Time to change mindset

There’s so much focus on helping managers to have ‘difficult’ conversations, but it’s time to shift our thinking. Conversations shouldn’t only happen when there’s a problem to be solved: they should be consistently adding value. Managers and employees alike should be looking at 1:1 conversations as an opportunity to bring everything to the table – discussing both challenges and opportunities and raising conversation points without fear of judgment.

Unleashing engagement

Businesses are facing a disengagement crisis: the risk of leaving things unsaid is too great. Only one in five (21%) employees feel engaged at work, according to a global report from Gallup. The other four in five? It’s common sense that disengaged employees are neither at their most productive nor their happiest. Different sources estimate that disengagement costs between 18% to 34% of employees’ annual salary. The right conversations, at the right time, can make all the difference to every individual’s engagement.

What matters most

Let’s inspire managers and employees to talk about what matters most to them at the right time. Yes, that might mean the personal, as well as the professional. An engaged team is one in which people bring their whole selves to work. By deeply understanding each other, and having an open forum for discussion, we can hold valuable 1:1 conversations that generate performance-driving actions.

Since we launched OpenBlend, we’ve seen the direct impact that 1:1 conversations have on individuals and workplaces. Here are the five workplace conversations we see as critical to boosting employee engagement and performance.

1. Clear goal setting

Stress is often a result of unclear expectations. If employees don’t understand the goals they are working towards, how can they feel motivated to achieve them? And how can managers take action to help employees achieve those objectives? Managers and employees can co-create achievable yet ambitious goals through productive conversations, and then use 1:1s to evaluate progress. Personal goals should be contextualised, showing how every individual contribution rolls up to organisational strategy.

2. Development

Most of today’s workforce prioritises development in their role. A study by Gallup found that what employees most wanted from managers was clarity, feedback, opportunities to learn and grow, and accountability. However, the same study discovered that only 30% of employees strongly agreed that their manager involves them in goal-setting, while only 19% talked to their manager about steps to reach their goals. When 87% of millennials (and 69% of others) rate professional growth and development opportunities as important to their job, it is vital that these development conversations are taking place.

3. Motivation

Performance is always underpinned by motivation – but what really motivates your employees? A blanket approach to boost motivation across the business (happy hours, weekend retreats, perks, etc) will never have the same impact as consistent 1:1 conversations. No two employees are the same, and motivation is deeply personal: what might motivate one may not motivate another. So how do you find out? You ask. Managers need to be open to having conversations about what really motivates an employee, whether it’s a professional or personal driver. One person might be driven by career progression, another might be motivated by having protected time outside of work – but conversation is the only way managers will find out.

4. Wellbeing

The way we feel will always impact the way we work. We are multidimensional beings, and no amount of professionalism can prevent our wellbeing from influencing our day-to-day, whether we are happy, sad, stressed or having a crisis of confidence. Employees need to be able to be honest about how they feel with their managers, and what is really affecting those feelings, be it personal or professional. Yet only 14% of employees feel able to talk about stress and mental health with their manager, meaning that wellbeing issues are often invisible to managers. To change this, managers need to be coached to prompt these critical conversations and be open and available to the responses.

5. Reviews

Reviews shouldn’t be intimidating or demoralising, yet for many employees, they often are. A year’s worth of feedback is distilled into one, short meeting, with little context and another year until the employee can find out whether they have fulfilled their objectives. It’s no wonder that 47% of millennials start looking for a new job after their annual performance review, while only 14% of employees overall are inspired by reviews. How can managers change this? With consistency. End of year reviews should be one part of an ongoing development conversation, just one of many 1:1s that focus on development, opportunities and learning. By building evaluation and actionable objectives into regular 1:1s, end of year reviews can become a positive, inspiring annual summary.

1) Organise

1:1 conversations benefit from a having a regular, logical cadence. If employees and managers both know that 1:1s are booked, they will know that there is an opportunity to constructively raise important goals, feedback and concerns. It allows a more organised approach to the manager-employee relationship that is consistent, rather than ad-hoc. If you have a tool to do this, especially one that integrates with organisational Apps such as Slack and Outlook, like OpenBlend, use it. It will prompt both parties to organise and make sure 1:1s are booked in.