Quick Downloads: 5-Step Career Conversation Process | Career Conversations Form | Supervisor UAccess Upload Guide
Career Conversations are a valuable tool to create actionable strategies that will help motivate, develop, and retain your team.
You play a significant role in your staff's job satisfaction and engagement levels. Don’t underestimate the effect your critical guidance and input has on your team members’ growth and success.
Taking the time to truly listen to your team member’s goals and aspirations and coaching them with meaningful feedback will cultivate trust and boost employee engagement and productivity.
Benefits of Career Conversations:
- Puts focus on your employee’s future with the university
- Highlights and recognizes what your team accomplished in the past 12 months
- Frames conversations around skills your team members want to learn and develop as part of their growth plan
- Identifies how you can support your team in meeting their goals.
Career Conversations Office Hours
Meet with De'Anna Randle to ask questions about the Career Conversations process, get support, and more.
- April 2, 2025 - 12 - 1 p.m. (AZ)
- April 15, 2025, 9 - 10 a.m. (AZ)
Get Started: Handbooks & Guides
The Handbook for Effective Career Conversations
This handbook is designed to help you implement impactful Career Conversations to retain and develop employees on your team.
Career Conversations Check-In Guide
Use this checklist as a tool to help you to prepare for the check-in so you can better coach your employees to success.
Flexible Work
Staff with flexible work arrangements have specific needs. Use this guide to help avoid proximity bias and support your direct reports' goals.
Coaching and Career Development Resources
LinkedIn Learning: Career Growth Resources
LinkedIn Learning has created a resource collection to help you create professional goals and career development strategies. These videos can help managers support their team development.
Career Coaching with the GROW Framework
The GROW model is an effective framework in which a coach or supervisor asks focused questions to help their client or employee clearly define goals and develop an action plan to move forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
All university staff should engage in career planning with their supervisors.
The formal Career Conversations process should be completed with staff who have been in their role for at least six months. That provides enough time for the staff member to understand their position well enough to strategically plan for the future.
Prior to six months, supervisors and their staff should engage in regular feedback about job expectations and success as part of the onboarding process.
- Before the university had a common date for completing Career Conversations, staff feedback shows that the process felt unclear and that Career Conversations didn't always happen. The April-June window:
- Accommodates both academic and fiscal timelines
- Establishes the expectation for staff members and supervisors for an annual process
- Allows for tools and resources to be developed and shared with you
- Streamlines communications sent to your inbox
- Will enable easier tracking of completion rates
- Better performance and higher productivity
- Stronger teams and work groups
- More trust and a culture of positive change
- Greater job satisfaction and engagement
- Early signs of performance challenges
There are three easy ways to sign the Career Conversations form (DOCX).
- Sign the form physically and scan it. Upload the scanned document to the UAccess Career Conversation module.
- Type names directly into the form in Steps 2 and 3. The employee uploading this document to UAccess and the supervisor approving it will act as signature verification.
- Use Adobe Sign. Review the Completing Career Conversations in Adobe Sign (PDF) for instructions.
Supervisors should be honest and share their perspective throughout the year. Staff members should not be surprised by comments during the Career Conversations process. However, supervisors may note any disagreements in writing or invite the staff member to revise their content based on the discussion.