Companies today are increasingly aware that the traditional annual performance review is ineffective when it comes to actually increasing employee performance. In fact, just 12% of respondents to a Deloitte survey indicated that this process was highly effective in driving business value, while only 6% of organizations responded their current process for managing performance is worth the time.

5 Conversations You Need to Have to Motivate Employees

This is a huge problem. Developing and nurturing a motivated workforce is one of the single most important things any organization should focus on, and if your current performance management process isn’t delivering on that then it’s time to make a change.

That’s where focusing on performance development comes in—and its effect on the workforce can be transformational. By moving away from the annual review and shifting to ongoing performance conversations, companies can make powerful changes. Simply having more frequent conversations between employees and managers can make goal setting a more collaborative and effective process, ensure alignment around top priorities and transparency across the company, facilitate ongoing mentoring and coaching, and reduce stress and anxiety for both employees and managers.  

Motivated workers focus on what matters (to the company and to them), are agile and aligned around key strategic objectives, and achieve today’s goals while also developing themselves to meet  tomorrow’s challenges. However, it’s critical that you’re not only having more frequent conversations, but the right conversations. To help you, here are the five critical conversations that you need to make sure are happening in order to motivate your workforce:

Every manager should be having these crucial conversations with every one of their employees on an ongoing basis to ensure they are motivated, engaged and meeting their goals. To learn how HR can best help your managers have the right conversations at the right time, read the full guide to 5 Conversations That Motivate Employees.