Thinking About Unquantifiable Effort While Conducting Performance Reviews | I Used to Think Career Advancement Meant Moving Further Away from Childcare

Recently, my company has been putting a lot of effort into performance reviews.

There was a hierarchical test, followed by a lecture on performance evaluation.

That day, I arrived at the station quite early.

Before heading to the test venue, I had about 50 minutes to spare.

In reality, I think that was supposed to be time to calm down, review materials, or shift my mindset.

But at that station, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

It was the phrase, "nameless effort."

Performance reviews.
Hierarchy.
Goals.
Results.
Roles.
Career.

Within a company, various things are given names.

Things you've become able to do.
Things you've achieved.
Things you've contributed.
Roles you've been entrusted with.
The hierarchy you're climbing.

I think those are important things.

But at the same time, there is also effort that cannot be written down on an evaluation sheet.

Getting the children ready before leaving the house in the morning.
Making sure we don't run out of diapers or baby wipes.
Managing the household before work, and returning to the household once work is done.
Even in the workplace, the small tasks and words of encouragement that keep things from falling apart because someone is doing them.

Those kinds of things rarely get a name.

Because they have no name, they are hard to see.
Because they are hard to see, they are hard to evaluate.
Because they are hard to evaluate, I even lose track of whether or not these things were efforts.

Once I started thinking about things like that, I couldn't stop.

Even though I should have arrived at the station 50 minutes early, before I knew it, I arrived at the venue about 10 minutes before the start.

I should have arrived with time to spare, but in my head, a different article had already begun.

And after that, while listening to the lecture on performance evaluation, my thoughts progressed even further.

What exactly are we looking at when we evaluate?

Sales.
Results.
Growth.
Contribution.
Goal achievement.
Career advancement.

I think all of these are important.

As long as you are working for a company, numbers are necessary.
Roles are also necessary.
It is also necessary to make what you have become capable of doing visible.

But, at the same time, there has always been something that has been bothering me.

There is effort that cannot be written down on an evaluation sheet.

There are things that are hard to show in numbers, but the store runs because someone is doing them.

And one more thing.

I myself have always had slightly complicated feelings about being evaluated.

I am grateful to be evaluated.
I am also happy to be expected to do well.

But the more I am evaluated, the more responsibility I have.
I felt that the more responsibility I had, the further I was moving away from time with my children.

I used to think that career advancement meant moving further away from childcare.

But recently, I think it might be a little different.

Here is my previous article where I thought about my career in order to take childcare leave.
Please take a look if you are interested.

I have worked backward from my career in order to raise children

I haven't been working with only my career in mind from the beginning.

Rather, I have a sense that I have been working backward from my career in order to raise children.

Repaying student loans.
Getting married.
Raising children.
Building a family.

For that, I first needed to work hard.

After graduating, I chose a career that involved working nationwide.
I went to various places and saw various pharmacies.

I was also at a site in front of a large hospital that handled a considerable number of prescriptions.

It was tough, but it was fun.
I was nurtured there in terms of both the speed of work and the ability to see the field.

However, it was hard to imagine my ideal family life as an extension of that way of working.

How much time can I spend with my children while they are young?
How much time can I secure to raise children with my wife?
To what extent can I respond to sudden illnesses or nursery school schedules?

Thinking this way, I changed jobs to a company with a well-established childcare leave system.

It wasn't that I wanted to throw away my career.

But I wanted to re-choose how I work in order to build a family.

I intended to settle down a bit as a regular employee

When I changed jobs, I had a slightly naive idea in my mind.

I thought I might be able to work a bit more calmly for a while as a regular employee while observing the field.

That is what I thought.

However, once I actually joined, I felt a significant difference in the sense of speed and the way things were organized compared to the field I had seen at my previous job.

On the other hand, the home care system was truly amazing.

In facility home care, there were accompanying visits, prescription proposals, and the management of external medicines, as-needed medications, and nutritional supplements was finely organized.

There were also information organization sheets before visits, and I was relied upon by the facility nurses and the visiting doctors.

Because I had residency experience at a hospital, I understood that even though it was a facility, they were handling things at a level very close to a hospital.

That is precisely why I could also see the margins in other areas.

The flow of prescription input. The timing of creating pre-preparations. The flow of auditing. The timing of ordering. The places where the administrative staff gets stuck. The places where human movement stops at the beginning of the month. I became concerned. While asking, "What is the flow here?" "How does the movement at the beginning of the month work?" "Where do the administrative staff get stuck?", I organized the days for starting facility pre-preparations, prescription input, calendar sets, picking, and one-dose packaging, and created a manual for that store.

I created the general framework in about a week and brushed it up while having them read it.

For me, I had just tidied up the places that bothered me.

But from the company's perspective, I think that was business improvement.

