The annual interview is mandatory for all employees. What is this interview for? What are your objectives and how can you best prepare for them? Business Cool deciphers for you this unmissable event in the lives of French employees and how you can stand out from the crowd!
What is the annual maintenance?
The annual interview (or individual assessment interview) aims to assess the professional abilities of an employee. Once a year, the employer takes stock of the year to ensure that his employee has met his objectives and sets new ones. It is also an opportunity for employees to negotiate a salary increase.
For employees, annual appraisal interviews have several objectives. They are used first of all to assess one’s strengths, but also to find solutions to improve one’s performance and take stock of the past year. It is also an opportunity to communicate with your manager about your daily constraints and possibly request a raise or even modified working hours. For its part, this interview allows the employer to take stock of the work accomplished, measure the progress made, as well as communicate on future evaluation methods. It also makes it possible to correct certain problems or to discuss certain areas of improvement for the employee.
How to prepare for your annual interview?
Although this interview can be stressful for employees, in reality, this is not the case. This is not an exam! This interview between the employee and his employer is a review of the year which allows his performance to be evaluated in order to improve. It is also an opportunity to take stock of future objectives, prospects for development and the possibility of sharing potential concerns with your manager. In order for the interview to go as smoothly as possible, it obviously needs to be properly prepared. Here are some tips to prepare you as best as possible!
Carry out a retrospective of your year
To begin with, before the interview, you must carry out an objective assessment of your year. You have to question yourself about the actions that you managed to carry out and those that you were unable to implement. It is important to take an objective look at the quality of your work. If the employee tends to overestimate himself, the manager might think that his only objective is to obtain a raise. In addition, if possible, it may be interesting to ask your manager directly about the annual interview and the different questions asked in order to prepare yourself as best as possible.
Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses
It is essential for the employee to keep in mind his or her successes for the year during this interview. To do this, before the individual interview, you should not hesitate to list the set objectives that you have managed to achieve. The employee must remember to highlight the key figures of his successes (number of products sold, projects completed, customer satisfaction, traffic trends, number of followers gained, etc.). If, during the year, you acquired new skills, this must also be mentioned. This will show your employer your motivation and determination to always improve.
However, we must not ignore our difficulties. The employer will certainly highlight these during the interview, so you must understand, in advance, where you made mistakes, why you encountered difficulties, what skills you lack in order to improve. in the future. This is an opportunity for the employee to do some real introspection work.
Think about your ambitions
An individual interview takes place in two stages. To begin with, the evaluation phase, then comes a discussion on areas for improvement. If the employee’s objectives were too easily achievable, you should not hesitate to be more ambitious. Conversely, if the employee has had difficulty achieving them, his objectives may need to be lowered.
The annual interview is an opportunity for employees of a company to let their manager know their desires for development in the short, medium and long term. To do this, before your interview, you must have a precise idea of how you plan to progress within the company (change position, team, become manager, etc.). It is also possible to request training, if it is justified in the context of your professional development.
How to negotiate your salary during an annual interview?
The annual appraisal interview is an opportunity for employees to negotiate a salary increase. To do this, it is important to put yourself in your employer’s place in order to understand the reasons that would push them to give you a raise. It is essential to know your value on the job market, your value within the company, but also to show your employer that your results justify your request for a raise. Prefer a salary range rather than a precise figure. The annual interview is a time for discussion between the employee and the employer, it is a discussion between two parties that must be addressed in a report “win-win“.
However, if the company refuses the salary increase, it is also possible to negotiate a bonus, training or even solutions to improve your quality of life at work. Keep in mind that if you are a good performer, your employer will have every interest in rewarding you in order to maximize your motivation.
Annual interview: manager practices
The annual interview is also a mandatory step for managers who must prepare for this meeting and deploy measures to adapt to employee feedback. Clotilde Mérillon, HR director at Javelo, a SaaS HR performance management platform, gives her advice to managers on how to get the most out of annual reviews.
According to her, it is important for the manager to carefully reread the annual interview and define the elements to be put in place, which will make it possible to create a clear and personalized action plan for each employee. Clotilde Mérillon also suggests setting up a second interview with the employee and not hesitating to challenge the employee. The HR department explains that it is necessary to define SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-defined) before carrying out a regular monitoring point to measure the success of these objectives, but also to ensure that the points mentioned during annual maintenance has been taken into account.
For Javelo’s HR department, it is also important that the human resources department supervises the annual interview and supports managers after the annual interview. According to her, it must analyze employees’ annual interviews and highlight the salient elements to be implemented within the company, in order to improve the quality of life at work and the daily lives of employees.
