Performance Reviews Question thats Worth a Million Dollars

If there is such a thing as a million dollar question that managers should ask their employees in the employee interview, then it is this: What do you really want to do?

Why is such a simple question so valuable? First, it helps you understand exactly what your employees are passionate about, what engages them and what they see as truly meaningful work. Secondly, it helps to make your employees responsible by involving them in their own career planning and design of work tasks. And thirdly, it shows that you care about the needs of both the employees and the company.

If you add these factors together, you get an effective equation that increases the value of your employee conversations - and that helps increase employee engagement, well-being and retention.

Another reason why this simple question is worth its weight in gold is that it helps to transform employee meetings from retrospective evaluations to forward-looking planning meetings. In fact, more and more companies are deprioritizing the "evaluation aspect" in employee interviews and focus more on looking ahead - on what makes employees happy and productive, how they want to develop and how they envision the future with the employer.

Union Bank & Trust has rearranged its employee interviews in a way that involves the employees in the process to a greater extent. Both companies now ask their employees how they see their work and the future.

In the Harvard Business Review post "If You're Not Helping People Developing, You're Not Management Material," management professor Monique Valcour gives this advice to managers: "When planning your team's work, ask your employees to identify both what they can contribute and what they want to learn. In this way, employees are given the main responsibility for clarifying what they want to learn, and for suggesting ways to incorporate learning at work. This also avoids employees volunteering to carry out tasks that they are already highly skilled at." She also encourages managers to require employees to regularly report back to them on what they have learned and how they are using their new skills and knowledge.

Asking the million dollar question "What do you really want to do?" in the employee interviews can be an effective way to maximize the employees' contribution and commitment. And when you actually use what you've found out, you can make money from it.

In conclusion, IceHrm underscores the transformative power of asking the million-dollar question in employee interviews—unveiling employee passions, fostering responsibility, and shifting towards forward-looking planning. This simple yet powerful query elevates engagement and retention, making it a cornerstone for successful performance reviews.