Would you like to read more about options for more advanced templates:

The basis of creating a conversation cycle is working with the Learned Conversations module. This module works entirely based on conversation templates. These templates are the questionnaires that the employees and coaches have to fill in. In these questionnaires, you can add different types of questions that you can link to a Learned KPI that you want to measure according to your own wishes. In this article, we will show you how to build a basic questionnaire with custom questions and get started with different Learned KPIs.

If you go to Development (in the left menu) - Conversation, you see a tab Templates. Here you find the templates that are created over time by admins. On this page you also have the option to create a new template by clicking on the Create template-button.

On the template page you will find the Learned selected templates. If you don't want to use these templates, you can easily delete them from your overview. Click on the three dots on the right of the template and select 'Delete'. By only keeping the templates you want to use in your overview, you can easily find the ones that are most important for your organisation.

Besides the option to create your own templates or delete templates from the list, Learned also added a number of standard templates you can use. If you want to use one of these templates, you can press 'Import template(s)' and select the template you want to use. Once you've added a Learned template you can edit it by opening the template.

All conversation templates consist of a name, description and at least 1 section with underlying questions. When opening the template builder you start with an appropriate name and description. Note: The information you enter here will also be included in the email that is sent to the participants of the conversation round.

In the conversation template you can add 1 or more sections with the toolbox. The idea of a section is that you add questions to discuss a certain theme and, for example, measure one of the Learned KPIs. More on KPI's later. You give a section a suitable name and then you can expand the section by means of the button 'Advanced options' to add certain settings. If you work with multiple sections, you can also open/close the different sections for a better overview.

You can determine per section who has to answer the corresponding questions of the section.

You can make configurations per section according to your own wishes and thus prepare a 360° review. Deactivating e.g. peer evaluation is easily done by clicking on peer evaluation. You will then see the tick disappear and the button turn light grey.

Note: Depending on the settings, the participant will only receive the questions intended for him/her to complete. The length of the form can therefore differ per person.

For each section you determine the KPI that you want to measure under the button 'Reporting (KPI). You can choose between Performance, Potential and Skill Coverage or choose one of the custom KPIs you created. In a traditional assessment, performance and potential KPIs are often measured together. Nowadays we see more and more modern development conversations that also address the behaviour of the employee. We measure this behaviour in Learned by means of the skills/competencies, and therefore the KPI Skill Coverage.

Note: Various dashboards and reports (such as the 9-grid) are created by means of the Learned KPIs. So if you do not work with these KPIs in your conversation template, you cannot (properly) use these reports. For example, to be able to work with the 9-grid, you must activate at least 2 Learned KPIs in the same template.

Note: The dashboards and reports related to the KPIs are based on coach input. So if you want to use these reports, make sure that in the Coach evaluation section, evaluation is enabled.

Depending on the KPI, you can also set a rating scale. If you want to measure the KPI Performance or Potential, you can adjust the rating scale (number of points + names of the labels) yourself in the conversation template at section level.

Note: The rating scale set in the section applies to all questions in that section. Are you measuring a KPI and want to adjust the rating scale? You do this from the section settings.

If you want to measure the KPI Skill Coverage, you depend on the number of levels that you have set in the skill set. You, therefore, do not adjust this rating score in the conversation template.

At the bottom of the section you can add a theme to your liking. These themes are intended to categorise certain topics of conversation. Think, for example, of 'learning goals', 'career' or 'ambitions'.

These themes are then made visually visible in the employee's conversation report. This way all parties involved know easily which topic is discussed in which section of the conversation form.

In order for your employees to actually fill out the conversation form, you must add questions to the section. Depending on the chosen KPI, you have different options for this. In this article, we will only cover the use of custom questions. See our other articles for the more advanced options.

With this option, you can generally create any traditional conversation form. By adding a custom question you can type whatever you want and even add a description for additional information. For each question, you can determine whether you want to add a rating scale, or whether the employee can just fill out a text field. Of course, whenever you add a rating scale you are also in the lead of the number of rating levels and the names of the rating labels.

Note: Whenever the custom question is added to a section in which you measure the KPIs 'Performance' or 'Potential' you are tied to the rating scale you have set within the section.

In the 'Settings' of the template you can activate the slider button for 'calibration'. Calibration of evaluations and assessments means that you give the coaches the option of sharing their evaluations with other coaches and admins without it being visible to the employee. This gives you the possibility to compare evaluations of all employees company-wide to assess whether everyone has received a 'fair' evaluation. The scores can still be easily adjusted before they are finally shared with the employee.

Do you want the employee and coach(es) to digitally sign the completed conversation form? Enable this option at the bottom of the conversation template.

When enabling the digi sign, the following options will appear:

If you choose not to have the conversation signed by employee and coach, they are still given the task of completing the conversation. Once the coach completes the conversation, the conversation will be locked and no more changes can be made.

After you have finished drawing up the conversation template, you can share it with the employees using the Conversations module. They then start filling in the forms. The results of all questions and of measuring the KPIs can be found in the following places in Learned:

Example dashboard of a conversation dashboard for the Admin: