6 Conversations about your options

A key part of developing your work to ensure it meets your wants and needs is to use the reviews and career development programmes at your work. This can be as an end of year review or monthly/quarterly meeting. A detailed conversation with your employer will help you to talk through your situation and options.

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Use the information and insight you’ve gained from the sections above to use in your 1-2-1 conversations.

A review benefits both you and your employer as they provide an opportunity to:

• Review your progress to date, your achievements and ongoing challenges.
• Discuss your options and vision for the future and identify how they might align with the company’s objectives.
• Get constructive feedback on your performance and agree objectives for the coming year.
• Investigate flexible or agile working patterns.
• Identify gaps in skills and training needs and future potential.
• Discuss your personal development plan or work plan.

It’s important to prepare well for your review to make the most of the process. Your HR (human resources) department may have some guidance documents or a short training session on how to make full use of the review system. In other companies the process may be less formal, but preparation is just as important. Take a look at some tips at the section preparing for reviews [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

These conversations can happen even if you are not in paid employment, for instance if you are volunteering.

You can also manage your own work development by using a personal development plan and by having one to one discussions with a careers adviser.