New frequency, new obligations. But the transformation that counts does not appear in the Labor Code. Three axes to finally move from the check box to the real lever of development.
On October 1, 2026, theprofessional interview changes name and framework. It becomes a professional career interview. New frequency, new obligations, new content. But the most important reform is not in the Labor Code. She is in the posture of the manager sitting opposite the employee. Because this meeting does not talk about results, objectives or performance for the current year. It talks about skills, potential and aspirations. And this is precisely where many managers find themselves destabilized — not out of bad will, but because no one taught them how to play this role. Revealing the potential of an employee first requires accepting that this potential could take them elsewhere.
When the employee wants to move to another department — and what the manager does about it
There is a specific moment in the career interview that reveals everything. It is the one where the employee, after a few discussions, dares to formulate an aspiration that the manager had not anticipated. A desire to move to another service. A curiosity for another profession. A wish of mobility internal that the manager had not included in his plan.
The following reaction says everything about the HR maturity of the organization.
Too often, it looks like this: a silence, a reformulation that leads back to the current post, a closed question to close the subject. “You’re good on your team, aren’t you?” The employee receives the message. He will not reformulate it the following year. He will formulate it elsewhere — in another company, or in that progressive silence that we call disengagement.
The 2026 version career interview is not designed to retain employees in their position. It is designed to keep them in motion – actors in their own trajectory, including when this trajectory goes beyond the immediate scope of the manager. This is a profound paradigm shift. And it requires a rare quality from the manager: the ability to hear what he had not anticipated, without shutting it down.
Digging into the why: the question that turns discomfort into opportunity
Faced with an unexpected aspiration, the manager’s natural reflex is to try to understand what is wrong. It’s a good impulse but it is often expressed with the wrong tools. The closed question comes first: “Is there a problem in the team?” or “Are you no longer motivated?” These formulations call for a yes or a no. They close the conversation at the exact moment it should open.
The posture of manager coach career starts here. It starts with the open question, then the funnel. “What draws you in this direction?” lets the employee construct their response. “What will you find there that you don’t have today?” digs a deeper layer. “If this opportunity presented itself tomorrow, what would you still feel is missing to feel ready?” leads the employee to think about their own skills to develop.
It’s not therapy. It’s career management. And behind each aspiration expressed, even if uncomfortable for the manager, there is valuable information: what the employee seeks to experience professionally, what he thinks he can give, what he needs to develop. This information is exactly what the career interview is supposed to bring up. You still have to ask the right questions to reach them — and be sincerely open to hearing them.
The planned external devices — skills assessmentprofessional development advice, VAE — are precisely there to support this reflection with a third person. The manager does not have to carry everything. He has to open the door.
The career coach manager: serving potential, not planning
The most common confusion in career interviews is this: the manager believes that his role is to keep his employee. His role is to make it grow. These two objectives are not always compatible and this is precisely why this interview is difficult to conduct well.
A manager who fully plays his role as a career coach asks questions that he cannot control. He is sincerely interested in the aspirations of his colleague even when they point towards another department, another function, another horizon. He works with the skills framework not to evaluate but to identify what is missing and what can be built. It directs you to the right devices. It makes the employee the main actor in their trajectory.
This is not a natural posture for a manager whose performance is measured by retaining his talents and achieving his team objectives. It’s a posture that can be learned and that HR is best placed to transmit, accompany and support.
The HR-manager pair finds here one of its most concrete expressions: HR prepares the manager to play this role, provides them with the tools and remains available to process together what the interview brings up.
Because the professional career interview does not end when the report is signed. It starts there.
What the 2026 reform makes possible — if we really grasp it
The law of October 24, 2025 created the framework. She changed the frequency – now upon hiring then every four years, with a summary report every eight years. It introduced a specific interview for employees close to retirement. It strengthened traceability obligations. All this is necessary. None of this will be enough if the manager walks into the room with the intention of checking a box and walking out in thirty minutes.
The real reform, the one that changes something in the lives of employees, is managerial. It is played out in the quality of the question asked, in the ability to hear an unexpected aspiration without closing it, in the sincere desire to put the employee’s potential at the center — even when it is uncomfortable.
Managers, HRD: the deadline of October 1, 2026 is an opportunity. Not just compliance. Real transformation of a meeting that too many employees experience as a formality and which could become the moment when they finally feel seen, heard, and supported in what they really want to build.
This is exactly where the difference between a company that manages its human resources and a company that develops its human capital comes into play.
