Okay so the first one is around curiosity and for me that is just the questioning. It is wanting to have the insight about what’s really happening to people around you, what they really feel about their work environment and also what is happening further in their day to day job. Laurence said something absolutely amazing around the appraisal process being bullshit and I absolutely, completely agree. The way we work appraisals is all about the process, it’s all about the policy, it’s all about validating and giving evidence for the way people perform in case things go wrong, in case you need it for a performance tribunal, and having worked in HR for the past 16 years I can attest to that always generally being the case to why we do that.

But what we need to do in performance management is move away from speaking to people once a month or every six months or once a year and telling them at that point how well they’ve performed. Why not do it on time in the time when it happens and give them that feedback, ask them questions there and then about what’s happening for them in terms of their performance – rather than waiting for it? What would happen to me in my career?

I cannot tell you how many people would pass through my office, they come to me with this really urgent HR issue and they’d say “Well he’s done this and that, he’s upset this customer.” I’d say let’s talk through the process, what you’re going to do about it – and they’d say “it’s okay because I’ve got his one-to-one coming up in a month’s time.” So it was urgent enough for you to come marching into my office but you just want to rely on the process to be able to have that conversation!

So curiosity for me is about using this appraisal process that we have to dig deeper and to ask questions and also give people an opportunity to share and review what’s really going on for them. So let’s move away from the paperwork and get to really understanding the real people that we’re working with.