Fay Wallis: Welcome back to HR coffee time, a weekly podcast to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR career without working yourself into the ground. I'm your host Fay Wallis career coach with a background in HR. I'm also the founder of Bright Sky Career coaching and the creator of the HR planner, which is what I'm going to be talking about today, because I'm going to explain exactly how the HR planner can help you get confident organised, and plan your goals for 2023. If you don't already have a copy of the planer, don't worry, there is a condensed free PDF Printable version that you are very welcome to have. I will pop a link to it in the show notes for you.
And you'll also see there's a link for it on the HR coffee time page at my website. And after working on it for absolutely ages, I'm really excited to share with you that the hardback version of the HR planner is available to buy. Hurray, I can't tell you how much work has gone into it. I always underestimate how much work these things will be. If you're listening to this on the morning that the episode is released, which is Friday the 25th of November 2022, you will be one of the very first people to know that it's available. It's the third year I've created a planner for you. The first year it was just the free pdf version. But then last year, when people started asking me if there was a hardback version available, I decided to go ahead and create one. It's really similar to the free pdf version. But because it's wire bound, it means I can fit even more brilliant resources into it for you to help you with your career. And as with the free version of the planner, I'll pop a link to the hardback version in the show notes for you. So you can take a look at it and buy it if you'd like to.
But before I dive into the main part of today's show, where I'll talk you through what to expect from your HR planner, and how to use it and how it works. I just wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you to everyone who has reviewed HR coffee time on Apple podcast for me recently, three new reviews appeared last week from Mrs. F 2017. testvalleyali. And Freya, thank you all of you, it means a huge amount to me to know that you're enjoying the podcast and finding it helpful. And reviewing the show helps it get found by more people because it's my aim to help as many HR and people professionals as possible with these free weekly career tips. So I really appreciate your support with this, because it's my aim to help as many HR and people professionals as I can with this free weekly podcast to help you ball with your career. So I really appreciate your support with this. Thank you.
But now I think it's time for us to move on to the main part of the show. When I first created the HR planner, it was because I wanted to have a resource for you that was going to set you up for a successful year, as far as your career was concerned. So helping you think about what you wanted to achieve for yourself through the year. But also to be able to think about what you want to help the organisation you work for achieve. And also to help you not lose track of all of those different tasks that you and your team will be responsible for. Because HR is just such a busy function. A lot of the time you are constantly firefighting constantly being turned to for support. And so what happens is it means that your own priorities, your own goals can easily slip to the bottom of the pile. And I just don't want that to happen for you. I want you to be able to help prioritise what's important to you.
And also not to feel overwhelmed by the fact that you're in such a busy role, and not to have those really important projects that are going to make the biggest impact on your career and the biggest impact on the organisation you work for not to have them flipped down the list as well. So as time has gone on, and I've worked with more and more of you, whether that's through one to one coaching or on my group coaching programme, inspiring HR, I've begun to realise that it's not just a question of busyness, there's so much else going on that can get in the way of you having a really successful year for your career at work. And what seems to happen is that your confidence and your well being can take a huge knock because you are so busy all of the time and you often have to deal with some really tough situations and some really tough people.
So what I have done differently for this year's planner is I've also incorporated some activities to help build your confidence and also to help build your resilience and Make sure that you're looking after your well being. So some of that was in that in last year's planner, but it's becoming a little bit more prominent now. So I'll just talk you through step by step, what you can expect from the planner. And if you've already got the planner in front of you, well, you can't have the hardback version quite yet, as it's only just been released. But if you're listening to this in the future, because you've received your hardback version, you'll be able to actually start filling it in, you can just pause the recording as you're listening to it, pause this episode, and work your way through it if you would like to.
