TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Intro
  • How do I get started?
• How does it work?
  • Creating a development talk cycle
  • Templates
  • Start your development talk cycle
  • Emails in the development talk process
• Cycle progress
  • Employee preparation 
  • Preparation step for managers
  • Development talk step for managers
  • Development plan
  • After the development talk cycle - revisiting plan throughout the year 
• Any Questions?

Intro

Development Talks facilitates the work around recurring development talks or reviews for HR, managers and employees and assists you to be in more control, structure your preparation and end up with better results.

With this simple tool, you can plan, prepare, execute and oversee the full process digitally.

• All information is collected in one place for an easy overview of both current and previous talk cycles.
• The full process is digitalized - from preparation to development plan sign-off for employee and managers.
• HR gets a simple way to follow-up on progress of the teams.
• Email reminders are sent out to all roles to notify about important events in the process and to move the process forward.

How do I get started?

Development Talks is available for all customers with no extra cost. The feature does not require any further setup to get started.

How does it work?

The development talk process is managed by HR (admin role) by setting up cycles and templates.

Creating a development talk cycle

The development talk cycle is what decides during which period the talks should happen, which teams should participate, and what steps should be included. These settings can also be added and changed later. Cycle creation is found under the ‘Development’ tab and only visible for user with the "Admin" role.

Once you have clicked on New cycle, a pop-up will appear where you can begin setting up your cycle. All the information you add now can be change at a later stage.

1. Select a name for your development talk cycle - e.g Development talks Spring '24 
2. Select participants. Here you choose if everyone at the company should be included or specific teams. The module is build after a logic that it’s the closest manager who will conduct the development talk with his/her team, so therefore the ‘Team managers’ are already prefilled. 
3. Select steps. Here you select if you want your cycle to have a Development plan step or not. You cannot opt out of the others, since they are an essential part of the development talk concept. Here is a breif explanations of the steps: 
   1. Preparation - mandatory step. During this step, both the manager and the employee will prepare the talk. The employee is prompted to prepare first, by filling in the template designated for preparation. When the employee is done, the manager then prepares by reading the employee preparation and making notes. 
   2. Talk - mandatory step. During this step, the talk template is filled out by the managers. We recommend that this happens during the actual talk with the employee. The employee cannot make notes/fill out the template in this step. 
   3. Plan - opt in/opt out available in cycle creation. During this step, the manager fills out a plan template. This plan should be short and entail the actionable goals set together with the employee for the coming period. 
4. Choose period. Pick a start and an end date. This is only to be able to set some sort of timeframe for the organization, nothing will happen automatically when these days are passed. 
5. Click Next and Choose templates for each step. If you don’t have any templates yet, Click ‘No template’ - you can add them later.

When the cycle creation is finished, it appears in the list of cycles. You can edit the cycle as you wish, e.g switching participants and templates, until you release the cycle. 

The cycle will have a draft-state until templates are added to each step. Without them, you will not be able to start the cycle. That can be done on the little ‘wheel’ or on the three dot’s menu.

Templates

Note: We strongly urge you to build unique and separate templates for each step in the cycle. This allows you to get the most out of the development talk process for your employees.

In the second tab of the Development page, you also find the tab ‘Templates’. This is where you create and manage your own templates, or use Talentech’s best practice templates.

To create a new template, click ‘New template’ and choose a name. You are now directed to the template builder.

Here, you can build your own templates with different question types and content boxes. For inspiration, take a look at the best practice templates provided by Talentech. You can format text, add pictures and much more in the text editor. You can change order of the questions with the arrows. There are also options to Clone questions and delete.

Start your development talk cycle

When you have chosen templates for each step, the cycle will look like this.The status of the cycle has shifted to ‘Not started’. This means that the cycle is ready to be released and has all information required, but since it is not started changes can still be made to the cycle settings.

When you have checked that all information is correct and ready to be released to managers and employees to start working, it is time to start the cycle. This is a manual action that needs to be done by an admin. Once the cycle has been started, changes are not possible (except for the name and start/end date). When a cycle is started, an email will go out to employees and managers participating in the cycle, telling them to go to People Core to prepare. When this is done, admins are only able to view the cycle and the progress of the team from the Development page.