The store's workflow stabilized, and the number of reports to my supervisor decreased.
It became easier to train new staff when they arrived.
As a result, it also affected staffing assignments.

I had intended to settle down as a regular employee, but before I knew it, I had become a store manager.

When you do things, you get evaluated.

When you get evaluated, you are given a role.

When you are given a role, your responsibilities increase.

This progression was something I was grateful for, but also a little afraid of.

After becoming a store manager, I learned the difficulty of performance reviews.

Once you become a store manager, you become the one giving the performance reviews.

It was here that I truly realized how difficult it is to evaluate others.

First, there are the numbers.

Sales.
Inventory turnover rate.
OTC sales.
Store goals.
Staffing.
Operational efficiency.

Numbers are easy to understand.

Outpatient services lead to sales relatively efficiently.
On the other hand, home care services are time-consuming.

In terms of sales, there are many parts that appear inefficient.

However, as a company that handles a large volume of home care, that inefficiency has meaning.
There are also reasons why personnel are needed.

Even work that looks burdensome when viewed simply by sales figures was necessary work for supporting community healthcare.

After becoming a store manager and seeing the actual numbers, I felt that the company had been considering this gap all along.

Work that is visible through numbers.
Work that cannot be seen through numbers alone.

Unless you look at both, you cannot understand the store.

The same was true for the sales of OTC products and health foods.

At the time, it was a period when we had started focusing on OTC sales at the store.

While the sales figures themselves were important, they held even more significance as a hook to encourage store visits.

I thought about the product selection. I consulted with the administrative staff on how to display them. We decorated the area, and the administrative staff handled the customer outreach.

As a result, there were periods when sales grew significantly.

However, maintaining that level of enthusiasm for one or two years is not easy.

If the person who was at the center of it all leaves, it becomes impossible to continue in the same way.

If you only look at the numbers, it ends with sales going up or down.

But behind that, there was someone choosing the products. There was someone decorating. There was someone reaching out to customers. There was someone constantly watching over the sales floor.

There is effort that shows up in the numbers, and effort that exists before it shows up in the numbers.

Sales contests give a name to the effort that shows up in the numbers. Decoration contests give a name to the effort that exists before it shows up in the numbers.

That is how I have started to see it.

"I will do my best" is difficult for the evaluator

What was particularly difficult in performance reviews were the individual goals.

At our company, we have employees set their own individual goals.

However, the goals that come up at first are usually vague.

"I will work hard"
"I will do my best with inventory organization"
"I will learn inventory management"

I understand the sentiment.

But as the evaluator, I cannot stop there.

For example, if someone writes "I will do my best with inventory organization," it first needs to be broken down.

Do they know how to check inventory rates? Do they understand how to order? Can they manage stagnant stock? Can they handle disposal? Can they use the company's distribution system? How do they handle pre-prepared medications for home care?

For the first six months, "learning inventory management" is fine.

Cannot do it.
Can do it with assistance.
Can do it independently.

By confirming things one by one like that, it is possible to break them down into goals on a 10-point scale.

I think it's easy if you just give it a name.

Inventory management.
Improving customer service.
Streamlining operations.
Mentoring junior staff.

If you write it like that, it looks like a goal.

But just giving it a name doesn't make it an effort that can be evaluated.

What did you observe, what did you change, and how much were you able to accomplish?
Only by breaking it down to that level does it become a goal.

That's why it's problematic if the next half-year goal is just "I will learn inventory management" again.

The effort to learn is different from the effort to improve.

Once you've learned it, the next step is how to look at inventory ratios and costs.
How to reduce stagnant stock.
How to tighten inventory without increasing drug shortages.
How to consider the impact of high-cost drugs.

Unless you progress to that point, it's hard to lead to a positive evaluation.

It's easier to see when expressed in numbers.

But once you turn it into numbers, it becomes difficult in its own way.

During the COVID period, there were times when prescriptions for expensive therapeutic drugs increased.
If you hold onto expensive drugs, the inventory ratio changes drastically.

Conversely, if you tighten inventory too much, drug shortages increase, response time for patients gets longer, and extra costs like shipping fees are incurred.

If you try to improve only the inventory ratio, the workplace can fall apart.

Numbers are necessary.
But numbers alone cannot show the quality of the effort.

In the end, the daily grind is what matters.

Reducing unnecessary inventory.
Sending stagnant stock to stores that use it.
Observing patient visit patterns.
Never running out of essential drugs that must be kept in stock.
Looking not just at the numbers, but also at the movements on the front lines.

If you watch closely, you can write such efforts into a performance review.

Even if a goal wasn't quite met, if the actions taken along the way and the reasons behind them are visible, it won't result in a low rating.

Conversely, it is difficult to succeed if you don't manage your daily inventory and only try to work hard at the very end.

