Welcome back, everyone! Happy Halloween… we hope that your day is full of sweets and trick-or-treating!

When you are back home and settled, make sure to read the below to learn about upcoming, corporate year-end review processes. What should you do to prepare? How do you guide or participate in these conversations? Find out everything you need to know here!

Let’s Chat…Year-End Review Process

• Stay Aligned with Your Goals: If you work for a corporation, you’ve likely engaged in the goal-setting process. What this means is that we use online platforms to input different types of goals (professional, cultural, behavioral, etc.) so that we can create a measure of accountability on a bi-annual basis. While you should be checking in on the progress of your goals on at least a quarterly basis, your year-end review is a guaranteed time during which these will be evaluated. In order to best stay prepared, we encourage you to embed specific, measurable examples of how you’ve reached or worked towards these goals in your self-review. If you’ve missed the mark in certain places… ask yourself, why? What could you do better next year? On the other hand, if you have bypassed your goals with flying colors, ask yourself…can we adjust these to be more challenging? How can you expand on the skills you’ve developed in 2022 to ensure you continue to grow in the new year?
• Create a Comfortable Atmosphere: Remember, you will get out of the conversation exactly what you give! Like we said above, put meaningful effort into evaluating how you’ve met goals, made progress towards goals, turned in unanticipated directions, adapted goals, or even fallen short. It’s okay to learn and to grow! Goals are fluid and not fixed, so they can change to adapt to how your role ebbs and flows throughout the year. Especially by addressing shortcomings with the same value as strengths, you are setting yourself up to have a meaningful conversation in which feedback and critique are encouraged on both an employee and manager level.
  • Specifically, Call out Your Own Constructive Criticism: Before entering into the conversation, identify areas that you could personally see a need for growth or that you anticipate a person in leadership may call out. That way, you’ll avoid ever coming across as arrogant or unaware of yourself. I specifically measured the metrics in my goals against my performance (ex: aim for 5 meetings with various company leaders – did you have 3 meetings? 6? How do you measure up?), and in doing so, was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to seek out my own areas of improvement.
• Say Thank You: While you should always thank someone else for taking the time to engage with you no matter what the topic, it’s especially important to thank your manager for feedback and not express any animosity depending on the result. Getting constructive criticism is a part of life, and a vital skill to success is being able to channel those types of messages with action and appreciation.
• Review New Goals Before Making Final! The most important note of all, make sure that you and your manager are absolutely on the same page before solidifying your new goals in any type of HR platform. Make sure that your goals are SMART (measurable!), align with your interests and role, and are reviewed by the leadership that will evaluate them. Creating an open channel of communication so that your goals are interactive is key to success.

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