So first of all, we have got an activity in the hardback planner called looking back to look forward. If you've only got the free version of the planner, that's absolutely fine. Why don't you just jot down the questions that I'm about to share with you, you can jot them down now. And you can just do this activity in a notebook if you'd like to. So looking back to look forward is all about taking the time to stop for a moment, and look back across 2022. And all that you've achieved. Because you probably already know that if someone asks you what it is that you've been doing, it's really hard for us to think back across the whole year, we'll often just think of what's happened in the last few weeks. Or if we're very lucky, we might think back to about three months. So with this activity, I think what can be really helpful is to take a little bit of time and look through some of your old emails, think back over some of the conversations that you've had. Talk to some of your colleagues, ask them for feedback on what it is that they've really noticed you doing throughout the year, or anything that they've seen has had a big impact.
And so the questions that I'd then like you to reflect on are Question one, what did you achieve, and small wins are just as noteworthy as big ones. I think it's too tempting to get very hung up on huge goals, when actually, it's the tiny steps that we're taking along the way that have the biggest impact. And depending on what's going on in our home and personal lives as well. It may be that we've not been able to hit some of those bigger goals, it might be that something huge has happened at work that's pulled you away from them. And I don't want you to get dragged down. If that's the case, I want you to be able to see that you've still made achievements, you've still done noteworthy work. Question number two is what did you do to help others? I'm guessing it's going to be quite a lot. If someone else who has got a different career outside of HR, or the people profession is answering this, they may not be able to fill in quite so much here.
Question three is what are you proudest of from 2022? So what have you done that you feel really proud that you've done that. And actually, that doesn't even have to be from work. That could be something to do with your life outside of work as well. But I'd just like you to take that moment to acknowledge that you have done things to be proud of. Question number four is what did you do for your well being during the past year? And if you realise from this reflection that you've not done very much, then again, please don't beat yourself up about this. Instead, use this reflection time to think about okay, well, what can I do differently for next year than say that I am looking after myself? Because you are so important. And we all know the expression health is wealth. I love that expression. So please do take a moment with this one because it is so important.
Question Five is what did you learn during 2022? Now, learning is a big motivator for me. I love learning new things. But I think that most of us are motivated by developing and learning and stretching ourselves. So again, if it's just small things that you've learned, that's great. It's still learning. But if it's big things, then brilliant write those down to let's celebrate them. Question Six is which relationships did you develop and build.
If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you will know that I've talked about this so much. And you can hop back and listen to all of the episodes about networking and building relationships if you would like to, because with our careers, so much is down to the relationships that we have throughout all of our career really, and you can really see it once you get to a senior level, because nothing's going to get done without being able to influence and form good relationships with the people around you. Question seven is what are you grateful for? Now, if you can, I would love to encourage you to try to integrate a gratitude practice. Although that sounds quite wishy washy doesn't sit well. Just try and integrate a way of registering what you're grateful for on a daily basis, because it's been proven to have a direct impact on our happiness levels. And there's a good Rate TED talk all about this? Well, it's not all about this, it touches on the importance of gratitude by Shawn Achor. And I can link to that in the show notes for you as well.
Question Eight is, what did you find challenging this year, we all have challenges. So take a moment to think about those and note them down. Because by noting them down, it's going to help you give you ideas for what you want to do going forward. Then once you have thought through questions, one to eight and jotted down some answers. Question Nine is, what insights do you have from reading through your answers to questions one to eight, because you will have some doing this reflection time is so beneficial. In fact, it's one of the main benefits of coaching, really, because we're all so flat out all the time, you are doing some self coaching, by working your way through this activity by giving yourself the headspace to think things through. And then finally, question 10 is how can these insights influence your goals for 2023. You don't need to have your fully formed goals yet. But if you've got any ideas at all, just jot those down.
Now, once you've finished the looking back to look forward activity, you'll see that the next section is there specifically to help you in detail with planning your career goals. So first of all, it starts off by asking you to look inwards, and think about some questions to help you ask yourself so that you can move forward and think of some great goals. So those questions are what's important to me when it comes to my career. And what do I want to do next to help my career. And if you hear me say this, and think I've got no idea Fay, please don't worry, I've got some prompts to help you on the next page. So you can just work your way through those. Once you've worked your way through all of that, you'll start getting some ideas for what may be good or helpful to have for some of your goals.
