Career-focused one-on-ones on an employee’s work anniversary
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by Rick Joi Rick Joi is the founder of The Workiversary Group and author of the award‑winning book, Inspiring Work Anniversaries. |
Some organizations have a formal process for having conversations with employees about their careers, but many don’t.
If yours doesn’t and you’re a manager, setting up your own personal tradition of having a career-focused one-on-one conversation on each employee’s work anniversary can be really special.
They can help with retention
Employees are twice as likely to leave within a month of their work anniversary as any other time of the year. (Curious to learn more? Three sources who stumbled onto this from different directions are here, here, and here.)
Some recruiting companies even know this (the first of the three sources above is a recruiting company) and will specifically time their calls into your employees accordingly.
And this makes intuitive sense. Work anniversaries are a natural time for employees to be thinking about their career.
Thus, if you step in to discuss their career, then they will feel less need to look elsewhere.
Ideas on how to do it
There are lots of options, here are three:
Idea #1: Ask about their future
A straightforward approach is to ask the employee where they’d like to be in one year, five years, and ten years from now.
Then, look for ways in which the two of you can work together to take steps towards making those aspirations happen.
Know that it’s common for those aspirations to involve the employee quitting and going to another company — or perhaps even another career. That’s okay. Embracing an abundance mindset when it comes to employees’ careers will always lead to better outcomes than having a scarcity mindset that fears employees leaving.
Idea #2: Job crafting
Another approach that works both with employees who think about their long term plans and those who answer the questions about their future with shrugs is something called job crafting.
Here are the basic steps:
Before the meeting, let the employee know that you’d like to learn more about their job and their interests. Set the expectation that it’s possible nothing will change, but you’d like to see if there’s opportunity. Then, ask the employee to come to the meeting with a list of everything that they put time into as part of their job or would like to put time into as part of their job.
In the meeting, have them go through the list with you and answer any questions you might have about anything you’re less familiar with.
Ask them what things on the list they’d like to stop doing or do less of and what things they’d like to start doing or do more of.
Spend the rest of the meeting working with them to come up with a plan to make one or more of the changes actually happen.
If your organizations offer sabbaticals to long-tenured employees, then you should definitely embed job crafting into the sabbatical experience — learn more in the paid sabbaticals and work anniversaries blog post.
Idea #3: Ask about formal training
And as a third idea — which can work alone or alongside either of the above two approaches — is to ask the employee if there’s any formal training that would help them advance their career.
Then, make a plan to make it happen.
In the plan, be sure to delegate everything you can to the employee. If they don’t have a specific training in plan, have them research the options instead of you. The obvious benefit is that it will save you time. Another benefit is that you’ll filter out employees who aren’t serious, and thus don’t value the training enough for it to be worth the organization’s money.
Final thoughts
These meetings — and the support you’re providing to boost another person’s career — can be a truly enjoyable experience that bring meaning to your role as a manager.
If for any reason the meeting you scheduled needs to be moved, and you have enough notice, then it’s much better to move the meeting before their work anniversary rather than after. This subtle respect of their work anniversary will convey you care.
But if you can’t reschedule before their work anniversary, don’t let that advice get in the way of making sure it happens. Just apologize and get it done when you can.