Five Ways to Encourage Career Pathing

Employees, especially millennials, value career development. A well-executed career pathing program offers substantial opportunities for growth — and dramatically reduces turnover — but employees aren’t always aware of this development resource. Here are five ways to encourage employees to create and pursue career paths:

Create a Development Culture

Companies with a development culture give employees what they want. These companies value learning, progress, and individual success. They encourage employees to share their career aspirations with management and provide the tools necessary to achieve those goals, including training resources; networking opportunities; and software designed to create dynamic, customizable career paths that offer a variety of lateral and vertical moves. This flexibility and commitment to development encourage employees to chart career paths that align with their personal interests and prioritizes, thereby increasing employee satisfaction at work, maintaining employee engagement, and retaining top talent — creating a win-win for every party involved.

See what a customizable career path looks like

Implement a Mentoring Program

Mentoring empowers employees with identified skill gaps to gain the competencies necessary to move along their career paths quickly and efficiently. Employees can reach out to their mentors for guidance, support, and training, which improves engagement, productivity, and retention (by about 70 percent), thus saving organizations tens of thousands of dollars in training and recruiting costs.

Encourage Bottom/Up Communication

Employees who feel heard, feel valued and are more engaged at work. High levels of engagement make employees more productive (by up to 22 percent according to research) and encourage them to continue working toward their career path goals. Hold regular one-on-one meetings to check in with employees and find out what’s working for them, what isn’t, and how they feel they’re progressing in their careers. Review their career paths and encourage them to identify places where they need more help or would like to make adjustments.

Align Path Options with Organizational Goals

Well-defined career paths enable employees to visualize next moves while also enabling admins and management to uncover new talent and promote from within. For optimum success, align potential career paths with organization goals. Want IT personnel who know sales or accounting managers with customer service experience? Create potential paths that encourage employees to move through the company, and gather competencies, in specific ways that support these organizational goals. Not only does the novelty of new challenges challenge employees and maintain their interest in day-to-day operations, it also promotes a whole-picture vision by introducing employees to numerous departments.

Monitor and Reward Progress

Monitoring and assessing employee progress along their career paths enables managers to provide motivation, encouragement, and targeted resources if progress stalls. It also makes it easy to promote or transition top talent into new roles and maintain succession plans by evaluating internal moves and skill sets. A dynamic, competency-based software solution streamlines this process and ensures admins can keep their focus where it belongs — on managing and rewarding employees instead of analyzing metrics. Learn how a technological solution can boost performance, reduce turnover, and maintain a steady pipeline of high performers by requesting a demo of TalentGuard’s career pathing software.

To learn more about Career Pathing, visit our Learning Center for webinars and other content.