The annual consultation for employees

Annual consultations for employees

• Invite

  • Your manager invites you for an annual consultation. An annual consultation takes place between 1 February and 31 December.
  • Make sure mutual expectations, both in terms of preparation and the consultation itself, are clear. Below, you will find some tips on making a reflective report and indicating what you want to talk about in the consultation.
  • As an employee, you start the registration process as part of the preparations. You do so by entering input into the annual consultation form. Use the blue ‘Take action now’ button at the top of this page to get started.

  Please note: If you entered employment after 1 February, it’s your manager’s job to launch a new annual consultation form for you in ‘Jaargesprek’ (self-service option for annual consultations). They can access the form using the blue ‘Take action now’ button at the top of this page.

• Prepare

  A good conversation starts in preparation. Take your time for this and put it away in between.

  Form a view of your functioning and new agreements

  • Take the agreements you made in a previous consultation as your point of departure. 
  • Always look at the context. What are the goals of your team, department or group? What are you looking to achieve together and how do you contribute to this? If you don’t know enough about this bigger picture, ask for help.
  • Ask for feedback from a colleague, co-manager or someone else who can say what your qualities are and what you need to work on. The page 360-degree feedback for employees contains a number of ground rules, possible questions and tips.
  • Reflect on your functioning and development in a reflective report. This means not only thinking about what you do, but also about how you do it. In what ways were you effective, in what ways were you less effective and what does this mean for the period ahead? Here’s a list of questions to inspire you. 
  • Think about what you need in order to achieve the results you’re agreeing on. This is about duties you’re responsible for, but also about the direction in which you’re developing. Is there anything you need to learn? If so, what would be the best way to go about this (e.g. job shadowing, taking on a new responsibility, getting or becoming a mentor). Do you need anything from your manager, your colleagues and/or the organisation? This could be support, collaboration, time, etc.
  • If you’re an assistant, associate or full professor, you’ll use the annual consultation to make agreements on focusing on a core domain. On the Academic career paths page, you will find a further explanation about core domains and how to choose one, as well as tools such as an annual consultation reflective report for assistant professors/associate professors/full professors.

  Think about what you want to discuss

  • Together, the manager and you decide which topics you want to discuss during the annual consultation. For example, if you have similar views of your functioning, there is no need to talk about this in depth.
  • Be clear on what you definitely want to discuss with your manager. For example, how do you experience working together with colleagues or with the manager, and how are things in terms of work/energy balance, development, long-term employability and ancillary activities?
  • Are you tense about addressing anything? Try to pinpoint why you feel that way, but don’t avoid the topic. What effect do you want to achieve and how can you best go about this? Ask someone you trust for help and test the message you want to convey, for example. 

  Share your preparation with your manager in a timely manner

  • Put your ideas about the past and the future in a reflective report, so that your manager is familiar with your views and suggestions.
  • Indicate what you would like to talk about in the annual consultation, so the manager can keep this in mind in their own preparations.
  • You can do both these things in step 1 (employee input) of the annual consultation form, either by using the fields of the form or adding a document as an attachment.

• Conduct annual consultation

  In the annual consultation, you and your manager discuss your functioning and performance, and look ahead. This is an important moment to discuss topics that influence your work and development and make agreements.

  • At the start, take some time to agree on (or confirm) the topics you’ll discuss and the time allocated to each of them. This will allow you to focus on the content of the consultation afterwards.
  • Explain important points from your self-reflection, pause to ask questions and be open to feedback from your manager.
  • Make your ideas and needs clear, preferably in the form of concrete suggestions. What would help you reach a certain goal in your work or collaboration? Adopt a flexible stance throughout the consultation, adapting to the options presented to you.
  • Ask follow-up questions if something is insufficiently clear, for example to make sure you and your manager agree on what boxes a result needs to tick for both of you to be happy with it.
  • Also discuss how often you’ll have contact in the interim and how you’ll deal with it if something happens that affects the agreements made.

• Make a report and register agreements

  It is important for you and your manager to record a summary of what you’ve discussed and agreed.

  • Typically the consultation report is drafted by the manager, outlining functioning, agreements made and any other topics discussed. This information can be entered into the fields of the annual consultation form or into an attachment.
  • If you think anything is missing or there’s something you don’t agree with, discuss this with your manager.
  • As an employee, you can provide a written response in step 3 (annual consultation).

  All of the information in the annual consultation form in SuccessFactors – both the text in the fields and the attached documents – constitutes the report of the annual consultation, which is saved. You, your manager, the relevant HR Advisor and the senior manager can access annual consultation forms.

• Achieve

  You start working on the agreements made.

  • If you notice something has changed with regard to your work or to professional or private circumstances that affects the implementation of the agreements, discuss the ramification of this with your manager.
  • You can record any revised agreements in the interim by email and use them in preparation for your next annual consultation.

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