, or both? Commented Oct 11 at 23:51
  • Are there practical consequences of the performance review? Is there a "grading curve" (a distribution of the "marks" you get)? Commented Oct 13 at 7:56

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I am not in the precise situation you are in, but I am the sole statistician (and actually not one by training) in a software development team. My manager is a former software developer, and neither he nor my colleagues really understand what I do. I have managed to build enough trust between us to have a good working relationship. So here are a few ideas:

  • Act in concert with your coworkers. No need for everyone to try and address this in their own way and confuse management.

  • It would be good to act ASAP to set expectations actively before the first review cycle.

  • If at all possible, meet up with your reviewer now and work on those expectations. Chances are that they will be happy if you take the lead in this conversation, and this is indeed your chance of shaping it. Explain what you do in your day-to-day work, and in what proportions, and what you will be doing going forward.

  • It appears that statistical coauthorship is a core part of your responsibilities. Take your reviewer through this process, from consulting on experiment setup and power calculation, through support on grant writing (grant writing is good, because this gets the organization money), to analysis and writeup. Help your reviewer get into your shoes and understand you, at least to a degree. Do you sometimes present results in a seminar? If so, perhaps you could invite the reviewer?

  • Of course, have details at hand as to what you have done in the last review cycle, and on what you are working on right now. Perhaps have a slide or two with you.

  • If you have a good working relationship with your social science clients, these can be valuable allies. Discuss your concerns with them before you meet with your reviewer. If your clients see your contributions as valuable, then they should be interested in retaining you and in helping you. Perhaps your review could encompass feedback/testimonials from your clients, in either an informal or a formal way? Actually, judging from your comments, your formal supervisor, as a researcher themselves, should have absolutely crucial input into this process.

  • If you have any targets set from your last review cycle, then this would be absolutely great, because you can explain them and reasonably expect to be judged on those, not on some other KPIs. Plus, these old targets can inform any new targets you could negotiate with your new reviewer.

  • If you do not have such targets, then it would make sense to think about possible future targets before going into this conversation. (This is the point about shaping that discussion.) Have arguments ready for why these targets support the overarching goals of the organization.

  • If you want to change something, now is the time to discuss this. Maybe you want to also work for other departments than social science? Learn a new methodology? Set up a new methodological seminar? Discuss this so you have material to talk about, perhaps put this into your targets for the next cycle.

  • Overall, do see this situation not only as threatening, but also as a potential chance to change the process for the better. Your reviewer may be just as uncomfortable as you with this, and you could work together to find an even better way going forward. For this, it is crucial that you also understand their motivations and organizational situation, while you help them understand your workflow and responsibilities.

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    @quarague: I'll admit that I am assuming a basically open-minded reviewer, who understands that they are not an expert. If I were tasked with reviewing someone whose work I do not understand, I would indeed first ask to have that work explained to me. If the reviewer is so antagonistic as to take an explanation as "an attempt to show them their cluelessness", then this turns into a very confrontational exercise. (And yes, it all depends on how one does these explanations, see my last point.) How else would you go about this? Looking forward to your answer! Commented Oct 9 at 7:05
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    I think the key here is that the review can be “organized” by the non-researcher but should include lots of input by direct “customers.” Look up the term 360 degree review and you will get ideas how that might be done. Commented Oct 9 at 11:54
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    @quarague: also, note that I am not "recommending to first explain the stats to them". I am recommending to explain the work that the OP actually does. "I help with analyzing data to see whether they support a scientific hypothesis and what we can learn from them" is quite different from "I run Bayesian MCMC in Stan". Again, if the reviewer is not interested in the kind of explanation of what the OP actually does on a high level, then OP is indeed in a problematic situation. Commented Oct 9 at 12:35
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    Further: get those you collaborate with to write comments about your work and skills and have them send those directly to the reviewer. Commented Oct 9 at 13:24
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    Thanks for the down-to-earth advice. I hope I won't get unlucky! If it doesn't compromise my anonymity, I might post my own answer in a few months to give some feedback on how it went. Commented Oct 9 at 17:12
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It is not uncommon for people to have bosses who are not actually subject-matter experts in the area of those they supervise. The key points in such relationships are:

  • Build trust. Assume that the other person is entirely aware of the fact that they do not actually know the area, but that nonetheless they want to be fair and objective. Most people know what they don't know, but nonetheless seek to make things work with this limitation rather than to impose their own ignorance and bias. So build a rapport, see if you can have coffee or lunch with them, and have a personal relationship -- everything is easier if you can talk about things.

  • Plan on educating them. For example, instead of listing "Worked on paper X" on your annual report, say "Worked on paper X. My role on this paper is the statistical analysis of the experiments done by A, B, and C (Department of Z), to evaluate whether the frobnication of the warp coil reduced the tritonium consumption. I estimate that I spend 160 hours on this work over the past 3 months, and that I wrote about half of the paper." In other words, educate the person reading your annual report on what specifically you did, how much time that took, etc. Perhaps if that was someone in your field, they could guess what your contribution was and how much time that might have taken. The person now in charge doesn't, so help them understand what it is you are doing, and how relevant that is to the project.

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Unless the manager is particularly incompetent, I would imagine this to be a non-issue. Many knowledge workers have supervisors that are not from their own area of expertise, and in any matrix organization (which is to say, most organizations) line managers are not directly supervising the day-to-day work of at least some of their staff.

You say that your manager "cannot delegate the annual reviews", but unless they are absolutely clueless they will 100% get input on your work from the researchers you actually work with (that's not the same as delegating your assessment, but you should also not imagine that they will come up with your performance review sitting in meditative silence in their office - a manager's job is to stay on top of how their staff are doing in their day-to-day projects, even if they couldn't do said projects themselves).

A person in my institution in a similar situation is our group economist / controller. His line manager is the head of administration (not a financial person by study or inclination). Every year, prior to performance evaluations, we get an email from her asking in a rather structured way how happy we are with our economist, what his big wins of the year were, etc. Our input, along with what she picks up from regular follow-up meetings she has with the economist, are then how she makes the yearly assessment. I would imagine it will go similarly for you.

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    +1 for the evocative picture of “sitting in meditative silence” — overall this is reassuring but does sort of just tell the employee that it will be okay because the manager is likely to be competent vs what steps the employee should take to proactively nudge the system toward competence with their fellows Commented Oct 10 at 13:34

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