HR Checklist: Boosting Employee Development with Performance Programs

In the past several months, we’ve seen many ways that HR teams are creatively supporting employee development. Specifically, many innovative HR teams have identified ways to boost professional growth with their existing performance programs. By adding career questions to review forms, or creating development-focused goals, HR professionals are fostering healthy discussions between managers and employees, and helping team members to build the right skillsets. Check out our top recommendations to instill a culture of growth and development with your performance programs.

Performance Reviews

• In your review form, include questions on accomplishments and areas of opportunity to inform developmental objectives. Examples include, “What are 3-5 accomplishments you’re proud of?” and “What is the most important thing you could have done at least 10% better last quarter?”
• Also in your review form, include questions specifically on career growth such as “What knowledge, experiences, and/or collaboration opportunities would benefit you in the next quarter?” and “What do you want your next career step to be?”
• After your review cycle is complete, encourage employees to meet with colleagues and/or mentors to discuss potential developmental areas. This will help them solidify their tactics and strategies to accomplish their career objectives.

Goals

• Encourage all employees to have at least 1 development-focused goal.
• Team members should add key results to track progress on their developmental goal. In Reflektive, goals and key results can be tracked by the total number, dollar amount, or percent completed.
• Encourage managers and their direct reports to revisit goals at least quarterly to discuss progress and modify objectives as needed.

1:1s

• Launch development-focused 1:1 conversations at your company. These can act as a lightweight check-in to foster employee growth!
• For quieter periods at work, encourage managers and employees to add development-focused topics to their 1:1s. For instance, Reflektive’s Career Conversation Starters include questions such as, “Which part of your current role is helping with career growth? What’s missing?”
• Drive usage of 1:1 action items for employees to follow-up on developmental activities and ensure that they get completed.

Feedback

• Ensure that feedback can be gathered from all stakeholders – managers, peers, direct reports, and leaders – to provide a holistic view of employee performance.
• Make it a best practice for team members to request feedback after major milestones, such as closing a deal or completing a major project. This will enable relevant, timely insights that employees can apply to their next project!
• Make it easy for team members to request feedback with integrations into employees’ favorite workplace apps. Reflektive’s integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Outlook drive more feedback since they’re built into existing workflows.

Engagement Surveys

• In your engagement survey, include a section on “Career Growth”. Reflektive includes questions such as “I have the option to move to other roles within my company” and “I understand how to grow my career at my company.”
• See how scores on the “Career Growth” section compare to results in other domains, such as “Leadership” and “Work Environment”. If scores are lower and development is an organizational priority, conduct employee focus groups to dig deeper into the gaps and identify potential solutions.
• Slice “Career Growth” scores by employee demographic to ensure that all team members have opportunities to advance professionally.

Looking for more ways to get value out of your performance programs? Talk to a Reflektive expert.