Quick Downloads: 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 plans
- Identifies how you can support your team in meeting their goals
Career Conversation Guidance: Changes in Reporting Structures
Some reporting structures have changed this year as part of centralization efforts, and some job scopes and duties are changing as units adjust in response to the financial action plan. This may change how you approach Career Conversations this year.
Planning for the year ahead can be challenging if your employee’s role is new or evolving or you do not have an existing relationship with them. Consider the following adjustments as you engage in the Career Conversation process.
If You Have A New Direct Report - Existing Employee
You are responsible for signing off on employees’ Career Conversation in UAccess, even if they recently started reporting to you. Consider these two options.
- Hold a joint Career Conversation with the employee’s old supervisor.
- If you conduct a Career Conversation without the previous supervisor, follow the normal process to gain insight into your new employee's previous role and how they can leverage their strengths to benefit your team.
If You have New Hires or Employees with Job Scope Changes
It may be hard for employees in new roles to map out SMART goals and learning opportunities for the next year. Suggestions to approach Career Conversations:
- Set time aside for open conversations with new direct reports about their experiences, needs, and growth goals.
- Instead of filling out the Career Conversations form, use it as a conversation guide. Encourage your employee to fill it out or summarize your discussion in a Word document for uploading to UAccess.
- Schedule a Career Conversation 4-6 months after your employee starts, aligning it with other team member check-ins.
Keys to Success
- Take time for you and your new direct reports to get to know one another and outline ways you would like to work together for the upcoming year. How can you remain curious, open, and adaptable as they realign their work?
If you have questions about adjusting the Career Conversation process this year, please contact your Senior HR Partner.
Resources & How-Tos
Download this email template to start your Career Conversations with your employees. Customize and edit it to suit your needs!
The Career Conversations Process
The Career Conversations process model consists of five steps. Read through each step or watch a short video at the link below.
Career Growth Resources From LinkedIn Learning
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.
Flexible Work
Staff with flexible work arrangements have specific needs. Use this guide to help avoid proximity bias and support your direct reports' goals.
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.