Why you’ll want to support employee career progression

As a manager of people, do you invest time in enabling their career progression?

While the responsibility for career progression is a shared responsibility between employee and manager, you’ll need to play your part – or risk your employees looking for career development elsewhere according to a recent study called ‘From skills to success: L&D insights for the modern workforce’, based on survey results by Cypher Learning.

According to the study, 37 percent said that lack of learning and development was a reason they may leave their company and look for employment elsewhere. This rises significantly among the younger age group (18-34 years olds) who were most likely to want to leave (44 per cent).

So why should you care as a manager? Well, 50 per cent in the UK and 53 per cent globally said that their manager was woefully under equipped to help them progress in their career.

What does it take to support your employees with their career development?

1. Explain that responsibility is shared
   If your team member is expecting to sit back and for you to notice their great work and find you that next role they are not playing their part in their career development. Ultimately, it is THEIR career and they are the ones best placed to position themselves for roles and to know which roles they are most interested in, even if they may need some help to do so.
   
2. Help team members to be purpose-led
   Early in career, we don’t always recognise that we can be fulfilled by the work we do if it feels like it has purpose. We may have picked a career based on what we studied or were interested in without considering what it would enable us to do, or perhaps more importantly, the positive impact we can make. As a manager, we can talk to our team members about what gives them purpose and enables them to feel most fulfilled to help them consider this as a guide in making future career choices.
   
3. Encourage team members to make their future happen
   A career can evolve by taking the next role that you are offered and that works well for some people although it relies on being seen and having opportunities appear. Share with your team members that they are more likely to progress their career development and careers by being pro-active. If they aren’t sure what role they might like to do next, what do they think might interest them and who do they know in roles like that that they could have a coffee catch up with?
   
4. Support team members to create a career development plan
   Sometimes your team members just need a short amount of your time to help them create a career development plan. If focusing on their next role and they have some clarity about what that role is, help them to define what skills, knowledge, capabilities, connections etc that they need to have to be a good candidate for the role. Then you can support them to consider how to develop on the job, through others (coach, mentor etc) or with any formal training needed.
   
5. Make introductions
   It can be helpful for your team members to access other people in your organisation (or potentially outside of your organisation) that can support their development. If you have contacts that they don’t, considering making an introduction to enable the team member to then have a conversation.
   

None of the above needs to take much of your time; it does however need you to be intentional and consistent in making a small amount of time available to support team members.

And remember, when your team members are successful, so are you. Rather than holding on to our talent, we benefit from readying them for future roles and being recognised as talent developers.

What tips would you add to the above?