Even if someone says, 'I worked hard,' if the evaluator cannot see what was done and to what extent, they will be at a loss.

The hardest part of performance reviews wasn't finding the people who were working hard.

It was breaking down what the individual considered effort into a form that could be evaluated.

The efforts of those who ask questions are visible along the way.

Here, I also think that honesty might be a skill.

People who work steadily ask questions along the way.

'I've done this much, but it's not going well.'
'What should I do in this case?'
'Is this the right way to look at these numbers?'

When asked like that, the evaluator understands.

Ah, this person thought about it this far.
They made progress on their own up to this point.
They are stuck here.

The progress along the way is visible.

On the other hand, if there are no questions and they only say 'I worked hard' at the end, you inevitably end up looking only at the numbers and results.

It might have been an effort in the person's own mind.
But it is impossible to see where that effort was directed.

If you don't put your efforts into words along the way, you may end up being judged solely by the numbers at the end.

This is painful for the person being evaluated, and it is also painful for the person doing the evaluating.

There are people who think, 'But I was working hard.'
However, from the evaluator's perspective, it is sometimes impossible to see 'what and how they were working hard.'

That is why performance reviews are difficult.

Giving a name to effort is just as difficult.

The person doing the evaluating was once the one being evaluated

When you become a store manager, you become the one who conducts performance reviews.

However, just because you are now the one evaluating doesn't mean you are no longer the one being evaluated.

Staff evaluations are linked to the state of the store.
The state of the store is also linked to my own evaluation.

Therefore, it is not just a matter of being kind in your evaluations.

Giving everyone a good evaluation might avoid conflict in the moment.
But if that means people who are working hard aren't rewarded, others will stop following your lead.

Conversely, if you avoid saying what needs to be said and remain vague, the small efforts within the store will disappear.

The person who checks the inventory.
The person who speaks to the patients.
The person who supports new staff so they don't feel isolated.
The person who organizes supplies and documents.

The efforts of such people end up being overlooked as just 'part of the job'.

That is why, when you need to say something, you have to say it.

'This is worthy of recognition'
'This is still not enough'
'This is within the scope of normal duties'
'I am helped because you have done this much'

If you don't put these things into words, the standards of the store become ambiguous.

There is also pressure on the person doing the evaluating.

I don't want to hurt anyone.
But if I don't speak up, the efforts of someone else might be hurt instead.

I think that is probably what makes management difficult.

Customer service is even harder to evaluate

Efforts that can be seen in numbers are also difficult.

But what was even more difficult was customer service.

Coming in early to clean around the store.
Building relationships with the clinic staff and casually picking up information from within the hospital.
Bringing in things to improve the store's atmosphere and decorating so that patients' waiting time is slightly eased.

Keeping the conversation going with patients when dispensing takes longer than expected.
Organizing supplies like pens, staplers, and packing tape.
Organizing documents and shipping out missing medications.
Staying close to new pharmacists during OJT so they aren't left alone.
Quietly offering explanations from the side even when things are busy.

None of these things immediately translate into sales.
They aren't visible in numbers like inventory rates.

But without them, the store wouldn't function.

There are efforts that don't show up in the numbers, but support the numbers so they don't collapse.

As a store manager, I have to collect those small efforts.

Even if I try to remember them six months later, I probably won't be able to.
That's why I need to observe them day by day.

That person cleaned up in the morning.
They were there for the new hire when they were struggling.
They kept the atmosphere calm while patients were waiting.
They restocked supplies before they ran out.

I translate those moments into words of evaluation.

Performance evaluation isn't just about grading visible results.

I believe it is also about picking up efforts that are about to fade away so they don't disappear.

Pharmacist work also involves many nameless efforts

I think the job of a pharmacist itself is one that involves many nameless efforts.

To the general public, it might look like we are just dispensing medicine according to the prescriptions written by doctors.

But in reality, we check the prescription details, look at dosages and drug interactions, and confirm with the doctor if necessary.
We listen to the patient's physical condition and living situation, consider the possibility of side effects, and explain how to take the medication.

In hospitals, we coordinate with doctors and nurses.
At pharmacies, we talk with patients and their families.
In home care, we connect information with facility nurses and visiting physicians.

It's hard for patients to see.
But if we don't verify things behind the scenes, medicine cannot be delivered safely.

From the perspective of other medical professionals, I think pharmacists are people they want to have around.
But to the general public, some might think, 'It's hard to tell what they actually do.'

I think this difficulty in understanding is also a nameless effort.

The less visible an effort is, the harder it is to explain.
But when it is conveyed, the evaluation can change all at once.

I used to think career advancement meant moving away from childcare

Now that I am on the side of giving performance reviews, I understand the difficulty of evaluation.

But at the same time, I have always had complicated feelings about being evaluated.

