Over the last couple of weeks, you would have had to have been living like a hermit to miss that it was valentine’s day on Monday. And, would you believe it, my husband forgot. Now we’ve been married nearly nine years now, so I don’t expect a massive romantic outpouring on valentines day – but I do expect a card and flower/meal out being planned near to the day. (But, not on the actual day, because we don’t like being ripped off, or squeezed into a restaurant with hundreds of other dewy-eyed couples)
Yes, he did a massive marriage limiting move. Forgetting Valentine’s day. Now, I could have done what my friend did and mention to her husband at 15:30 on Sunday that he had 30 mins before tesco closed to get a Valentine’s day card. She said that she has never seen him move so fast... But, I didn’t do that, as I trusted and expected that my husband was organised for Valentine’s day.
Now, this isn’t a blog post where I have yet another dig about my husband, or a blog post about the need to have difficult conversations (we’ve now had them), it’s the point about expectations.
Like many people, I have expectations and assumptions of my husband, which I may or may not voice. One of those expectations is that I will feel loved and pampered around Valentine’s day. Now, your employees have expectations of their manager and company in general. Guess what? They may or may not openly voice these expectations – but you as a company (and L&D team) are still meant to deliver on these expectations.
Now what may these expectations be? I’m not going to go into the whole dignity at work side of things, because I think you probably know that. They expect, in return for a fair day’s pay, interesting work AND career development. They want to know that you are investing in their career. And generally, we set this expectation in our recruitment literature by waffling on about how much we invest in our staff.
After the initial onboarding few months we often get a mismatch of expectations. Our managers expect our members of staff to take the initiative and responsibility for their own development. They expect that they will be able to tell us where they want their career to go, and what development they need to get there. Because, you are a manager, not a mind reader, right? However, a large proportion of our staff members, actually expect help from their manager and mentor to proactively help them with this conversation. And when this conversation isn’t forthcoming, this leads to poor staff engagement – and often disgruntled members of the team, who either stay and get embittered, or leave.
How do we as training professionals set the expectations with our line managers that they sometimes may need to prompt this discussion with their direct reports? I know many of think that it’s not in their job description – after all, you are the HR department? Having been in L&D for over a decade now, I know it’s not the job of the L&D or HR team to have these conversations.
What’s your thoughts?
