In my previous blog post I talked about having more meaningful conversations with employees. One aspect I touched on is understanding the motivations and drivers that help your employees perform. We know that when the work environment provides what employees need, they enjoy their role, are more engaged, and will perform at higher levels. The challenge is how you uncover the essence of your employees’ needs. If you ask them, their answers are likely to be one or many of the following: career progression, opportunities to develop, good compensation, and flexible work schedules., which are all examples of ‘benefits’ you read regularly in job descriptions. But employees’ needs run deeper than just those ‘contractual benefits’.
At Bridge we have developed a deck of drivers cards (as well as web app and mobile app versions) to help managers have those meaningful conversations with employees. The cards help employees prioritise values by understanding what is important to them and what ultimately drives them in their careers today.
Research has revealed that three quarters of employees feel that they are on their own when determining how to develop in their career. The cards gamify and facilitate career conversations between managers and their team to uncover what is important to their careers. The cards and the conversation that happens as a result of using them help eliminate the disconnection felt by employees by empowering them to articulate what they value in their job.
The cards are grouped into seven categories of the following needs: 1) status, 2) meaning, 3) people, 4) enjoyment, 5) company attributes, 6) growth, 7) influence and security. These groups contain cards with choices; for example the “company attributes” set of cards includes a “work-life balance” card and an “inclusion” card.
With the cards separated into their categories, your employee chooses up to three drivers from each category based on the words they feel are the strongest drivers of their career.
By this point you could have up to 18 cards or drivers! Now you’ll want to focus on the most important drivers to them, shuffle the cards and lay out just five of them. Now run through the rest of the cards placing them in front of your employee and have them keep or swap the drivers until you have the five that are most important to them.
If you place the cards equally between you and have your employee move the cards closer to them if they feel that those needs are met, or further away from them if their needs are not met within the context of the current role and environment.
By focusing on an employee’s five drivers for career development and satisfaction, and understanding whether the employee’s needs are being adequately met, you can now have a meaningful career conversation. The Bridge Learning & Performance Platform can help employees identify roles they want to pursue and the skills they will need. Bridge helps managers and employees create career development plans and connect them to relevant learning and performance tools they can use every day.
Try the cards and let me know what you think.
About Bridge
Bridge is a Learning & Performance platform that uniquely combines learning management, career & skill development, and performance management, all in one solution. With Bridge, you can turn stale and ineffective learning & performance review programs into a seamless, dynamic, and engaging experience for employees and managers alike. Used by more than 800 companies worldwide, Bridge helps companies achieve their strategic people development goals by facilitating connection, alignment, and growth across the entire organization. See why Bridge is one of the easiest to use platforms that both employees and admins love.
