Career Paths - Why Your Company Needs Them

Do you work for (or own) a company that has career paths? There are a myriad of reasons why you need/want them.

𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙧𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩.
When you can show a simple diagram to a prospective employee and say, this is the learning path/career path we have identified for the starting position of (whatever you are interviewing for) people think "Wow! a future! I can go places with this company."

𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣.
People really don't want to job hop, what they want is to GROW in their careers and in their skills. But if your organization doesn't have a plan for how people can move up AND within the organization (not every move is up) then they *believe* they have to go elsewhere to grow. That's on you.

𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜.
Let's say you have a person who enters your company in a customer service role. By the end of year two, how qualified are they to be a salesperson (rhetorical question. VERY qualified.)? AND you probably have some salespeople who would be great in marketing or business development.

Focus your career paths on adaptable 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙨.

If Janet knows A, B, and C - isn't she pretty much qualified to do L, M, and N?

⭐BONUS ⭐ When you have people who have moved around the company and understand its various moving parts, you have well-trained future leaders who know how to run a 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, not just do a 𝘫𝘰𝘣.

The biggest misconception we battle when helping companies to develop career paths is that they think linearly. e.g.
𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘰 "𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘳" 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 "𝘸𝘦" 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘰 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. WRONG.

For every starting point, there should be 3 - 5 possible career paths in your company depending on aptitude and interest.

⭐ Open the possibilities.
⭐ Develop career paths.
⭐ Conquer recruitment and retention issues.

If you'd like help developing career paths for your company - give us a call!

Career Paths are AMAZING Recruiting Tools

Last month we completed an analysis of exit interviews, spanning the last five years, for a client of ours. The good news is – their attrition rate isn’t that high. The bad news is – the people choosing to leave the organization have critical skills and nearly 90% of them stated as their reason for leaving, “there’s no where else for me to go in this company.”  In fact, a Gallup survey conducted prior to the pandemic found that 93% of people advance their career by taking a position at another company.

What are Career Paths?

Career paths give employees a “map” to ways that they can extend their career with your organization – either by moving vertically (up the ladder) or horizontally to other positions in the company that can utilize their skills. Career paths enable employees to pursue their interests and develop their skills without having to go outside the organization, as, unfortunately, the employees in our client’s organization felt they had to do.

93% of employees advance their career by taking a job at another company

For example, a call center job often begins with a position as a CSR (customer service representative) which is more difficult than you would think. CSRs can quickly burn out and leave organizations – often within the first year. But a career path that shows how their career might progress from CSR to team leader, to supervisor, and eventually to manager or trainer allows employees to envision a career with the organization, not just a job.

A possible CSR career path

Or say I’ve burned out in my CSR job after three years and one promotion to team leader… my customer service skills could also easily translate to a role in sales or procurement (a horizontal move) – so you don’t always need to think of a career path as a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other path. Sometimes it’s a swinging from the vine from tree-to-tree trajectory instead. Be flexible in thinking of career paths and encourage your managers to look at untapped potential that can be captured with the right training, coaching, and support.

How do career paths help in recruitment?

Not only do career paths help with attrition, as the above example illustrates, but they are a secret weapon in recruiting as well. Study after study in recent years have identified that younger generations prioritize professional development; that may mean having access to learning opportunities – going to training, having membership to a professional associations paid for, or tuition reimbursement - or it might mean having a defined process to continue to advance their career in your organization (which, by default, will include learning opportunities).

In today’s ultra-tight job market, you need a way to differentiate yourself and attract employees. Discussing potential career paths (and the purposeful development process that gets people there) and showing a simple diagram (you don’t want to overwhelm people during the interview process… to illustrate that there is room to grow over 3- 5- or 10-years’ time, will enable your company to stand out from the crowd.

Other benefits

Not only do career paths help you to attract employees, but they help you to retain employees as well (helping you to avoid the costs of advertising, interviewing, onboarding and training, not to mention the time it takes for a new hire to become comfortable and capable in their new job), AND often you’ll find they land you on the “Best Places to Work” lists because your employees are so pleased that you value them and are invested in their growth.

Person interviewing for job

Career paths and the public recognition of them (such as during performance reviews and in announcements of recently promoted employees) are also important for having a “supply” of mission critical employees. For example, if your organization only has one procurement officer and that person leaves for whatever reason… it could take months to fill that job. But having pre-planned (and executed) career paths means that you won’t panic because you’ll have someone waiting in the wings to step into the role. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of creating career paths for all roles in your company – then focus on the roles that are essential for the business to continue its work uninterrupted.

The existence of career paths doesn’t mean that every employee will take advantage of them or will follow them to “the conclusion,” but it DOES show that you’re a professional organization that has applied critical thought to not only how your company will grow, but how you’ll grow your people with it.

This is a Pivotal Time for L+D

This statement (in photo) is more true today than ever!

When operations return to "normal" companies are going to recognize that the silo'd training they've been delivering for decades has left them with a bunch of individuals with deep knowledge but little breadth.

Hopefully there will be a "reckoning" which will cause companies to embrace cross-training and cross-skilling so that the company is more agile in the future.

The after-effects of this coronavirus will be impactful on L+D.

#training #traininganddevelopment #futureproofing #trainingdr