School of Continuous Improvement researchers report a null on the mid-year feedback sandwich and freeze every open-plan year-end rating at the prior cycle's value.
A fourteen-month trial finds no association between the prescribed sequence and the year-end rating
Praise, then the criticism, then praise again. That sequence remains the only mid-year form the School of Continuous Improvement will accept on an open-plan floor. The year-end rating it was scheduled to move will now be last year’s rating.
The research poster released today is the work of Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor of the Impact Pathway Atlas, with Dr Osei Vandermeer, Research Fellow and Convenor of the Review Cadence Observatory, and Dr Joost Nwosu, Postdoctoral Fellow. Eighteen floors were randomised to the sandwich or to an unstructured check-in. De-identified audio was coded for sequence; year-end rating, attrition, and goal-completion were read from the HR export. Mean rating change differed by 0.03 boxes. Attrition and goal-completion did the same.
The School takes a result that does not move as the result it will keep.
The sequence was already in the handbook. The trial asked whether it wrote the number. It did not, and the number is now last year’s number.
— Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor, Impact Pathway Atlas
Dr Vandermeer said the mid-year slot stays on the calendar because the trial did not give the School a reason to empty it. “A check-in that does not move the rating is still the check-in the floor sits.” Unstructured conversation is withdrawn as a permitted substitute, with no reintroduction window.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.juq9is.