5 Key Questions to Ask Your Employees Before the Start of 2023

Disclaimer: This article should not be considered to be legal advice, and altHR is not liable for any actions taken based on this article.

It’s been a challenging year for many, and as many employees go off for their end-of-year leave and time off, it’s also important to begin planning for the upcoming year 2023. We’ve already covered end-of-year reviews to great extent in another article, but today, we’re going to talk about a couple of key questions that you should pose to your employees at the end of 2022. 

These thought-provoking questions will play a big part in ensuring that you’re best equipped to empower your employees to succeed in 2023, consequently helping you to reach your business goals throughout the year. Sometimes referred to as a development and goals plan, this should be seen as a different type of conversation than performance appraisals. 

Instead, this should help you to understand what your employees want and need from you in 2023 to truly succeed. 

1. What are your personal aims for 2023?

Employees aren’t just employees — they’re individuals with aspirations, goals, and targets of their own. This means that their plans for the upcoming year don’t just consist of KPIs and deliverables at work. For example, they may have financial goals they’re looking to achieve through the year, or they might even be planning to start/expand families at home. 

These aims and goals impact their career, too. As such, it’s crucial to take into account your employees’ personal aims for 2023 when charting their professional development through the year — while continuing to build a conducive work environment for them to hit these targets.

2. What can I do to help? 

Remember, the employer-employee relationship should be seen as a mutualistic arrangement, where both parties can help one another to achieve respective objectives. Speak to your team to find out if there is anything you (as employers/HR practitioners) can do to empower them further — which will benefit the business in turn. 

Whether it’s something as simple as an adjustment to remuneration packages, or a different arrangement for working hours, it’s a good idea to speak to your employees by the end of 2022 on what you can do to help in 2023. 

3. What is your biggest takeaway from 2022?

Likewise, speak to your employees about their biggest learnings and takeaways from the current year. This will help them benefit from any potential problems or challenges, or in more positive cases, help them to recognise progress and achievements from the year. 

Your aim here, of course, will be to help avoid repeats of any negative issues, while replicating — and even improving — any positive moments from the previous year in 2023 (and beyond). 

4. What areas do you want to improve in the most?

Improvement is always one of the key things you should enable, and understanding the professional development aims of your employees is paramount. As such, ask employees what they would like to improve on professionally, and consider opportunities that you can offer in order to empower that push. 

For example, consider offering cross-departmental exposure, or chances for individuals to try new things outside their usual job scopes. This, of course, depends on the aptitude and suitability of each individual, but remains a useful method to improving employee engagement and empowerment in 2023. 

5. What can the company do to improve in 2023

Finally, check in with your employees to see if they have any suggestions on how the organisation can improve in 2023. This can include workplace culture improvements, suggestion on how to better achieve business objectives, or even something as simple as improvements to technology and platforms being used in the day to day of the business. 

One of the biggest improvements a company can make, in any case, is to digitalise the end-to-end of their HR operations with a powerful super app: altHR.