POLICY

Staff learning and evaluation policy

Growth at work

This policy aims to place learning at the heart of all our activities as an organization. It formalizes and organizes our collective and individual learning processes. It applies to all staff at all levels, at all times; much of it also applies to others we work with, such as consultants.

Synaps strives to be a “learning organization,” but not because it sounds good. We need all our members of staff to constantly learn, experiment, adapt, and transform for the following reasons, which are as pressing as they are pragmatic:

• Our raison d’etre as an organization is to provide better information for the public good. We must develop robust understandings not only of our topics, but also of a variety of research methods, information formats, target audiences, and means of distribution.
  
• Our output typically involves interdisciplinary work, so all colleagues must be open to learning about other specialties (such as visual design, software development, data science, agriculture, or engineering).
  
• We aim for the highest standards in our fields, which are themselves constantly evolving. Because our model involves hiring staff who are not already experts, learning quickly while on the job is all the more essential.
  
• Finally, as a civic organization, we are accountable to the communities who fund or host us, and we must therefore learn from our own mistakes, as well as the structural malfunctions at play in the sectors we are part of.
  

By learning, we imply progression in both hard and soft skills. In the context of our work, hard skills include research methods, linguistic proficiency, analytical writing, public speaking, data science, digital savvy, pedagogical approaches, project management, the competent use of AI, and so forth. Soft skills comprise work ethics, good communication, time management, problem solving, managerial savvy, leadership, etc.

Learning extends to general knowledge and awareness: Synaps expects its staff members to invest earnestly in a broad understanding of the world.

Although we welcome all forms of learning, we emphasize books as a particularly valuable source of consolidated knowledge.

This policy is rooted in the following principles:

• Synaps is interested in your career beyond Synaps. A successful journey within the organization is one that sees you leave in an even stronger position than when you joined, with more skills, self-confidence, and public recognition. That implies that you put as much effort as you can into growing into your current role.
• Synaps sees learning as part of your job description. Learning isn’t a hobby, a side-project, an afterthought: In a research organization, you learn every day, in a structured manner. We expect you to be ever curious about your own topics, your colleagues’ work, evolving methodologies, and the world around you.
• Synaps believes your attitude determines your aptitude. With the right mindset, there are few limits to how much you can learn. We are less blown away by what you already know than eager to discover the topics, methods, and skills you will master next.
• Synaps doesn’t just want you to learn—but to also learn how to learn. Learning itself is a skill that you get better at over time. With practice and technique, you will learn faster and become ever more agile and autonomous. This is essential in a creative research organization, within a rapidly changing world.
• Synaps will promote you based on your progress. We’re eager to see you take on more responsibilities, for better pay. (Conversely, we don’t increase salaries to reward length of service only.) Our goal, in supporting your learning process, is to help you accomplish a wider range of tasks, better, more efficiently, and with greater personal satisfaction.

Through practical experience, we have learned some important lessons about learning, which have helped shape this policy. Sharing them here will also help manage your own efforts and expectations.

• Learning is a practice. As children, we learn by doing, which is something we easily forget as adults, at the risk of making it into a cerebral exercise. We believe that you will only truly learn knowledge, skills, and methods that you put to use.
  
• Learning goals must be practical. By this, we mean that your goals should be realistic, timebound, measurable, resourced, and closely related to your immediate needs. You’ll learn less the more you pursue lofty aims and abstract ambitions.
• Learning can feel intimidating. No matter how pleasant the notion of learning may sound, in practice it is invariably challenging and even uncomfortable. This can bring up doubts, insecurities, and defensiveness, but it need not do so: allowing yourself to be challenged is a good sign that real learning is taking place.
• Learning must be rewarding. Learning nonetheless implies pleasure alongside hard work. Your incentives are likely to include solving a problem, unlocking new prospects, reinforcing your status, or acquiring some form of power. Don’t shy away from such rewards; you earned them!
  

Learning is ultimately a self-driven activity, even when colleagues, managers, and tutors are there to guide you. Synaps provides a variety of support and resources to help you on your way.

Onboarding

New hires enjoy the benefit of an intensive onboarding process, purposefully designed to speed up their ability to learn everything they need to grow into their role. Existing staff promoted to a managerial role will undergo a version of the above relevant to their new responsibilities.

Methods memos

Synaps unpacks every aspect of our work in the form of methods memos, published on our website. You are strongly encouraged to make use of this resource, which will help you solve most of the classic problems you will face, because we have faced them many times before.