And I would also like to encourage you to seek some feedback from the people around you. So there's a feedback exercise for you a really simple one, where you ask for feedback just using two questions. But then there's also a feedback exercise, which is called the personal brand activity. So the personal brand activity is all about circling certain words that you think represent how people see you. Your personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. The idea is for you to think about how do you think people see you, and you circle all the words that are relevant, then for the next part of the activity, using a different colour pen, you circle all of the words that represent how you would like people to see you. This can be particularly helpful if you've taken a step up into a new role in the same organisation, and you feel that people need to shift their perspective and how they're seeing you. But it's helpful, full stop, regardless of your situation at work.
And once you've done that, you can then share blank copies of this with your colleagues and ask them to fill it in. It's a really positive activity, there are no negative words that you can circle when thinking of the words that best describe you. So when you share the blank sheet with your colleagues, you just ask them to circle the words that they think best describe you and then jot down some notes about why they've chosen those words. Again, as I said, it's very positive, they can't put any bad words down. So if you're a little bit fearful of feedback, this is a really nice gentle way of getting some. And it's always wonderful for me to see how people react to this, because often, they'll see them much closer to where they want to be than they'd realised, or they're just stunned to see that they're viewed by their colleagues in quite different ways. And they're using lots of qualities that are just wonderful. And they weren't aware of those activities that I've just shared with you all about looking inwards and thinking about yourself and your own development.
For the next activities. I encourage you to look outwards, using your HR planner to help you. There's a list of words that describe all the areas of influence that the HR function typically has got influence over things like benefits change management, corporate governance, culture, data and analytics. I'll stop there because there are lots of them. But they're just there for you to have a look at and to think, Oh, yes. Do I want to dive into one of these in real depth this year? Is there something that I think we could be doing much better as an organisation that's going to have a really big impact? It really is just that to help get you thinking. And then underneath that is something that I added into the planner last year that I've had some really wonderful feedback about. It's just a simple diagram that illustrates the employee lifecycle. If you're more of a visual learner or a visual thinker, you may really like this. So it's a little pathway with a little person on it and marked out on the pathway are the key stages that anyone joining your organisation is likely to go through.
They are attraction, recruitment, onboarding, development, life events, retention reward separation,although for next year, I might change that word to offboarding. I think that sounds a bit nicer, and then alumni. So again, the idea is that you look at this, and it just helps get your creative juices flowing thinking, right? How well are we doing all of this? What do people really feel when they hear of our organisation or join our organisation? Or have a life event happen? When they're working for us? What could we be doing to make this an even more positive and impactful place for them to be working, and then there's space on the next page for you to jot down any of your ideas, and also for brainstorming. So now that you've had a think about looking inwards, and looking outwards, bring the two things together to just brainstorm some ideas for your goals for the year ahead.
Once you've done that brainstorming, you'll see that the next section is all about finalising your career goals. And I've talked on the podcast before about the problem with smart goals, you may be very familiar with the idea of SMART goals where your goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and realistic, and time bound. Now, I agree all of those things are very important. But after delivering loads of training in my last role when I worked in HR, and then seeing that, no one necessarily seem to actually remember what their SMART goals were, they'd come to the end of the year and think, Oh, I better check what my goals were for the year, and they'd completely forgotten them. Or they maybe had done a bit of some of them, or they just got totally sidetracked. And I think the reason for that is because using just smart, doesn't have any emotion or real motivation tapped into that.
So instead, for these career goal planning pages, I've got some questions for you to consider to help really map out that goal. Get motivated about it, identify any roadblocks that might get in the way of you being able to carry out that goal. And then to be able to put plans in place to overcome those. That's another thing that I think is missing from smart. And you'll see that I've got space in the planner for you to fill in seven goals. Now, please don't think oh, my gosh, I have to fill in seven goals straightaway, I would really encourage you not to do that. Because if you have got lots and lots and lots of brilliant ideas, that's wonderful, but prioritise the ones that are going to have the biggest impact that are the most important to you and or the organisation you work in. And they're the ones to start off with. So that means you probably want to be starting the year with just between one and three goals.
