Career Hub for managers

With Career Hub, managers are given the tools and transparency they need to help their team members focus on doing enriching work and achieving their growth goals. This article covers manager-specific logistics of Career Hub including how to access your team's Career Hubs, visibility and permissions, and holding meetings with your team.

In this article, you will learn...

• Recommended steps you (a manager) should take before Career Hub is enabled for your organization
• How to access your direct reports' Career Hubs
• Manager visibility/permissions
• Best practices for reviewing Career Hub results and holding meetings with your team
• Additional resources to set you up for success

Recommended steps before enabling Career Hub

Best-Self Kickoff

We suggest that managers complete Best-Self Kickoffs with their direct reports before enabling Career Hub. The Best-Self Kickoff is a precursor to Career Hub in many ways, and can help direct employees as they go through the process of filling out their Career Hub.

Input job descriptions and responsibilities

In the ‘Role clarity’ tab of Career Hub employees are asked to rate how energizing their job responsibilities are. Therefore, before launching Career Hub, it’s important that job responsibilities are added to Career Hub. Account administrators can bulk upload job descriptions and responsibilities company-wide, whereas managers can input them one-off.

To enter a job description or job responsibilities, open your employee’s Career Hub by following the steps in the next section of this article (“How can I access my direct report’s Career Hub?"). From there, follow the steps below to make changes to these sections.

Job description

1. Open the 'Role Clarity' tab.
2. Click Edit in the top right corner of the ‘Job title & description’ box.
3. Make desired changes, then click Save changes.

Job responsibilities

The purpose of this section is to list job responsibilities as laid out in an employee’s job description. Employees will rate each of these responsibilities based on how energizing they find them.

1. Click +Add responsibility in the top right corner of the ‘Job responsibilities’ box.
2. Add responsibilities that are part of the employee’s job description. Once you’re done, click Submit. Repeat until all responsibilities outlined in the employee’s job description are listed.

Projects & tasks [optional]

The intention of this section is to allow employees to list projects and tasks that they do on a regular basis that may not be part of their official job responsibilities. You can also add projects and tasks for employees if desired. As is the case with job responsibilities, employees will rate these items based on how energizing they find them.

1. Click +Add item in the top right corner of the ‘Projects & tasks’ box.
2. Add responsibilities that are part of the employee’s job description. Once you’re done, click Submit.

How can I access my direct report’s Career Hub?

1. Click on 'Career Hub' in the left hand navigation bar.

2. Under "Team", click the name of the employee whose Career Hub you'd like to view.

3. Once you’ve opened a person’s Career Hub, you can navigate through each tab using the top navigation.

What visibility/permissions do I have as a manager?

Visibility

The only people who can see a person's Career Hub are the person themselves and their manager. As a manager, you will see a limited version of both the ‘Role Clarity’ tab and ‘Career Vision’ tab until your direct report shares results with you. They can still edit their responses post-share, and you will be informed that there’s been an update. Updates your direct report makes to the 'Strengths' tab will be visible to you immediately.

What permissions do I have as manager?

'Role clarity' tab

• Add/edit the job description
• Add/edit the lists of responsibilities, projects, and tasks (except responsibilities added by account admin)
• Leave comments

'Strengths' tab

• Leave comments

'Career vision' tab

• View-only

Can I edit my direct reports’ responses?

No- you can comment on items, but you can’t edit any information that was entered by your direct report.

Best practices for reviewing results and holding meetings

Once your direct report fills out their Career Hub, it's time to hold 1-on-1 meetings with them to discuss findings and make a plan moving forward. This section walks through how to prepare for Career Hub-based conversations with your team, and what topics to discuss during these meetings.

Role clarity

Effective performance management starts with role clarity and creates a foundation of psychological safety, the invisible force behind all high performing teams.

A role clarity conversation is a critical initial meeting between a manager and each team member that occurs at the beginning of the relationship. The goal is to create as much clarity and shared agreement as possible about what the job entails, including all responsibilities, objectives, projects, and tasks.

At the end of the role clarity session, you want your team members to walk away saying, “I’m clear about my role and responsibilities and what the organization expects of me.”

Some things to keep in mind:

• An effective role clarity conversation starts with a clearly defined job description, yet most job descriptions don’t fully capture what the actual job entails. Managers, work with your HR Admin to upload employee job descriptions to the Role Clarity section of Career Growth. If your company doesn't have formal job descriptions, update the responsibilities and add any missing items. Your team members will be prompted to add any additional responsibilities, Objectives, projects, and tasks as well.
• Set up a time to meet to review your team member’s job description, including all responsibilities, Objectives, projects, and tasks. We recommend scheduling 1 hour for this session. During the meeting, open the Role Clarity tab in Career Growth. Review the job description and update the current job responsibilities together to ensure the role is clear, complete, and up to date.
• At the end of the role clarity conversation, ask your team member to assess their work including all responsibilities, Objectives, projects, and tasks using the Energizing Work Scale (see in app) which is designed to measure how energized people feel at work. Schedule a follow up meeting to review their results. We recommend scheduling 1 hour for this session.