Emails in the development talk process

These are the emails that are sent out during a development talk cycle:

Cycle progress

A crucial thing that Development Talks aims to support HR with is being able to track the progress of the development talks. This enables you to facilitate and help out where it's needed. When a cycle is released and managers have gotten started with their teams, HR (Admins) can follow the progress through clicking  ‘View’ on the cycle you want in the Development tab.

You are also able to view the progress under ‘View all’ - where you will find all of your organization’s employees. Here you can filter and search for specific employees based on several criteria.

Here is an overview of the development talk process:

After an admin has released a cycle, participating employees and managers are pinged to engage through email. 

Employee preparation 

Employees are prompted to prepare first. The development talk is a employee-centric process where the employees' development should be in focus and they should be able to set the agenda for the talk. The employee conducts their development talk steps under the tab ‘My development’.

Here they are able to view all development cycles that they are involved in right now and previous cycles that have been complete. Under ‘Completed’, the employee is able to find the notes from all steps of the development cycle and can easily access them for recollection or follow-up meetings. 

The ongoing cycles are placed at the top of the page and each have a status timeline. Here the employee can follow and be informed where in process they and manager are right now. Also, the employee will be encouraged to take action when it’s their turn to do something, like below:

If ‘Open’ is clicked, they get to this view where they fill in their answers for the development talk preparation questions. They can choose to ‘Save as draft’ and finish another time, or 'Send to manager' to mark themselves ready for the development talk.

When the employees have prepared for the talk and sent it to their manager, the status will indicate that the employee is done on this step and it’s the manager’s turn to prepare.

Preparation step for managers

When the employee has finished preparing, it’s the managers turn. They will be notified via email and in the ‘Team development' tab. In this tab, the manager will do all their work with all their team members. All the development cycles that the manager is involved in is visable in an overview (like below). Here the manager can see both ongoing cycles that have already started and cycles which the manager has been planned to be involved in  that hasn’t started yet. The state of the cycle is visible on the status badges on the cycle cards - Ongoing indicates ongoing cycle, Draft indicates cycle for the future.

Entering a cycle gives the manager an overview of the team members on which step they're at, and what actions are up next. Descriptive statuses guides the manager forward. They are also provided with a status bar, giving a quick overview of the progress of the team:

When an employee has finished preparation, the managers opens the step and can see the employee's notes. The manager can now take notes about the employee preparation, commenting on what they agree/disagree on. This notepad will follow the manager throughout the development cycles steps and can never be seen by the employee.

When the manager has finished preparing the "Talk" step is next.

Development talk step for managers

In this step, the manager is in the driver's seat and will be the one filling out the template in People Core. This is preferably done during the actual development talk, so that the manager is using the talk template as a guide for the development talk meeting. The manager can access the notepad at any time, to see their notes from preparation. The manager can also access what the employee prepared, by clicking on the ‘View’ next to the Preparation step:

Filling out this template can be done in steps, by saving the draft and coming back to it later. When the manager is done with the talk template, click ‘Done’ and the "Talk" step will be marked as complete. If the admin only chose the Preparation and Talk step of the development talk cycle, being done with the Talk step finishing the cycle for every employee. If the Plan step was also chosen, please read further.

Development plan

The last and optional step of the development cycle is the development plan. This template is filled out by the managers and then sent to the employee for approval and comments.

1. Managers will write the development plan. They can work on it several times by saving it as draft. When the plan is done, it is sent to the employee by clicking ‘Send to employee’

2. The manager’s are indicated that it’s sent by shifting statuses on the employees status bar:

3. The employee can then read the plan by Clicking ‘Open’ on their status bar. The employee has a choice to either Approve the plan, or Comment the plan if they don’t agree or want something to be changed. If Approved is chosen, the development talk process is concluded for that employee. If Comment is submitted, then the comment it sent to the manager and the acceptance flow starts over again until we reach an Approval.

4. When Approval has been reached, the development talk process for that employee is done. The managers can find the employee under the filter ‘Completed & cancelled’ in their Team development view.

5. The employee can find their filled-out development talk forms and plans in the My development tab under ‘Completed’ talks.

After the development talk cycle - revisiting plan throughout the year 

We of course strongly encourage you to work with the development plan throughout the year with your employees. Employees and managers can always access plans from development talks when entering the right Completed cycle and viewing the notes.

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us here