9 Tips for Preparing the Planning Meeting

The planning meeting is the first official conversation in the traditional HR cycle, which consists of the planning, performance, and appraisal meeting. It is also called 'the goal-setting conversation', because the manager and employee together determine what the goals for the upcoming period will be. Both parties express their expectations and record the goals. At another moment, such as during the performance or appraisal meeting, these are reviewed.

The type of organization determines the kind of goals that are set, but the most discussed topics during the planning meeting are: development goals for the employee and goals that deliver business results.

Many see the planning meeting as the starting point of the traditional HR cycle. Only one in five employees experiences the traditional appraisal cycle as fair, transparent and motivating (Gallup, 2024). Organizations working on improving fairness and transparency see significant benefits. A fair work climate increases productivity by 26% and reduces turnover by 27% (Gartner, 2021).

Room for growth in the planning meeting

There are still many growth opportunities. Both the company and the employee need concrete goals to pursue.

Four reasons to communicate your company goals with your employee before the planning meeting:

• A quarter of employees (25%) have no idea what the company goals are (Protime);
• Only a small part of employees experience their leadership as effectively communicative (Gallup, 2024);
• Millennials highly value working for a company with a vision (Deloitte, 2024);
• Highly engaged teams achieve 23% higher profitability (Gallup, 2024).

Fast-changing market and the planning meeting

The market is changing rapidly. Company goals can therefore be constantly adjusted, making it difficult to set annual goals. Yet it is important to monitor development, as 85% of companies expect a skills shortage within 3 years (WEF, 2020). By increasing conversation frequency, more realistic goals can be set. An excellent way to translate company goals to employee goals are OKRs.

A quarter of employees have no idea how they can contribute to company goals

Below are practical solutions for the most common situations with the planning meeting that HR departments encounter:

In a traditional HR cycle, a planning meeting is held at the beginning of the year. In this conversation, the goals for employees on business and development areas are recorded. However, the world is changing faster and faster. Goals set at the beginning of the year are often outdated after a few months.

At Learned, we therefore work with the methodology of the 'Good Conversation' per quarter. By having conversations each quarter, we have integrated the HR cycle with our business.

By working with the Learned platform instead of old-fashioned forms and back-and-forth emailing, we achieve time savings that we then use to have a good conversation every quarter, instead of once a year.

There is still too often a top-down methodology. Do you find that your employees are not sufficiently challenged to define their own goals? By having employees think about their goals beforehand, they come to the meeting well prepared. With the questionnaires in Learned, you can get this process started. Employees receive a task to think about the following questions beforehand, for example:

• What are you good at?
• What gives you the greatest job satisfaction?
• What do you prefer to do in your work?
• What do you want to develop further in?

Both prior to and during the meeting, the employee and the manager can add the agreed-upon goals directly to the meeting form.

🎯 Want to get started yourself? Download the template with sample questions for the updated planning meeting

Do managers find it difficult to conduct a good planning meeting? We advise supporting managers in conducting a good conversation, for example by offering a structured conversation form.

In the Learned platform, there are 10+ forms ready for users registered as 'coach'. This especially helps less experienced managers bring more structure and quality to the conversation.

One of the most important drivers of employee engagement is "making an impact". Do employees feel they contribute to the organization's success?

Use the planning meeting to give employees insight into the organization's key goals and help them determine their impact. With Learned, you make company goals visible to all employees and translate them to team and employee goals. This is called Goal Cascading.

Goal Cascading = goals that are translated from one level of the organization to the next. For example, organizational goals translated to team goals and employee goals. The goal of this method is to align all goals with the organization's strategy.

Before setting goals in the planning meeting, it is wise to first discover what the employee enjoys, is good at, or gets energy from. The chance that they will then achieve the goals is much greater. Employees who spoke with their manager about their goals and successes in the past six months are 2.8 times more likely to be engaged than other employees (Gallup, 2020).

The objectives for the planning conversation are best established using the SMART model or through the OKR method. By making the goal as concrete as possible, it becomes clear which expected results we discuss in later conversations, such as the progress, performance, or good conversation. Create goals in Learned's goals module and make them concrete by assigning them to an employee with a deadline.

How do I create a goal with the SMART method?

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. A goal that meets all SMART criteria is concrete enough to work with and has a clear endpoint. This means these goals provide sufficient structure for evaluation in all subsequent conversations. For example, in the year-end conversation where you discuss the employee's skills and competencies.

Example SMART goal: "I want to schedule at least 3 appointments per week via LinkedIn by the end of March."

Tip 1: during the year-end conversation, evaluate the SMART goal set during the planning conversation against the skills and competencies. Looking back on this can provide new input and inspiration.

Tip 2: ask the employee subtle questions before the goal-setting conversation to get their thought process started.

How do I create a goal with the OKR method?

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. The method is determined by two important factors: objectives and key results. The objectives are meant to motivate and inspire the organization and should be recognizable, realistic and concise. Simply put, everyone in the organization should be able to understand them. The key results tell what has been done to achieve the objectives and what still needs to happen. Like the objectives, the results should also be concise and powerful.

A good benchmark is to have approximately two to five measurable and transparent key results for each objective. Even minimal use of OKRs leads to higher performance levels. This was demonstrated by the sales of Sears Holdings. When they used OKRs, they sold up to 8.5% more per hour!

Does it emerge from the planning meeting that the employee wants to further develop a particular skill? One of the most user-friendly methods is to directly give the employee insight into the relevant available learning offerings.

Many organizations now work with an online learning platform, such as: Goodhabitz, Skilltown, Studytube, Newheroes, and Lepaya.com. However, employees often don't know how to connect their learning goal to the available offerings.

With the Learned platform, we help employees by suggesting relevant learning offerings from learning platforms as activities to achieve their learning goal.

Not recording goals increases the chance that the conversation will have no follow-up. Still working without a system? Record your goals in a PDF form. However, the chance is high that the conversation will no longer be followed up. PDF forms quickly disappear in a drawer or are completely lost. With the Learned platform, we help our customers store goals and conversation reports in a central location.

Great, you've recorded your goals. You now want to prevent not looking at the goals again until the next conversation takes place. That's why managers and employees at Learned continuously discuss goals in 1:1 conversations.

In the Learned platform, the manager can immediately see what progress the employee has made. Additionally, we look at the status of organizational and team goals with the entire team once a month in a joint team meeting.