Piggyback suggestion: Corporate Records

[NerdyVampire]

Made to complement:

TL:DR of the above suggestion, is that we should find a way to bolster the authority (or illusion of same) of our corporate executives. The above suggestion is to formally place the corporate executives inbetween department heads and employees, so there is sufficient reason for employees to obey their executives when a relevant situation arises.

That made me consider an additional implementation; Corporate Records^TM --- The best way to support authority without actual authority, is bureaucracy!

The Corporate Records^TM are a program accessible through the corporate executive and department head laptops, ID scanning to ensure only such eyes come upon them. These records are ways for bosses to apply comments to a character's (not corporate executive, not consular, not department head) performance, which gives the impression of a long career, while in actuality only showing the latest three items for each given category (as we don't want to explode in space usage).

It works like this: The corporate executive opens the Corporate Records^TM and finds a relevant character. They click on their name, and are met with a list like so:

Spoiler

Merits:

1. Performed well under pressure [date], department head [name], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
2. Represented the corporation well during a diplomatic encounter [date], department head [missing], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
3. ----
[Open new Item]

Performance review:

1. Review as of date [date], by department head [name] and corporate executive [name], with a score of [8/10] [print (prints a paper)]
2. Review as of date [date], by department head [name] and corporate executive [name], with a score of [7/10] [print (prints a paper)]
3. Review as of date [date], by department head [name] and corporate executive [name], with a score of [5/10] [print (prints a paper)]
[Cannot open new item yet (10 day minimum from most recent)]

Employee interview:

1. Review regarding career goals as of [date], department head [missing], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
2. Review regarding work satisfaction, department head [name], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
3. ----
[Open new Item]

Demerits:

1. Failed to respond to work-related duties in reasonable time [date], department head [name], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
2. Neglected duties to engage in drinking [date], department head [missing], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
3. Failed to appear for scheduled employee interview [date], department head [missing], corporate executive [name] [print (prints a paper)]
[Open new Item]

Each item has been added by a corporate executive through the program in a previous round, and each item has been validated by the ID of the executive and a departmental head (only required in case of performance review, optional in others). At any point, only the three latest items are shown (and the older ones automatically deleted to conserve space).

The corporate executive decides that the latest employee interview is rather old, so they contact the employee to schedule a new one. They click the 'Open new Item' and now has the form ready to be filled on their laptop. Once they are done, the program will ask for their ID and that of a department head (optional). Then the corporate executive clicks save, and they receive a small message that it has been submitted for approval.

Approval happens at end of round, if these two conditions are met:

1. Each item has been properly validated, with the ID of at least (1) corporate representative and up to (1) head-level command member (exactly 1 for performance reviews).
2. Neither the employee nor any of the validators have been marked as antagonist for this round.

If they are, then the item is added to the Corporate Records^TM of the character, pushing out the oldest item if the new count of items for that category would surpass (3) items.

Here are a list of the suggested items that an employee/head/corporate exec might engage in together (or without the department head for anything but performance reviews).

Spoiler

• Employee Merit: Just like Employee Warnings, these can be added for great performance, or bringing glory to the corp or other such things.
• Performance Reviews: The corporate executive contacts the department head and employee to schedule the performance review. They then accompany the department head to review the work of the employee during the shift, asking technical or service-related questions. Once a review has been written by the executive, it requires the department head's ID swipe to be valid.
• Employee Interviews: The corporate executive invites the employee in for an interview, to discuss their work satisfaction, career goals, etc. There are no specific goals for this item, and it requires only the corporate executives' ID to be validated. The employee may request the presence of their department head.
• Employee Demerit: The corporate executive writes out a warning for the employee, based on lack of performance, failing to represent the company properly, being disgruntled, causing work-place hazards, etc. etc. They are usually sparked by a departmental head, but does not require a departmental head to be validated (though one can be supplied for additional weight). The employee should be inform

Here is a suggestion of an item-format for a merit:

Spoiler

Date: [autofilled]
Summary: [up to 200 characters to appear in the item-list]
Text: [up to 1200 characters. Must be relevant text to explain what the character did to deserve a merit on their records]
Citation: [up to 600 characters. Citation from a department head, coworker or other relevant entity, to validate the merit.]

What would this do to the rounds:

1. Employees should stay on the good side of corporate executives to keep a clean record.
2. Department heads have more reasons to meet with the corporate executives, and has another aspect to their department leadership.
3. Command can more easily see what corporate executives actually do, and what their role is.
4. Corporate executives can more easily find an excuse to call in and meet with their employees.
5. Potentially, Corporate Records^TM can be used to adjust an employee's bank account, making the average performance review score add or subtract a percentage from their money, or recent merits be used to argue for bonuses to be paid out to the employee.

 

This was a lot, but if you've read so far, good for you!

[Carver]

I'm not sure how this would work for any antagonist round, given that a significant majority of people's behaviour during said round can be entirely influenced by an antagonist that is a third party to the form entirely (neither the recipient nor a validator). As one can't IR someone for antag-influenced behaviour, one shouldn't be able to review them for the same. Furthermore, having it only show the last 3 of a category means that one may be missing out on an established pattern over the long-term, I would rather have a full picture of someone's canonical good/mis behaviour.

I like the concept, but I cannot see it being especially useful without the above being taken into account.

[NerdyVampire]

13 hours ago, Carver said:

I like the concept, but I cannot see it being especially useful without the above being taken into account.

Definitely still in a raw state right now, so there are kinks to work out.

The antaggery is mostly addressed by the end-round validation step, that doesn't actually save it to the database if any of the involved parties have been flagged as an antagonist this round. This doesn't stop the antag corp ex from filling it out to show the employee and being a meanie, or the antag employee from going out of their way to embarrass them or the company.

You are right though, that it cannot solve "antag influence" on the round, but I would argue that a corporate executive can be expected to make a fair judgement call. I would expect a program like this would need some in-game directives to help the corp ex player do it properly.

Regarding the number of items, I only said three to be certain not to ,take up more space than necessary, I don't really have a concept about how much is reasonably available to something like this. If it works, then 5 or 10 items per category would certainly be better than 3.

[CatsinHD]

I wonder if the core idea of this could be taken and implemented into the current records program. Currently, there exists a comment feature, but it's wiped after the round ends. Making the comments persistent and limited to only those who would need it, such as doctors in medical or corporate reps for employment, would help avoid program bloat and hopefully make a neglected system more useful. I know for a fact you can limit who sees comments, it's a matter of making it a useful system. There's like 100 things I'd love to see improved with records, I just have no UI skills at all.

My only comment on the idea in its pure form, really, is how (seemingly) tedious validating comments would be. I personally would rather see a Security charge-esque system where a player can remove a charge/comment if it was antag related*. There's likely some wiggle room with that worth discussing.

Seems like a nice idea overall, and would be useful even beyond corp reps (such as doctors being able to apply visitation notes without needing the player to OOCly update their own records).

*The main difficulty in this is enforcing the removal of canon charges/records, which is something that staff currently address when it comes up. Thankfully there are tools to help with this...