And then because you have the planner, you can review them on a monthly basis and see how you're getting on. And if you feel you've made enough progress with them, you can then introduce some additional goals. So go back to those pages, then, if you're thinking no fail, I've got all these great ideas. That's absolutely fine. Still fill them all in, but just try and pace yourself with them. Next, you have got a key HR tasks and events to plan for checklists in the checklist are things like benefit schemes, promotion and review, check all the contracts and information is up to date, review preferred supplier lists, plan well being activities, remember gender pay gap reporting, HR budget setting and review. And it goes on and on. On these pages, there is the list of everything that you may have responsibility for or your team has responsibility for. Then next to that in the next column is the question what do I or the HR team needs to do in relation to these, so you can just jot that down.
And then the next column says what are the key dates and tasks related to this to add to the calendar section of this HR planner, because you'll find out in a moment that there's a big calendar section to help you. This means you can start plotting in to your monthly calendar section, all of these little tasks that need doing or start delegating them to other people in your team. You'll also see I've left some blank sections in the HR tasks checklist in case there are other things that need to be added there that are relevant for you that I haven't thought of. And if that's the case, please do let me know because then I'll add them into the HR planner for next year. Because if you've got other things you need to remember, it's very likely that lots of other people do too. So it would be lovely to make this as helpful and supportive for everybody. And then once you've finished that section, the next page is a new page for this year's version of the HR planner for the hardback version. This is a quarterly planning page.
And I've realised that this can be quite powerful because you may or may not know that I will be running a free HR planner workshop. So as well as having this podcast episode to listen to to help you get started and understand how to use your planner, there will be a free workshop that you can attend on zoom that I'll be running live, where we can work our way together through different aspects of their planning to help you get started with it. And when I ran the free workshop earlier on this year for the 2022 planner, I introduced a quarterly planning sheets, just to see if it was helpful. And it was really helpful. So with this quarterly planning, what I asked everyone to do is then look at their goals for the year, look at the tasks for the year, and then just jot down into the quarterly sections when they needed to be getting these things done to get them all done throughout the year.
And you've given yourself plenty of time to get everything done for each month, as well as having the monthly Overview section with each day having its own square. And in the square, you've got the awareness days and the inclusion days. Then after that you have got weekly planner pages. So again, these aren't in the PDF version, because there's no way it would just be enormous, you would never be able to staple it. But we can have it in the hardback version. You can use it as well as for planning in advance. I think you're probably going to use this more on a week by week basis just to keep track of all of your to do's all of your tasks and take them off as you go along. Then you'll see that after the weekly planner pages, you have got a sheet called end of month reflection. This is in both versions of the planner. And this is probably one of the things I've had the most positive feedback about. Because of course what happens is we get busy we're just cracking on with work. We don't take the time to actually stop and look and see how we're doing but I guess it's a bit similar to the looking back to it.
And the feedback was so interesting, because what lots of people said was they realised a huge amount of their work was expected to be done in the first quarter of the year, which is why they felt so stressed out at the beginning of the year. Of course, we have all got an element of control over these things. Even if we can't get things changed for this year coming, seeing that it's quite powerful as a visual to then take to your boss. So teach your colleagues or if you are heading up the whole function thinking, Do you know what I'm going to make some changes, we don't need to be doing all of this at the beginning of the year. Because ideally, what you want to do is spread your workload out throughout all of those quarters quite evenly, so that you're much more likely then to be able to achieve everything without getting really stressed. Once you've finished your quarterly planning page, you'll then see that you're at the main part of the HR planner, the monthly calendar section.
What's different with the hardback version to the free pdf version is just that you have more space, because the PDF version, I'm guessing that you've printed off, and you've stapled it and popped it on your desk, now you can only get a staple through a certain number of pages. In fact, when I designed it originally, I had for the free pdf version this year, I had made the monthly calendar spread across two pages, because I'd had feedback saying it would be nice to have bigger boxes for each day of the month to be able to write in. So I thought brilliant, we can do that and got it all sorted. So it was across two pages, or when I printed it off, you could not get a staple through it, it was just too big. So that's why if you've got the PDF version each month is on one page. But if you've got the hardback version, because they're wire bound, it means I can fit so many more pages in you're not relying on staples.
