Lack of career development continues to be a major cause of employee dissatisfaction and turnover.
My survey of 297 Australian HR specialists conducted earlier this year in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane found that 205 (69 per cent) said that lack of career opportunities was one of the top three reasons they left their last job. In the same survey, 152 (51 percent) reported that lack of career opportunities in their last job directly led to a decrease in job commitment and engagement.
Aside from the irony that HR specialists are usually responsible for career-development strategy in their organizations, disengagement and turnover are expensive and often avoidable.
Five ways organizations mismanage career development. There are several reasons why organizations mismanage career development. The common mistakes could be called the five “Ps” of poor career-development management. They are:
Protean careers
Today employees are not just changing jobs but entire careers. It is common for workers to have two or three career changes during their working life. Many employees study for distance learning degrees or diplomas preparing for new careers without their employers being aware. Few organizations are able to cater to someone who wants to move from IT to marketing or from HR to logistics. Employees see a dead-end and move companies when they want to start a new career.
Psychological contract
The unwritten contract employees have with employers has changed significantly in the past three decades. Employees today expect a lot more than just a salary. They expect things like promotion, pay increases and professional development to happen more quickly and frequently than did previous generations. Many employers seem to have an out-dated view of the psychological contract whereby they expect high levels of loyalty, commitment, effort and results without a commensurate value proposition for their employees.
Planning
Research suggests that many organizations do not plan or prioritize employee career development. They do not align career development with other strategic HR plans or document or communicate organizational approaches to employee career development. There is a lot of rhetoric but little concerted action. Career planning and advancement are largely left to the individual. Written career plans for individuals and career-development policies or strategy are rare. Most career planning is limited to setting a few short-terms goals after the annual performance review.
Promotion
Promotion can be an excellent part of a career-development strategy when used to signify the successful achievement of an employee’s career-development plan. Too often promotion is short-sighted and rushed, filling vacancies based on the organization’s need rather than employees’ plans for themselves. Often the wrong person is promoted, cajoled into a position he or she has little enthusiasm for or little preparation for or the process lacks strategic intent or equity. Promotion in practice is often an exercise in expediency handled poorly.
Programs
The survey mentioned in the opening paragraph found that just 33 (11 per cent) of respondents had left an organization that had formal career-development planning seminars, workshops or training.
It is important for organizations to show employees that they are serious about career development. Activities need not be expensive or drawn out but they should be frequent and engaging.
Foundations for a career-development strategy
A successful career-development strategy has several important characteristics. They include beginning early, communicating clearly, partnering employees, facilitating internal movements and taking action frequently.
Start at recruitment
Career-development management should begin at recruitment. Career paths available and specific career-development initiatives offered can be promoted in advertisements to attract high-quality candidates. The psychological contract begins here. By clearly promising only what can be delivered, advertisements can help job seekers to avoid applying to organizations that offer limited career opportunities thus avoiding resentment and disengagement later. During the selection processes, too, candidates should be directly asked about their long-term career objectives and what they will require to achieve these objectives. Simply asking where a person would like to be five years from now is not sufficient. The organization needs to know during selection whether it is able to deliver the career development the candidate is seeking.
Disengagement and turnover are expensive and often avoidable.
Open up communication
Career-development management should not be manager-centric. Bottom-up communication generates excellent ideas about how the organization could better develop its career-development strategy. Employee communication is the barometer by which the organization knows if it is doing enough of the right things. Have a dedicated e-mail address for career-development enquiries and a portal on the intranet which houses information and resources. Have senior management talk about career development and seek feedback on career-development events.
Form a partnership with your employees
Line managers are as critical to career-development management, as they are to performance management. Line managers need to be trained and supported to guide and advise their team members on developing long-term career plans. Line managers need to review these plans, acknowledge success and be encouraging of the concept of career development. HR can support line managers with training, tools and resources and guidance. Line managers should be able to draw up career plans with individual team members, monitor progress and identify solutions to problems just as they would do for the performance management of team members.
Facilitate career change within the organization
Design a structure and a supporting process and policy that allow employees to switch careers without leaving the organization. Many organizations have achieved this with the job-families organizational structure as opposed to the career-ladder structure. Job families enable employees to see what similarly paid and skilled jobs are open to them in other areas of the organization. Rather than climb the one single ladder, they can jump across into another job family at certain points where their skills, experience and knowledge are comparable.
Have quarterly career-development activities to support the organization’s commitment to career development started during recruitment and selection and developed by line managers, the organization should hold quarterly activities. These career-development activities demonstrate a genuine commitment to employee career progress. Activities should be aligned with the organization’s strategic objectives for career development and employee retention. The activities should be formalized and on the calendar. They must be well-promoted ahead of time, and their value assessed once completed. Identifying practical, cost-effective and meaningful activities around career development can be the biggest challenge. Here are eight suggestions.
Career-development activities internal careers day
Hold a careers fair or expo on your organization’s career opportunities for your employees. This is especially valuable for top talent, new-entry graduates and mid-career professionals, who are often the most disengaged.
Identifying practical, cost-effective and meaningful activities around career development can be the biggest challenge.
Interviewing skills and resume-writing workshops
Run quarterly workshops for employees to help them to improve interview skills, resume-writing and cover-letter writing skills. HR can do this as part of its internal service offerings. This will increase employees’ chances of lateral movement in the organization or attaining promotion.
Guest speakers from other departments
Invite department heads to speak at sessions where employees can hear about vacancies and opportunities in other parts of the organization while having lunch. This is especially valuable in large, multi-site organizations and has the added benefit of helping employees
To understand their organization better.
Career planning after appraisal
Organize a formal career-planning session for each employee with the line manager about Two weeks after the annual performance review. Employees can reflect on their review and their career goals and then get advice on planning the next steps in their career. It is important that this is not part of the performance review: elevate its status and avoid confusion or worry by keeping it separate.
Employee career-development plan
Employee: _______________________ Job Title: ________________________
Line Manager: _____________________ Department: _______________________
Plan commenced: ___________________ Next Review: ______________________
Current career objective:
Recent steps taken to achieve career objective:
Skill/Knowledge/Experience required to achieve career objective:
Professional associations
Encourage employees to join appropriate professional associations and become active members. Recognize, utilize and reward active membership and help employees to leverage membership to support their individual career plan. Alternatively, establish internal career clubs for employees to network, share resources and collaborate on career-development goals.
Career-development workshops
Facilitate career-development workshops and seminars where employees develop and work on individual career development plans. A simple first-step example is provided in
Career-development awards
Promote the organization’s commitment to career development by offering four awards to deserving employees each year of, say, $2,500 each. These could be for a specific purpose (for example, to attend an overseas conference or to put toward a course of study) or offer a free choice where the employee decides on what opportunity to spend the money.
Have a lunchtime awards ceremony where the chief executive gives out the awards.
Rewards
Reward employee career-development achievements with certificates, vouchers, inexpensive gifts, public acknowledgement or praise – for example, achieving a significant goal on the individual development plan or getting a promotion or completing a challenging job rotation.