Creating career paths

When you hop into a car, you usually want to go somewhere. You don’t sit in idle in the driveway. And when you want to go somewhere, you generally aim for a specific destination. This is analogous to mindlessly treating employees as wanting to come to work and sit idling in the professional driveway, content to do the same things all day every day with no need to move or change and with no destination in mind.

Some employees are content to fill roles that don’t change much over time. But many want more.

A career path is like a roadmap: It’s a progression of steps one can take to progress into different or more advanced roles at work. A career path comprises a series of experiences and jobs that help employees reach their career objectives and future goals. It’s the GPS for professional growth.

When you know how to direct employees to viable career paths, your employees and your company reap a destination of long-lasting benefits.

Why should I help?

It may feel like too much work to concern yourself with your employees’ abilities to craft satisfying careers for themselves. However, it is advantageous for you to meet their concerns.

Investing resources in your employees’ career paths improves retention, builds a more skilled workforce and enhances your talent pipeline.

Improved retention

When employees feel stagnated at work and aren’t sure where new opportunities exist within the company, they are likely to start looking outside the company. Offering career path opportunities will give employees a reason to stay.

Retaining employees is beneficial for many reasons. Turnover costs can be massive. Looking for new employees, onboarding and upskilling them until they’re productive for your company is a long, resource-intensive process. Keeping and training current employees requires a fraction of the time and resources.

Retaining employees also boosts the successes of internal mobility. Rather than looking externally because you need someone in a pinch, knowing your employees’ career paths helps you know who wants to move into different positions and who has been working toward that purpose. Current employees who know they’re “on deck” are likely to wait for opportunities.

A highly skilled workforce

Having a career path mindset helps organizations identify skill gaps. When you’re creating opportunities for people, you pay closer attention to what they are doing currently, which can help them become better at their work.

You may also find skills and talents within your workforce that you didn’t know existed. This can help you identify ways to reorganize your workforce to move people into roles where they can be more effective.

Strategic upskilling and cross-training are fundamentally different than status quo retraining or otherwise trying to push people to improve skills at which they don’t excel. Helping employees focus on their strengths and showing them future opportunities will spark a sense of purpose.

Enhance the talent pipeline

Morale is enhanced when it’s obvious you’re building a bench of ready-now and ready-soon leaders. It will be important, too, to be able to explain what it takes to be considered for a seat on that bench.

Having new and future leaders at the ready will help reduce risks associated with sudden vacancies. When a valuable employee leaves for a better opportunity or retires, you will have solid options for temporary and permanent replacements.

The benefits

Developing career paths for employees helps them clarify their career directions, provides opportunities to strengthen engagement and motivation, and encourages skills development.

Clarity

Researcher and organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that though 95% of people believe they are self-aware, only about 10-15% actually are. This is a significant indicator many people don’t know themselves or what they want out of their careers. Employee disengagement may be a symptom not only of a company’s culture but of individuals feeling stuck because they don’t know themselves well enough to imagine their options.

Demonstrating opportunities and offering education and training designed to equip people for unconsidered opportunities allows employees to engage in personal assessment, be honest about their uncertainties and abilities and experience safety in exploration.

Organizations that build customized paths based on employee interests and company needs become more people-centered, resilient and competitive

Commitment

Employees feel valued when they see long-term opportunities, especially when their company invites them into consideration for specific opportunities. This increases commitment to their companies by turning possibility into probability. A goal that seems achievable creates a heightened sense of intention and energy.

Skill development

When people identify something they want, in most cases they’re willing to pursue steps to obtain it. Whether a company identifies steppingstones or only identifies goals and allows employees to figure out the intermediate steps, the result will be intentional learning and skills development.

This is positive for two reasons. First, employees eager to learn will bring new ideas and energy to their work. And when they’re learning to grow into something you’ve identified you need, you know their efforts are aligning with organizational needs.

How do we do it?

Part of the reason this level of intentionality doesn’t happen is because there isn’t a plan. The following are a few simple steps to begin working on career paths with employees.

1. Start with clear role frameworks. Define levels, competencies, skills and behavioral expectations for each role at your company. If you don’t already have this in place, the time investment is worth it. It’s impossible to fill roles well if you don’t know exactly what you need people to know and do.
2. Build individualized development plans. Building a plan is a collaborative process of employees and managers working together to align goals with organizational objectives. Employees and employers agreeing on goals and next steps results in the best growth.
3. Provide accessible learning and development resources. Equip employees to pursue goals that align with your goals. Training, education, mentorship, stretch roles, coaching and job rotations are all options. Don’t rely only on what’s available within your walls. Training opportunities are worth their expense in learning and the motivation employees feel when you invest in them.
4. Equip managers to guide career conversations. One of your first professional development needs might be to educate managers on how to have growth conversations with employees. Middle managers are often not equipped or confident in their abilities to guide their direct reports in such conversations.

When all these things are in place and conversations are happening, you may want to track progress regarding training and, eventually, tangible evidence of fulfilling company needs. There are many useful technological tools you can use to support visibility and tracking, such as career mapping platforms, learning tools and skills inventories.

Become more resilient

Working with employees to develop career paths is a strategic investment, not an HR extra.

Improving retention, building a more skilled workforce and enhancing your talent pipeline count on engaging with current employees. Organizations that build customized paths based on employee interests and company needs become more people-centered, resilient and competitive.

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