6 Ways to Capture Your Wins Before the Year Ends

Tips for early-career professional & senior leaders.

As the year closes, many of us shift quickly from finishing deadlines straight into Christmas, New Year, and then before we know it, it's January again! But before you move on, there’s huge value in pausing to reflect on what you’ve achieved, especially in an industry as fast-moving and demanding as food production.

But it can be tricky to know how to start summarising an entire year! So, we've build a downloadable 'Capture Your Wins' template to help you get started.

Download it here

Capturing your wins isn’t just about feeling good. It helps you:

Build confidence
Evidence your contribution
Strengthen your PDR conversations
Clarify what you want next
Recognise your own growth (even in tough years)

Here are five practical, meaningful ways to reflect — with tips for you if you are an early-career professional or a senior leaders.

1. Build a “Year in Review” list — not just a ‘Done List’

We see tasks as boxes to tick and once ticked, they disappear. A “Year in Review” list helps you look at the bigger picture.

How to do it:

Go month by month and list the big things and the small-but-important things: key projects, improvements you made, things you learned, relationships you built.
Highlight the work you’re proud of, not just what was urgent.

For senior leaders:
Review key leadership decisions you made — where did you show courage, influence, or resilience?

For early-career members:
Include “firsts”— first presentation, first time training someone, first time managing conflict, first time owning a task end to end.

2. Capture the impact, not just the action

Saying “I completed X project” is good.
Saying “I completed X project and it reduced downtime by 8%” is great.

Where possible, link your work to:

Efficiency
Cost savings
Team improvements
Customer outcomes
Safety
Compliance
Wellbeing
Culture

For senior members:
Ask: Where did I shift thinking, unblock problems, or create long-term value?
Not all impact is measurable — a stronger culture or calmer team counts.

3. Collect feedback while it’s still fresh

If you wait until your PDR, colleagues forget specifics. Now is the perfect moment to ask:

What’s one thing I’ve done this year that’s made a difference?
What strengths stood out to you in how I worked this year?
What did you appreciate about working with me?

You’ll be amazed at what others notice that you missed yourself.

For senior leaders:
Gather 360 feedback from peers and your team. It shows humility and helps you grow as a leader.

4. Reflect on challenges... not just successes

Some of the biggest wins don’t look like wins at the time. They look like setbacks that taught us something.

Ask yourself:

What was the toughest moment this year?
How did I show resilience?
What did I learn about myself?

This is powerful PDR material as it shows ownership, growth, and self-awareness.

5. End the year by thanking the people who helped you

Resilience doesn’t happen alone. Recognition strengthens relationships and creates momentum going into the new year.

A simple message like,
“Thanks for your support on [project]. I really valued it this year.”
can go a long way.

For senior leaders:
Thanking your team models appreciation and sets a tone for the year ahead.

For early-career members:
Thanking people shows maturity and builds visibility naturally.

6. Download our Year-End reflection Template to easily capture your wins

We've created a downloadable template to help you capture some of the successes you've achieved this year, which can be used as a prompt to help you reflect on the year when you are prepareing for your PDR.