Conducting employee development interviews is an important management task that is, however, sometimes postponed or not carried out at all. This is really unfortunate, as it is at this very interview, that the direction is set for the next year's work and development.
It differs from organisation to organisation just how the EDP interviews are conducted. And so it should be, as all companies are different. However, there are a number of general mistakes you should not make when conducting EDPs.
1) Postponing the employee development interview
It can go wrong even before you begin the actual EDP interview.
In some organisations, the dialogue takes place at a certain time of the year. In others, it is conducted on the employees' birthdays. No matter what model you use in your organisation, it is important to stick to the agreement that is made with the employee.
If you, as a manager, postpone the EDP interview time and time again, you send a signal to the employee that the dialogue is not important. The topics covered by the EDP (e.g. direction, work assignments, interaction with co-workers, well-being and development) are of great importance to your employee. And for that reason, they should also be important to you.
Be sure to take the time necessary for the EDP interview and invest that time in your employees' development.
2) The EDP interview is used for everything but employee development
Following the point above, the employee development interview should focus on important topics such as performance, well-being and development. We are aware that in several places, wages are also discussed here, and that may work. But we usually recommend keeping the two things separate. We find it most constructive not to use the important EDP interview to negotiate salary or to deal with difficult issues.
Rather, have a separate meeting about pay. If it is necessary to deal with a major issue or challenge, you should have a difficult conversation with your employee. Read more about why 'the difficult conversation' should be separated from EDP.
3) Employee and manager do not prepare
The prerequisite for a good and rewarding employee development interview is preparation. If neither you nor your employee has made any thoughts before the meeting, you will need to spend a great part of the interview on just steering the conversation in the right direction.
You basically risk talking about anything and everything without really getting around those important issues that may be the foundation for development.
Imagine that your employee has a topic he/she would like to discuss with you. But in the natural flow of the conversation, the right opportunity does not appear, and the employee is left after the interview without having mentioned it. That is a shame, because then, how do you, as a manager, know how your employee is really doing? It is almost impossible, and therefore it may be a solution to let the employee answer a number of questions prior to the interview so that you can pick up the important topics and set a direction for the course of the interview.
Read more about preparing for the EDP interview in the blog post '3 things you need to be aware of in a digital dialogue'.
4) No minutes or agreements are made
One typical mistake of many EDP interviews is that no minutes are taken, and no agreements made. All the development topics that you and the employee have talked about should be written down so that you can always return to them and be reminded of what has been agreed on.
In situations where the EDP interview is done on paper and where the minutes are taken by hand or in a document on the computer, the minutes may not be written until after the employee has left the room. It is okay to do it that way, but if the employee should feel involved or take ownership to the minutes, it is a good idea to write them together or at least let the employee see the minutes afterwards so he/she can object in case of any disagreements.
Another option is to write the minutes during the actual conversation. In Evovia it is possible to write minutes directly in the questionnaire that has been filled out by the employee in advance. It is also possible to create specific agreements for the individual questions with a deadline and a priority, so reminders are sent to both manager and employees when it is time for action. Afterwards, the minutes are jointly approved by the manager and the employee, after which the form is sent to the employee, while the manager can access it directly in the EDP system. This is not just timesaving but also involving.
The agreements make it possible to get reminders in the busy workday so that something is actually done about them.
5) The EDP minutes are put in the drawer until next year;
One of the biggest traps is when the minutes are just put in the drawer, not to be taken out before preparing next year's EDP interview.
The EDP interview is the dialogue that should set the direction for work and development in the coming year. Therefore, the interview simply cannot just be stowed away. As a manager, you should return to it several times during the year to follow-up on whether the agreements have been kept.
Has the employee actually been on the course to give them the necessary skills to do the work even better? Or has cooperation in the team improved after you agreed to have monthly team meetings? How do you go about ensuring an optimal flow between task submission and feedback?
Follow up and get the most out of development. Read more about how to do this in the blog post 'Make the EDP interview last the whole year'.
6) Employee data is not stored properly
Are the EDP minutes kept in a drawer in the desk, in a binder in the bookcase or perhaps in a folder in the company's Dropbox? All those places are quite risky, as the minutes may then be accessed by others. The binder is accessible to anyone who is in the office alone. The Dropbox folder is open to all the company's users unless special permissions have been configured.
In these GDPR times, it is important to store employees' information correctly. This also applies to their personal responses to the employee development interview. EDP minutes should not be available to anyone but the manager, the employee, and possibly a few others who have been allowed to access the dialogue.