Energizing work

Career growth isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Managers can help their team members discover what they want in a career and customize the role by finding ways to maximize energizing work that is intrinsically motivating, enjoyable, and aligned to a person's deepest strengths, values, and interests.

During your next 1-on-1, open the Role Clarity tab in Career Growth and review their Energizing Work results. Work together to maximize the amount of energizing work and reduce the amount of de-energizing work as much as possible.

Maximize Energizing Work: Help team members do more of what they love!

1. Discuss responsibilities that energize them most.
2. Brainstorm ideas on how they might do more of what energizes them.
3. Create an action plan on how they could be doing work that energizes them 60-70% of the time. For example, a designer who loves presenting could be given more public speaking opportunities.

Minimize De-energizing Work: Roles will most likely include some amount of de-energizing work, even in ideal cases. Managers can help team members minimize the amount of de-energizing work in a couple of ways:

1. Automate the work. For example, an HR leader can create a new method of filing or implement a new software system to make their job less repetitive.
2. Offload the work. For example, an HR generalist who is de-energized by legal work could offload their work to another team member who is more energized by it.
3. Re-energize the work by helping employees leverage their top strengths. Team members can take strengths assessments (e.g., VIA Character Strengths, Gallup’s CliftonStrengths) to identify their top strengths and identify ways to leverage their strengths more in the role.
   For example, a sales rep who is de-energized by reciting a formal script can leverage their humor strength during their calls.
   For example, an HR leader whose top strength is love of learning can help design people's programs out of the latest science.
   For example, a customer success rep who excels in creativity can help develop and design training materials.

Managers can also encourage employees to batch de-energizing work during a specific time of the week. By clarifying the role and helping team members maximize energizing work, managers provide the support team members need to grow in their careers.

Strengths, values, and passions discovery

Your team members will identify their top five strengths themes by taking strengths assessments and searching for patterns across all their results.

Open the 'Strengths' tab to review their results and discuss their top five strengths themes together. Share any strengths-based feedback you have and any additional patterns or themes you see. Make updates in 15Five if needed.

Your team members will also discover their top values and passions. Review your team members' top values and passions together as well. Your team members will place a heart next to the strengths, values, and passions they want to leverage more in their role.

Career vision

Your team members will use Career Vision to find and define what they want in a career. They’ll envision the specifics of their ideal day, including what they want to do more of and what they want to do less of in order to draft an aspirational job title and description.

Once submitted, review their Career Vision and aspirational job description draft together.

Support your team member in their exploration by discussing ways they can leverage their strengths, values, and passions more in their role using the prompts below:

1. What top strengths are you currently leveraging the most in your role?
2. What strengths do you want to leverage more in your role?
3. What top values align with your role?
4. What values do you want to leverage more in your role?
5. What top passions are you currently leveraging the most in your role?
6. What passions do you want to leverage more in your role?

Use the examples below for inspiration:

• [Strength] A sales rep can leverage their humor strength during calls rather than reciting a formal script. A customer success rep who excels in creativity can help develop and design training materials.
• [Values] An engineer who values teamwork and community can design their role around more group work. A marketing manager who values freedom and autonomy can be given more flexibility to work from home.
• [Passions] An executive assistant who is passionate about public speaking can be given more opportunities to present at company-wide meetings and events. A sales rep who has a passion for teaching can be given opportunities to train or coach others.

Once complete, add any adjusted responsibilities to their aspirational role description.

Next you’ll be guided to help your team members turn their dream career into reality by creating a plan with milestones, exploring career opportunities with your company, and taking action.

Hold continued career-based meetings with your team

Continued meetings can be helpful to ensure that career growth remains a continuous topic of conversation. The cadence of when these meeting should occur depends on the eagerness of the employee— but we’d recommend checking back in on the conversation of your career vision at least once a month. Try bulk adding a Career Hub-specific talking point to your 1-on-1s with your direct reports!

Check out these additional resources ⬇️

• Help Center article 💡: Career Hub for employees
• Help Center article 💡: Hold a Best-Self Kickoff meeting
• Blog post 📝: 15Five’s Career Hub Empowers Employees to Design a Strengths-Based Development Path