Performance review - Your annual appraisal

Performance review

Employee development interview, what is it?

An employee development interview is a conversation between you and your manager, where you talk about topics such as well-being, your performance and your development opportunities. It can be also be known as an annual appraisal or performance review.

So you evaluate the year that has passed and talk about the year that is coming.

Your job should preferably consist of tasks that give you energy and develop your skills, while at the same time acquiring new knowledge and new skills. The annual employee development interview should make sure you do just that whilst delivering your job correctly.

Before the performance review

What can you do yourself to prepare for an employee development interview?

Before the conversation, it is a good idea to sit down and write down some reflections. It can make the conversation easier.  Remember, it is a two way conversation, so be sure to engage and take part, it’s your future after all.

For example, you can reflect on:

• What is important to you in your working life?

• When and how do you thrive best?

• Looking back on the past year what results have you helped to create?

• Have the agreements you and your manager made at the last employee development interview been followed up?

• Ideas for initiatives in relation to work tasks, optimizations or collaboration across the organisation

• Have you been supported?

• Where have you gone above and beyond?

• Have goals and targets been met, if not why not?

A good idea might be that you, every time you come across something new during the year, write it down. That way, you are sure that you do not forget anything important and that your reflections do not just become the things you can think of on the spur of the moment.

How does a performance review conversation take place?

The performance review can typically be broken down in three timelines:

1. Past, your work over the last year

2. Present, how is your work going currently

3. Future, what are your  goals and areas of opportunity for the coming year

Some of the topics and questions you will be asked in the conversation with your manager may be the following:

Wellbeing, environment and cooperation

• Do you thrive in the company?

• How do you perceive daily communication?

• How do you assess the relationship between you and your line manger?

• How do you assess the relationship between you and your colleagues?

• How do you assess the relationship between you and others outside the company?

Tasks 

• Do you feel that your work effort is appreciated?

• Do you influence your work?

• Do you get the support you need?

• Are you being professionally challenged?

• Do you get the necessary information to be able to perform your tasks?

Work in general

• What tasks are of greatest interest to you?

• What tasks are of least interest to you?

• What is your experience of the workload? The level of difficulty? The time? Other things?

• Last year, in which work situations did you work best?

Development

• Necessary competencies to be able to handle the work tasks in the coming year and looking forward

• Want to work areas / tasks in the coming year?

Etc.

It is important that you try as much as possible to go with a positive frame of mind to an employee development interview conversation. The conversation is there for both you and your line manager.

See it as a constructive conversation where it is not about just getting all the negative thoughts out, it should preferably not end up in a discussion that can be difficult to come back from.

After the performance review

What happens afterwards?

After the interview, you and your manager can prepare a development and conclusion form, where you write down the things that you have agreed on during the interview and what respectively you and your manager must do going forward.

This helps to ensure that you both get something out of the conversation and your further development in the workplace.

Are employee development interview calls mandatory?

In the public sector, employee development interview talks are mandatory. They are due to the collective agreements of public employees.

In the private sector, on the other hand, employee development interviews are not mandatory. But it can be a really good part of a company's development strategy, succession planning and feeling with the employees, making it a good idea to hold them.

Employee development interview & salary

Can you talk about salary for an employee development interview? You can talk about salary for an employee development interview but it will rarely be a salary negotiation.  It is generally recommended to keep the two things separate. You do this because it is two different types of conversations, each with its own authoritarian situation.