Simple techniques can often have a big impact on our careers. If you want to progress in your HR career, a monthly review is a great way to stay on track with your goals. In this episode of HR Coffee Time, career coach Fay Wallis talks you through an 'end-of-month reflection' activity available for free in the pdf version of her HR Planner. Listen to learn why it works and what the key questions are to ask yourself at the end of each month.

Key Points From This Episode

[00:23] Fay takes a moment to say thank you for helping HR Coffee Time reach number 5 in the Apple Podcast UK Careers Chart

[01:35] Fay explains how to download your free pdf condensed version of the HR Planner for 2023

[03:22] The first question in your planner's ‘end of month reflection’ section is: What progress did you make towards your career goals this month?

[06:25] The second question – What went well this month?

[08:03] The third question – What new things did you learn?

• How body doubling/co-working can keep you on track with your goals

[11:03] Fay refers to episode 29: Making a success of your promotion to a leadership role, with Jacqui Jagger

[12:55] The fourth question - Who did you help at work this month?

[13:25] The fifth question - What have you done for your own well-being this month?

• Fay refers to episode 66: Reflecting on 2022 – looking back to look forward

[14:23] Question six - What did you find challenging this month?

[15:00] The seventh & eighth questions - How can you overcome the challenge you've mentioned before? / Are your goals still relevant? Or do you need to adjust them or create new ones?

[16:00] The ninth question - What would you like to make a priority for next month?

• Fay shares her priority to design and test an HR strategy day and how you could help

Useful Links

• Connect with Fay on LinkedIn
• The Bright Sky Career Coaching website
• Video: how to rate & review HR Coffee Time on Apple Podcasts
• Download the free pdf condensed version of the HR Planner for 2023

Rate and Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of HR Coffee Time helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Fay know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.uk.

Enjoyed This Episode? Don't Miss the Next One!

Be notified each time a new episode of HR Coffee Time is released and get access

to other free career tips, tools and resources by signing up to receive the free weekly HR Coffee Time email

Welcome to this episode of HR Coffee Time. It's wonderful to have you here. I'm your host, Fay Wallis, a career coach and the founder of Bright Sky Career Coaching, where our mission is to help HR and people professionals have successful and fulfilling careers without working themselves into the ground.

Before I dive into today's episode, I just wanted to say a huge 'thank you' to Jason and to Jasmine because they both shared posts on LinkedIn about HR Coffee Time over the past week. And it was such a lovely surprise to see the posts. And I know that things like that make a huge difference in helping spread the word about the podcast. So thank you both ever so much.

In fact, this is a good time to thank everyone who's listening right now. And who has supported the show by telling a friend about it or rating and reviewing it, because HR Coffee Time hit the number five spots in the Apple Podcasts UK Careers Chart the other week, and I was just absolutely blown away by that fact, I can't quite believe it. I also need to say thank you. Gosh, this is just a whole episode of thank yous at the moment to Andy Charlwood. Because he has inspired this episode of the podcast. I had a chat with him today and asked him what I could be doing to help people get the most out of their HR planners. So he suggested I record some episodes showing how to complete the different sections in the planner, and how to make the most out of them.

If you're new to the show, and you're wondering what the HR planner is, there are two versions of it, a hardback version which has sold out and a more condensed PDF version, which is completely free to download. If you don't already have a copy, you can find the link to download it in the show notes or by going to the HR planner page of my website, which is brightskycareercoaching.co.uk. The HR Planner is made up of different sections to help you have a brilliant year with your HR career.

And today, I'm going to be talking you through the monthly reflections section. Because I'm recording this at the end of January 2023, which means we're one month into a new year. And it also means it's the perfect opportunity to use your monthly reflections section, you've got one for every single month of the year in your planner. In fact, this section is one of the activities I get the most positive feedback about from the planner, it seems to be the simple secret to making progress in your HR career. And if you're listening to this thinking, I haven't even opened my HR planner yet, or I haven't even printed it off.

Don't worry. I've had some people tell me they don't want to start it until they can fill it in perfectly. I promise you, you don't need to be perfect. Let's crack on with the episode. So I can talk you through how to do a monthly review by using the monthly reflections section. And why it's going to make such a difference to your HR career this year, you'll find your end of month reflection section at the end of every month of your HR planner, which won't be a huge shock. And you'll see that it's just made up out of nine questions.

The very first question is 'What progress did you make towards your career goals this month?' Now, it's probably obvious why I've put that in as the first question because of course, if we're going to achieve our career goals, if we're going to get the most out of our careers for the year, we need to properly thought about what it is that we actually want to be spending our time on this year what those goals are. So that means that near the beginning of the planner, there is a section called finalising your career goals. And in there, there's just a series of questions to answer, which will help you map out exactly what your goals are. So you might turn to this question in your end of month reflection section and think, Oh no, I haven't even actually written down my goals. You may have no idea what your goals are.