It makes me happy to be evaluated. But I am afraid of increased responsibility.

If my responsibilities increase, it becomes harder to take time off. It becomes harder to leave work early. It becomes harder to prioritize my family when my children are young.

That is what I thought.

So, to be honest, there was a time when I didn't want to advance my career as much as possible.

If I speak up about what I've noticed, I might get evaluated. If I talk about how I've improved efficiency, I might be given even more tasks. If I put someone else's efforts into words, I might be seen as having management skills.

So, there were times when I thought I would just stay silent.

But in the end, I care too much and end up doing it anyway.

When I see something inefficient, I want to fix it. When I see the small efforts someone is making, I want to put them into words. When I realize I've been helped, I want to say, "This has been a big help."

While doing so, I end up being evaluated. My roles increase. My responsibilities increase.

I thought career advancement meant moving further away from childcare.

But it was a little different.

However, lately I think it might be a little different.

Just because I became a store manager doesn't mean my working hours have increased drastically. On the contrary, as I have gradually organized the store, overtime has decreased.

Of course, the responsibilities are heavier.

But if the store is stable, there are days when it runs even without the manager. I don't have to shoulder everything by myself; there are people who support me.

In fact, I took a five-month maternity leave.

At first, I was anxious.

Would it be okay to leave the store? Would the workplace function? Wouldn't I be causing trouble?

But when my leave ended, my boss said to me, "Has it already been five months? It felt so short."

I felt saved.

I'm sure the people at the store also had a hard time with various things.
There must have been mistakes and troubles.

Even so, when I returned, instead of venting their anxieties in detail, they told me, "Everything was fine."

At that moment, I thought.

The fact that the store was able to function even without me for five months might have been because the nameless efforts I had made until then remained.

Creating manuals.
Creating workflows that made it easier for people to move.
Creating an atmosphere where administrative staff and pharmacists felt comfortable consulting with each other.
Gradually setting up systems so that new employees wouldn't feel isolated.
Fixing small daily discomforts instead of leaving them as they were.

None of these look like major achievements on their own.

But perhaps they piled up little by little, turning the place into one where we could support each other.

When thinking about parenting and a career, what's important might not be just moving up, or not moving up.

How much are you supported?
How much of a place have you created where you can entrust things to others?
Is there a relationship where someone will protect the time when you are not there?

That might be it.

Efforts that cannot be written on an evaluation sheet remain somewhere

Performance evaluation is difficult.

There are efforts that can be turned into numbers.
There are efforts that cannot be turned into numbers.
There are efforts that are easy to name.
There are efforts that simply cannot be written on an evaluation sheet.

Those who evaluate struggle with how to pick up on them.
Those who are evaluated struggle with how their efforts are being perceived.

And a career while raising children is even more unstable.

I want to be evaluated.
But I'm afraid of increased responsibility.
I want to advance my career.
But I don't want to cut into time with my children.

I have been wavering between those two for a long time.

But now, I think just a little bit.

The nameless efforts I have built up may actually remain somewhere.

Even if you don't loudly label something as 'this is an effort' yourself, there are times when someone else is watching.

And there are times when someone else will give it a name later on.

Organizing the store.
Creating a flow that makes it easier for people to move.
Ensuring new employees don't feel isolated.
Creating a space where administrative staff can perform at their best.
Creating an atmosphere where patients can feel a little more at ease.
Choosing to rethink how I work in order to spend time with my children.

Those things might not be easily written down on a performance evaluation sheet.

But they haven't disappeared.

I thought career advancement meant moving further away from childcare.

But perhaps the nameless considerations and environment-building I have accumulated have, before I knew it, become a 'place where we can support each other'.

So, for now, I think just a little bit.

If you carry your career on your own, it takes you further away from childcare.
But if your career involves building a place where you can support others, it might not just be taking you away from childcare.

There certainly are efforts that cannot be fully evaluated.

But there are also people who try to see them.
There are people who remember them even without being able to give them a name.

While conducting performance reviews and wavering between childcare and my career, these are the things I am thinking about now.

The phrase 'nameless effort' that I thought of on my way to the promotion test venue that day might not have been just a random thought.

Performance evaluation, a system within a company that gives names to efforts.
Childcare, a time when nameless efforts pile up every single day.
Career, a path where responsibilities increase the more you are evaluated.

I have been wavering between those three things all along.

There certainly are efforts that cannot be fully evaluated.

But there are also people who try to see them.
There are people who remember them even without being able to give them a name.

And perhaps the phrase 'nameless effort' that I am trying to write about now is also a temporary name for finding those things that are hard to see.

While conducting performance reviews and wavering between childcare and my career, these are the things I am thinking about now.

While conducting performance reviews and wavering between childcare and my career, I am now trying to face the phrase 'nameless effort' a little more.