So I've been able to give you a bit more space. And what you'll see for each month is that there's every day of the week on there and printed onto those days of the week, or the awareness days, the inclusion days that might be really helpful for you to know about throughout the year. And these can link in really well with your goals. So for example, let's say that you want to have a big focus on wellbeing this year and launch a new well being initiative or strategy. Well, you can tie that in with some of the awareness days. So like National stress Awareness Day, for example, you could look at that and think, oh, okay, let's do some webinars, or let's introduce some information or run some workshops around that day. And then it's a great way of highlighting all of the other stuff that we're doing around well being. And of course, what you can do is start plotting in your goals and all of your tasks into the different days within the monthly sections of your planner, so that nothing is going to come as a shock to you.
For the activity I mentioned at the very beginning of the planner, but instead it's helping you think through everything that's been happening over the last month. And everything that you've achieved what you might have found challenging. It's a check in on your goals, are they still relevant? Or do you need to adjust them or create new ones? Because again, I'd like to really encourage you to just hold your goals lightly. We have got no way of predicting what is going to happen. It's great to have goals to be working towards. But it doesn't matter if they have to change world events, life events, organisational events can all come at us when we're not expecting them. Just look at what's happened over the last couple of years. Things like furlough Who on earth could have predicted that that was going to happen. So you know, when things happen, it doesn't matter, you can just adjust your goals.
The next activities to tell you about in your HR planet come at the very end. But although they are situated at the end of the planner, I'd really like to encourage you to remember they are there. And in fact, start filling them out right from day one. Because these are pages and exercises I've included to help you with your confidence. And with your resilience. There are two pages, they're called praise pages, what I would really love to encourage you to do is any positive feedback that you get while you're at work, jot it down, make a note of it on your praise pages, you get a lovely email from someone saying thank you for your help, print it off, cut it out, stick it on your praise pages, someone comes up to you and says What a difference you've made. Just make a note of that conversation on your praise pages. Someone if you're very lucky buys you a nice thank you gift at work. Make a note of that on your praise pages.
Because what happens is, when we're going through a tough time at work, and we're doubting ourselves, it can be easy to get trapped in that negative spiral of really depressing thoughts. Well, if you're having one of those moments, you're having one of those awful days, what I would love you to do is to be able to look at your praise pages, and it can give you such a boost to remind you that you're doing brilliantly your work is appreciated, you're doing so much better than you probably think you are. And just to help build your confidence back up again. If it's taken a knock, the next page is there to help you as well. It's called your feeling good books. And I talked about this in a different episode of the podcast, which was called to ideas to help you bounce back from a tough day at work. I can link to that in the show notes for you.
That podcast episode talked about how effective it can be to think in advance of strategies that help lift you up when you're having a really tough day and feeling really rubbish. For example, when I thought about this, I thought if I had a physical books, I could put in a photo of my dog Cookie to remind me to take her for a walk. Because actually getting up and out and in the fresh air always makes me feel better. I also thought I could put photos or phone numbers of some of my close friends who I knew I could call if I need a bit of a pick me up, I could put in a book that I really enjoy, I could put in a nice relaxing scented candle. So hopefully you get the idea of the sorts of things you might want to have in a feeling good box.
Although you haven't got a physical box in the planet, you have got a page that represents one on that page, you can either stick things in, if you want to stick in photos, or otherwise, you can just write in there things you can turn to to help you bounce back from a tough day at work. And then you know, if you're feeling low, if you're feeling stressed out, all you've got to do is read your praise pages to help build your confidence up again and look at your feeling good books and then put one of those strategies into action. So I would get up and I'd go and take cookie for a walk or I would call a friend or I would light that candle or I would read that book. Please do make the most of this one and I would love to hear how you get on with any of these activities. It's always so wonderful to hear from you. I so hope that you enjoy using your HR planner and that it sets you up for a fantastic 2023