Well-being, tasks and development

Your manager will invite you to an SDD dialogue and ask you to fill out a dialogue guide before the meeting. The dialogue will be about:

• What has happened since the last SDD
• Well-being and job satisfaction
• Future career and competency developmen

Please also consider whether you have reached the development objectives and completed the activities you agreed on during the last SDD. Also consider different competence development opportunities.
 

Prepare in mitHR

• The dialogue guide in mitHR is a questionnaire with a mixture of multiple choice and open questions. All questions are voluntary and you can answer in the way you see fit (watch a guide on filling in the dialogue guide)
• Before the dialogue, you can send your notes to the manager, you are having the staff development dialogue with. The manager can then prepare with your answers in mind, so that you have a good basis for a valuable dialogue.
   

Take notes

You will be well-prepared if you write down challenges, needs and ideas during the year. In this way, you can ensure that your experiences in relation to well-being and assignments are not only based on the last few months.

If you have not started writing things down, it is a good idea to start now.

During the staff development dialogue, you and your manager will agree on one or more development objectives or activities for the coming year.

• It is your responsibility to write these in the agreement form after the dialogue and submit the form to your manager for approval    
• Keep the development objective in mind during the year and make sure that you complete the activities you agreed on    

Please contact your manager during the year if it is difficult for you to comply with the agreements. Maybe the objectives should be adjusted, or you need to consider another competency development method.

The dialogue guide in mitHR is a questionnaire with a mixture of multiple choice and open questions. All questions are voluntary and you can answer in the way you see fit. You can ask supplementary questions, leave out sub-questions and ask the questions in another order than specified in the guide.

The idea is to create a fluent dialogue with both the manager and the employee asking questions which come to them naturally. However, as a minimum, the dialogue should cover the three main themes in the dialogue guide. 

The three main topics of the dialogue are:

1. What has happened since the last SDD? – A good starting point for talking about the future
2. Well-being and job satisfaction
3. Future tasks and competence development 
 

You find the dialogue guides in mitHR and can see them here:

• PhD student
• Junior VIP (e.g. assistant professor, researcher, postdoc, research assistant)
• Senior VIP (e.g. professor, associate professor, senior researcher)
• Senior VIP with managerial responsibility (e.g. professor, associate professor, senior researcher)
• Technical or administrative staff (TAP)
• Technical or administrative staff (TAP) with managerial responsibility
• Group or Team development dialogues

An SDD usually lasts approx. 1.5 hours.

In the dialogue, you will cover the topics in the dialogue guide. However, you will often start the dialogue by defining whether there are special topics you want to focus particularly on during the dialogue. Maybe a particularly challenging task requires new competencies.

An SDD is a mutual development dialogue which focuses on the future. An SDD is not a replacement for ongoing dialogue and feedback. Nor is it an occasion to discuss problems and focus on accumulated points of criticism.

Listen to each other

A quality SDD which has meaning and impact requires that you and your manager make an effort to conduct a dialogue that focuses on the future and on development.

A dialogue that leads to development requires that you listen to each other and try to understand the basis of what is being said by asking elaborating questions instead of arguing against the points that are being made. Read: How to give constructive feedback.

As part of the SDD process, the intention is that you and your manager give each other feedback on, for example, work performance and collaboration during the past year.

To ensure that the feedback can be used constructively, it is a good idea to use this simple feedback model:

1. Describe facts

Start with a specific example, for example a situation or a quote which calls for feedback.
Repeat facts without trying to interpret them. 

2. Describe how you experienced the situation

Your experience is about you, and sentences such as ‘I feel/become/am...’ - e.g. impressed, confused, insecure, sceptical, happy, relieved, inspired, unhappy, proud or angry - should be used.

Judgemental expressions are not suitable for giving feedback, for example ‘You are so …’, ‘You always get …’ 

3. Say what it is you want

Say what you want the other person to do.

Say what you wish for and what you want in future rather than what you don’t want.