It’s still early in the new year, and having recently refreshed your employees’ development plans, you’d like to level up to more frequent development discussions. As with a physical fitness goal, one key to development plan success is to avoid having both manager and employee overwhelmed by too much, too soon. In my recent article “Replacing the Annual Review with Regular Check-ins: A Manager’s Plan of Action” for Training Industry, I provide a blueprint to simplify planning development goals and corresponding check-in discussions. Read on for highlights.
Congratulations! In your role as a manager (or as an HR pro helping new managers), you’ve successfully recruited and onboarded a high-potential multicultural employee. And at year-end review time, you’ve carefully aligned the employee’s development needs with job competencies and future career objectives…but is that annual process enough to help them succeed? Not according to experts Beverly Kaye and Julie Guilioni, who advocate in Help Them Grow or Watch them Go that employee development works best when it’s top of mind all year round. And while this observation holds true for all employees, it is especially critical when it comes to employees whose cultural norms and communications skills present challenges that the once-a-year performance review conversation may not adequately address (see my post “Performance Evaluations of Multicultural Employees: Three Things to Keep in Mind”).
It’s hard to believe we are already well into fall. In New England, that means colder weather, apple picking, pumpkins, and football. For many organizations, the season is also filled with a flurry of talent management activities, from onboarding and training to gearing up for the annual performance review process… Definitely a busy and potentially daunting time for most HR professionals.
Have you ever encountered a performance review in which a manager criticizes a behavior that’s tied to an employee’s cultural norms rather than to performance issues?
In today’s increasingly competitive talent market, many companies are talking about abandoning annual performance reviews in favor of continuous performance feedback (CPF).
For many companies, the midyear period is a time for employee evaluation and goal-setting, typically resulting in a “from-now-to-year-end” roadmap. Ideally, managers and human resource leaders work together to establish an open-dialog environment in which employees are actively encouraged to share thoughts on their progress, challenges, and goals…and how they see the rest of the year unfolding. Managers, advisers, and HR staff should all come away from these conversations asking--