Career Conversations Between Managers and Employees

A career conversation helps an employee and manager discuss aspirations, evidence, development and realistic opportunities. It is not a promise of promotion or a substitute for a performance conversation.

Prepare separately

The employee should reflect on work they want more or less of, capabilities, evidence and constraints. The manager should review role expectations, feedback, possible experiences and known opportunities without deciding the employee’s ambition for them.

Begin with the employee’s direction

Ask what work is energising, which problems they want to solve and what they want to learn. Some employees seek depth, mobility, stability, leadership or a career change. Avoid assuming that advancement always means managing people.

Explore evidence

Discuss strengths shown in work, feedback and outcomes. Separate demonstrated capability from interest. Name gaps in relation to a possible direction rather than labelling the employee broadly.

Describe opportunities honestly

Explain known roles, projects, rotations, mentoring, learning or exposure and the uncertainty around timing. Do not invent a vacancy or suggest a development action guarantees selection.

Create a development experiment

Choose one or two actions that produce evidence: lead a bounded project, shadow a decision, practise a skill or solve a cross-team problem. State support, success criteria and review date.

Discuss constraints appropriately

Invite the employee to share location, schedule or mobility preferences without requiring private family or health detail. Explore alternatives where possible and use formal accommodation routes when relevant.

Record useful commitments

Keep aspirations, actions, owners and review dates in the approved development process. Do not record speculative personal comments or treat an aspiration as consent to immediate transfer.

Follow up

Review what the experience showed, update goals and explain changed opportunities. Career conversation quality depends on actions between meetings, not the annual form.

When performance is a concern

Be clear about current-role expectations through the performance process. Development discussion can continue, but it should not obscure an unresolved requirement.

Prepare managers for boundaries

Managers should know internal mobility, development resources and selection rules. They must not guarantee promotions, discourage movement to retain talent or demand personal detail. HR should provide an escalation route for conflicts.

Include lateral and specialist paths

Discuss deeper expertise, projects, different functions, locations and mentoring as well as promotion. Show the capability and trade-offs of each path. Avoid portraying management as the only successful career.

Address limited opportunity

If no relevant role or project exists, say so and focus on portable development in current work. Do not keep an employee waiting through vague assurances. Explore external learning or future review only when realistic.

Example

An HR operations employee wants analytics work. The manager agrees a bounded data-quality project, connects them with an analyst and sets evidence criteria. The conversation creates learning without promising an analyst vacancy.

Managers provide context, feedback and access; employees own choices and effort; the organisation decides appointments through fair selection.