Feedback framework

Synaps is an organization in which we learn from one another, not least by trusting each other to point out areas for growth. Because feedback is both essential and awkward, we use a structured approach to make it part of our day-to-day culture.

Troubleshooting

Problems are integral to learning. In fact, learning has much to do with recognizing, defining, tackling, and overcoming problems—a process at the heart of everything we do. As you come to understand problems as merely solutions in the making, pull in your colleagues and manager for their sympathy, experience, and assistance.

Mentoring

You may gain from being mentored by an experienced professional, as part of a more substantive long-term arrangement. We describe how to establish and profit from a mentoring relationship in a dedicated memo. (The onboarding process above includes a buddy system which serves the narrower goal of helping a new hire learn about our organizational culture and processes.)

Must-reads

Synaps’ library is made up of the best references in our fields, reviewed by members of the team. We seek out books that condense the existing knowledge on a particular topic, because they help fast-track your learning. Never hesitate to ask for advice and recommendations based on your needs. And join our book club to benefit from what others are reading.

Professional training

At Synaps, training takes many different forms. You may enroll in online masterclasses, attend workshops and conferences, or hire a tutor. We’ll help cover the expense, but we insist that such courses do not interfere with your ability to carry out your duties. Such initiatives therefore require discussion with your manager and are arranged on a case-by-case basis.

We also develop and commission training sessions and courses of our own. These reflect a variety of needs within the organization, ranging from technical skills to self-care strategies. Feel free to raise your particular needs proactively; we will also periodically assess the needs of the organization as a whole.

Finally, we like to learn from our peers, through informal seminars during which they present their work, methodologies, careers, lessons learned, dilemmas, and even their failures, to understand how they honed their own learning.

Staff evaluation

Synaps truly values your development and recognizes that any measure of progress can only be an approximation of the actual growth that has taken place. That approximation is useful nonetheless in guiding your learning process.

We evaluate all members of staff twice a year, around June and December, following the same biannual rhythm as our internal reports on the state of the organization as a whole. We prefer the word “evaluation” to other terms, such as “performance review” or “progress monitoring,” because it is simple and to the point. Our evaluations are forward-looking and collaborative: We assess past performance to define areas for future improvement and make plans on how to support that progression.

Before your evaluation meeting with your manager, you will be asked to self-evaluate using our skills checklist. This document lists all the core technical and behavioral skills required to perform your duties within Synaps, broken down into three levels. The first level corresponds to a junior hire with little to no experience. The third level lays out our utmost expectations vis-a-vis someone assuming a leadership role within Synaps.

Before the meeting, you must also fill out or update your individual learning plan.

The evaluation meeting will include:

• A discussion of your performance during the period under review, with a focus on providing helpful feedback, per our feedback framework
• A discussion of any personal circumstances and concerns you may want to raise, for their repercussions on your professional life or general wellbeing, to seek ways to mitigate such effects
• A discussion of your self-evaluation, alongside your manager’s own assessment of your progress, with a view to reaching an agreement on priority areas for improvement
• A discussion and finalization of your learning plan, ensuring that your goals are relevant, realistic, and adequately resourced

Managers are encouraged to check in informally with a colleague a couple of months before their formal evaluation, to discuss any problems they face and adjust their learning plans. The purpose of such a check-in is to increase the chances of making the evaluation itself productive and motivating.

Managers, while subject to evaluation by their own managers, must also reverse the process with their team, seeking feedback on their own performance and priority areas for improvement. Synaps’ small size makes upward feedback difficult to achieve: An anonymous survey would offer little sense of safety to colleagues, while quantitative tools are irrelevant on our scale. Upward evaluations depend, therefore, on building trust continuously, by welcoming criticism and acting upon it. A successful evaluation is one in which a manager’s team feels confident enough to point out areas for improvement, suggest practical steps in support of desired changes, and validate the manager’s progress since the previous evaluation. Any other outcome—a blame game, an embarrassed silence, or for that matter unanimous praise—are to be understood as a failure on the part of the manager, to be corrected by the next evaluation.

The evaluation meeting is not the time and place to discuss promotions and salary raises. To engage in such a negotiation, make a separate appointment explicitly dedicated to it. The reason is that promotions and raises are not a simple reflection of your individual performance and progression; they also involve organization-wide factors such as financial projections, technical budgetary constraints, equity among colleagues, and so forth. Evaluations, by contrast, are a space dedicated to your own personal evolution. The latter will in turn naturally lead to discussing greater responsibilities.