Preparation: Ensure that you and your postdoc are prepared for the PDR meeting and are both aware of the expectations for each other. The location can make a difference – if your office isn’t appropriate then book a quiet room where you aren’t going to be disturbed. Make sure your postdoc is aware of what they are being assessed against. Many Universities in the UK are signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) which recommends the broad range of outputs and contributions found in research rather than restricting measuring research productivity using journal-based metrics. 

Attitude: How you treat the PDR process impacts how your postdoc will view it. To get the most out of the PDR your postdoc should feel comfortable, welcome and ready to engage with the process with the right mindset. Demonstrating frustration, reluctance or telling your postdoc that it’s a pointless box-ticking exercise will not achieve that. Consider your body language as well as what you say – be welcoming and relaxed. 

Balance: As stated above, PDRs cover both performance and development. Too often the focus becomes the reviewee’s outputs but PDRs are about the person themselves: what you need from them and what they need from you. If you find a PDR meeting has focussed too much on one aspect, schedule a second PDR meeting to ensure both elements are covered. As reviewer you are aiming for a balance of compassion and accountability. 

Open dialogue: PDRs work best when both reviewer and and reviewee feel comfortable to be honest and open. Adequate preparation from both sides should help with this but make sure you ask open questions that invite self-appraisal and reflection. Such questions might begin ‘Tell me about...’, ‘Explain how...’ or ‘Describe...’. 

Listen: The PDR process is an opportunity for your postdoc to reflect on their performance and their future plans. If you as their manager are talking too much then this can’t happen. Practice active listening and acknowledge and empathise what they are saying rather than simply waiting for your turn to speak. Don’t assume you know what the answer to a question is until you have listened to what your postdoc has to say. 

Feedback: Offer constructive feedback using specific examples of your postdoc’s work. Be specific and honest, providing feedback on positives as well as any dips in performance. Nothing in a PDR should be a surprise for either you or your postdoc and you shouldn’t be saving feedback for the PDR as feedback that isn’t timely isn’t especially useful. Remember that a PDR is also an opportunity for your postdoc to feedback to you as well – ask their opinion on how you can work together more effectively. For resources on providing feedback, visit the Management page. 

Avoid biases: It’s easy to go into a PDR assuming that you know everything about your postdoc if you’ve worked closely with them. Challenge your own assumptions about their performance and listen to what they say. Other PDR biases include recency bias (where your perception of performance is based on just the last few weeks) and spillover bias (ignoring recent changes based on your knowledge of their previous performance; Maier 2016). 

Set goals: A major frustration with PDRs for reviewers and reviewees alike is that whilst much can be discussed in a PDR meeting, its meaningless unless it’s acted upon. During the whole PDR process ensure that you and your postdoc set goals to achieve the decisions made during the PDR. The SMART framework is useful: the goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. 

Plan: Before or as a result of their PDR, your postdoc could write a Personal Development Plan (PDP), “a framework that allows an individual employee and their manager to identify learning needs, set objectives to meet them, and pinpoint the resources necessary to do so” (Sayed 2022). Your institution may already have a template that your postdoc could follow, however the essential elements that should be covered are: 

• What is the development need?  
• What is the development category? For example, is it a legal requirement, part of faculty plans or important for the postdoc’s next career step? 
• How urgent is it and when could it take place? 
• How can the development be achieved? Are there opportunities within your institution or would it need to be external. 
• What is the resource cost and what other impacts might it have on the project whilst the development activity is taking place? 
• What is the benefit to the postdoc, project and/or institution? How could that benefit be measured? 

Finish on a positive note: Regardless of what was discussed in the PDR meeting, try to ensure that your postdoc leaves the meeting feeling positive about the future.  

For many research institutions, PDRs are an annual requirement. But restricting discussions of performance and development to once a year has a number of limitations: 

• Recency bias – The reviewer’s knowledge of their staff’s performance and outputs tends to be limited to the proceeding month or two, rather than a fair appraisal across the year (Maier, 2016). 
• Timeliness – Challenges or development needs can occur at any time throughout the year. Waiting for an annual performance review can mean that productivity is stalled or staff become frustrated. 

Many companies beyond Higher Education use review processes that are more regular, avoiding the pitfalls of a single point of time. Each meeting may not be as intensive as a single annual PDR but they allow for frequent discussions between manager and staff member to monitor performance and development needs. Importantly, these meetings are still more formal and focussed than a weekly progress catch up, where discussion of day-to-day tasks can dominate the conversation. 

More regular performance review meetings could be carried out on a bi-annual, quarterly or even monthly basis. Expand the drop-down menu below to see an example of a monthly performance review schedule. 

Example monthly performance process

Month 1 – Set and agree objectives for the coming year 

Month 2 – Discuss what development is needed to meet the objectives with the knowledge of a month's work on the project 

Months 3 & 4 – Performance and progress updates towards objectives 

Month 5 – Discuss any additional development needs that have come to light 

Month 6 – Mid-year review 

Months 7 & 8 – Performance and progress updates towards objectives 

Month 9 – Focus on reviewing development to date and what else might be needed 

Months 10 & 11 – Performance and progress updates towards objectives 

Month 12 – End of year overall performance and development review