Or you may have quite a good idea or a bit of an idea, but they're just in your head at the moment. If they're just in your head at the moment, I would really strongly encourage you to write them down. It doesn't matter. When you're listening to this episode. It doesn't matter where we are throughout the year. Although it's a lovely idea to plan out your goals at the very beginning of the year. You can do this activity whenever works for you. And for full transparency here. I hadn't written down all of my career goals and I've created the planner. In fact, I think one of the reasons I created the planner and have put all of these things in it is because I find it really difficult to be organised and stay on top of things. organisation is not a skill that comes to me really naturally it's something I have to work on and I'm constantly working on and probably always will be.

So I had filled in some of my goals, but it was actually seeing that question, 'What progress did you make towards your career goals' that made me think, oh my goodness, I better fill in the rest. If you're like me, and you turn to your end of month reflection page and think, Oh, my goodness, I haven't filled in all my goals, then why don't you take the opportunity now to just sit down and plan them. And you'll see that I've got a whole load of exercises at the beginning of the planner, to help you figure out what your goals are, if you literally have no idea what it is that you want to work on. So when answering the question, What progress did you make towards your career goals this month, I was able to see that I have actually made progress with three of my goals. So although I initially panicked thinking, Oh, no, I haven't even written them all down, I had written several of them down. And interestingly enough, it's the ones that I had written down that I've made the progress with.

So this is one of the reasons I think that the end of month reflection activity is so helpful, because it helps you focus on your goals, it means if you've written your goals down, you're keeping them in mind, and you're being reminded about them on a monthly basis. It's just way too easy to either not write down your goals at all, or write them down and completely forget about them. So I thought this was interesting that I've clearly held both goals in mind because I had written them down.

The next question to answer is what went well this month. And I was surprised by how much I tried to fit in here, if you could see my page, I've had to really kind of squish loads of writing in. And I think it's a reason that, again, people like this activity, it's something that's really helpful, because if we just focused on looking forward all the time, we can forget to stop and acknowledge the progress that we're making along the way, and the good things that are happening as well, especially if you're having a tough time at work, it would be nice to see, even if things are tough, something will have gone well. So for me, what went well, this month, well, I managed to make progress with the goals I mentioned earlier, I'm not going to go into detail about it, or this episode will go on for absolutely ages.

But one thing I will mention to you is that I've been invited to talk at a CIPD South London branch event in March. I'm really looking forward to doing that. If you live in South London, it's going to be taking place in Croydon, and I would love to see you there. I'll share all the details on LinkedIn when they've been confirmed. And I'll also share them to everyone who subscribes to my emails, or if you'd like to know about it, then just feel free to get in touch. But anyway, enough about this CIPD event. What is the next question on the list? Oh, yes. In fact, if you can hear rustling noises in the background, it's because I'm flipping through the planner while I'm recording the episode. So sorry, if the background is a bit noisier to normal. Hopefully, I'm going to stay on the one page now before I was looking back at the goals, which I think was making the rustling noises.

So number three is what new things did you learn this month. And lots of research shows that we're often happy when we're learning. So that's why I've included this. Again, it's a nice way of acknowledging the progress that you're making to help you realise your learning, even in times when you might not have been aware that that's what you're doing. And it's also to just keep your professional development in mind. So if over the month, you feel like you're not really writing down very much here, it's a nice prompt for you to go ahead and think about what you could be doing to expand your knowledge. But of course, you'll be able to put down that you're listening to this podcast, that's one of the things that is definitely going to be contributing to your learning at the moment. And insight that I had by answering this question, what new thing did you learn this month? Or what new things did you learn this month, is that over this month, it really really has confirmed to me the power of co working or double bodying.

I got that wrong, or body doubling, which I have touched on before it's come up a few times on the podcast. Now, if you haven't heard me talk about it before, it's when you agree with someone else, that you're going to sit alongside them if you're working in the same building, or you can sit alongside them on Zoom or teams or whatever video conferencing software you use. And you both agree to work on a certain task at the same time. It sounds so simple, but it's weirdly powerful. It's something I've been doing for quite a long time. And I know it really helps me to work my way through bigger projects or bigger goals or tasks that feel a little bit daunting or that I know I have to make time for and it's just too easy to let other things fall into my calendar or take up my time. So I have done it for quite a long time. But recently I've really stepped it up again. So the goals that I talked about making progress on that is because I've asked people to co work or body double with me.

