Happy 2020! And welcome to another decade! When we enter a new year we think about our goals for the year for our businesses, but do you also think about the goals for your employees? 

Yep when you are a small medium sized business owner (SME) and have employees you absolutely must think about career goals for your staff.

Ideally the goals for your employees will relate back to the goals for your business, but in order for that to happen there has to be a conversation between the employee and their manager-their manager being you, the business owner, or a senior person at your company that is managing your organization’s staff members.

You might be wondering who is responsible for career discussions with your employees.  The answer to that is both the employee and their manager.  Yes, it’s up to the employee to express what their career interests are, what areas they want to grow in, but it’s also up to the manager (& ultimately the organization) to create those opportunities for development to happen.  If not, then you won’t have an employee that’s engaged into working at their top level of performance.

So at what point do you have the career discussions with your employees. Ideally this discussion happens with your employee as part of them being incorporated into your company right after they are hired. From there the discussion should happen on a regular basis where you are checking in with your employee to see where they are in their development plan.  So you could have regular check-in’s on a monthly basis, and then move it to once a quarter-the most important thing is that you actually check-in with your employee on a consistent basis.

Now I know that the ideal scenario doesn’t always happen.  If that’s the case then what better time to start that discussion then now, at the beginning of this new year, this new decade.

And even if you are reading this and it’s not the beginning of 2020, that’s ok.  As long as you are going to your employees (or to the employee’s manager’s) first and say you want to have this conversation, then you are on the right track.

That brings me to how do you start this conversation with your employees.  It is as simple as going to your employee’s desk and saying how you want to set up a meeting to discuss their career goals in the next week. Also, mention to the employee that when you send the calendar invite, you will also send a few questions that they must answer in order to make the most out of their time for the meeting.  Make sure your employee answers these questions 2 days before the meeting, so you have a day to review their answers. 

Keep in mind that it’s not just going to be this one meeting and then your job is done.  This will be the first of a few meetings because once you know what their career aspirations are, how they relate to the company’s goals, you need to create a development plan of how your employee will reach that goal and see if they are on track.

The goal of the first meeting is let the employee know, that as their manager, you are invested in them growing with the company and in their career and you want to help as much as you can.  In order to give that help it’s the employee’s responsibility to communicate with you what they want their career to look like.  What areas are they interested in?  What are their strengths? What are some areas, they need to grow their skills and expertise in?  Once you both have that laid out, create their development plan, the action items needed to execute the plan, milestones they need to hit and by what date, and of course regular check-in’s to see the progress they are making.

As always MKS HR wants to make your life as a business owner easy!  Which is why we created this free download where you have a step-by-step process on how to plan & execute your career discussion with your employees. Included in the guide are the actual questions to ask your employee to answer about their career goals before the meeting!

Click here to accessyour free download now.

At anytime if you need help with this or any other HR issue in your business, click here to book a Discovery Call with MKS HR.