So for example, I have started posting on LinkedIn again, after being a bit haphazard with it. I was finding it so hard to make the time to do that. But one of the guests on the show Julie, who you may remember, Julie white, she also wants to be posted on social media. So we've agreed we're going to meet for one hour every Monday. And in that time, over the last few weeks, I've managed to get a post out. So it sounds like a tiny thing. Obviously, in your role, you probably don't need to worry about posting on social media, but there'll be something else that you really would like to be doing every week. So whether it's chipping away at a big HR initiative you want to launch perhaps it's a well being programme, perhaps you're rolling out a new HR software system, perhaps you want to get on top of some new management, development training, whatever it is, you probably have a big task that you need to make sure you're doing regularly or working away on regularly.

And this is a way of putting something in place that can be really helpful. I've also realised I need to carve out some body dabbling slash co working time for working on this podcast. Because I'm recording this episode right now, at seven o'clock on the evening of Thursday, the 26th of January, it will be going live at 6am On Friday, the 27th of January. So this is not ideal. I know that I need to get a bit more organised with it. So actually, I've arranged to start doing body doubling with one of my friends, Jacqui Jagger, who has also appeared on the podcast, she came on the show to talk about succeeding when you're promoted into a new leadership role as an HR leader.

And she has recently released a podcast so you might want to go and check that out. It's called the career and leadership Real Talk podcast. It's, it's absolutely great. So give it a listen, if you love podcasts, and we're looking for another one to try. So because I know Jacquie started a podcast, I thought, Oh, excellent. Someone I can ask to do some body dabbling with. Now she isn't available. And I'm not available, we couldn't find a slot that matched up in our calendars to be able to commit to doing this every single week, we just couldn't find one for ages. But what I have learned over all these years of trying to crack time management is that it's okay to plan stuff in the future. So she and I are going to start doing that in a few weeks time.

I think it will have been sort of two months from when we first talked about it. But I know that it's now in my calendar, I will not be moving it. And it means that I will hurray be more organised with this podcast. So hopefully, I won't be recording future episodes quite so at the last minute for you.

Question number four is Who did you help at work this month? Now in your role, you're probably helping absolutely loads of people. So if you've got too many people to write down in this section, just maybe pull out a few highlights. And again, there's research that shows that we're often at our happiest and most fulfilled when we know that we're helping others. So I'm hoping that this activity is a lovely positive one for you. That's going to get you fired up about your work and helping you feel fulfilled.

Question five is what have you done for your own well-being this month? This is so important. And I know from when I talked about the end of year reflections, which I recorded a few episodes back that I mentioned, I know that I've been much better about planning and things for my own wellbeing since I created the HR planner, and have been working my way through these questions. So I really hope that by you, filling in these questions yourself is going to help you to prioritise your well being as well because I know how hard you're probably working, and that you put your heart and soul into your work and that you're looking after everyone else within the organisation. But by doing that, it can be easy to forget about ourselves. So you go ahead and fill that in. And if you realise it's blank, you've got nothing to put in there, then have a think about how you can be filling that in differently at the end of next month.

Question number six is what did you find challenging this month, because of course, work and life isn't all rainbows and easy peasy and easygoing. It's important as well as acknowledging the good stuff that we take time to think about the things that's been more challenging. And hopefully through that, that's going to help you with building your resilience and also building your confidence because you'll probably realise that you're coming up with strategies or you have already come up with strategies to overcome those challenges. And of course, it's the times when we're challenged that we're often learning and grow During the most.

In fact, question seven says, 'How can you overcome the challenge you've mentioned before.' So if you've already overcomed it, overcome it, if you've already overcome it, just jot that down the fact that you've realised you have overcome it. And if you've got any ideas that could help you to overcome it, then you can drop those down to question number eight is, 'Are your goals still relevant? Or do you need to adjust them or create new ones', I put this one in here, because sometimes I know, we can beat ourselves up a bit, if we're not achieving a goal, or if we change our minds about something. And you know what, it is absolutely fine to change your mind. There is no golden rule book about goal setting that we all have to follow. It's really important that with any tool, we just adapt it to suit ourselves, and help us to get the career fulfilment and the career progression and the career development that we're looking for.

So if you've set yourself a goal, and maybe it's too challenging, or you've moved on, or it's not relevant, or actually you're not enjoying it, or whatever, the reason is that it's not relevant anymore, then that's absolutely fine. You can adjust it for me when I filled it in this time, I've been able to write down yes, my goals are still relevant. I'm, I'm still happy personally to be cracking on with the goals that I've set.

But anyway, that is enough of me talking about my goal. I hope that that question is going to be helpful for you. Of course once you've finished your end of month reflection activity, you can then go on to plan out some of the steps you need to achieve it and pop any key tasks into the monthly calendar section of your planner. Good luck. Let me know how you get on with your end of month reflection activity. I Thomas this is going to make a difference. It's such a simple thing to do. You just need to set aside a little bit of time. I think it took me about 15 minutes when I sat down to do this today, but it's really helped me feel happy with the progress I've made so far. excited for what's coming up and reassured that I am staying on track with my goals. So I hope it does the same for you. Please do let me know how you get on