Career pathing is a game-changer for employee retention! Here, we break down how giving employees clear, personalised career paths can significantly boost their engagement and loyalty. It highlights the importance of aligning career development opportunities with employees’ skills and aspirations, ensuring they feel valued and see a future with the company. By investing in robust career pathing strategies, businesses can reduce turnover rates and foster a motivated, skilled workforce ready to take on future challenges.
Career pathing is not a new phenomenon in the world of human resources. It allows employees to chart their career progression from a wider standpoint and in turn, it lets employers invest in the right and appropriate development channels.
Aside from ensuring that employees are achieving their individual career goals, career pathing can also help immensely with employee retention. The more a company invests in its employees, the more likely they are willing to stay for a long time.
A high rate of employee turnover can be detrimental to a company in the long run. Hiring and recruiting new talents is not as easy as some may think. It takes up a lot of time, effort, and money to hire the right candidates. With career pathing and a concrete career development plan in place, a company can easily avoid a high turnover rate.
Here are some of the ways career pathing can help stabilise the employee retention rate within a company.
Promotes transparency and loyalty
These days, companies are urged to keep a level of transparency with their employees to instill trust and loyalty. Especially when it comes to career progression, employees deserve the right to be updated and kept in the loop.
Employees are more comfortable staying within the same company if there’s trust and loyalty. If they don’t see an opportunity for growth, there’s a high chance that they’ll start to look for opportunities elsewhere where there’s a clearer career trajectory.
Instilling trust can be in the form of a healthy working environment or the way management is willing to invest in their personal and professional development. Employees want to be updated with the latest career opportunities, skill development, training, and so on. This is where career pathing takes place as it maps out in great detail all the available roles and skills an employee needs to succeed.
Increases motivation in the workplace
When employees have a clear idea of their career trajectory, they are likely to be more motivated, productive, and perform better at work. An employee should not feel like their job is mundane. Things should be exciting, even when they have to do menial tasks. A way to excite them is to introduce new training or seminars, leadership opportunities, or new projects that they may not encounter daily.
Employees are more likely to stay with a company if their skills and talents are acknowledged. They would feel a sense of belonging thanks to the contributions they have offered to their teams. Performance would increase and overall satisfaction in the workplace will be significantly improved.
Highlights alternative career opportunities
Career progression doesn’t always have to be linear. In a traditional workplace setting, career paths would typically be vertical, and why it’s often referred to as a career ladder. Career pathing can highlight any opportunities for an alternative career progression. This includes a career shift into a similar role or something completely different yet requires similar sets of skills.
As an example, imagine this scenario: you’ve been working as a QC manager for a few years and you’re not sure if you’re able to go further up the career ladder. You’ve gained skills that are also relevant for the role of project manager. With career pathing, this can be easily highlighted and the opportunities to expand your career are endless.
With career pathing and a concrete career development plan in place, a company can easily avoid a high turnover rate.
Clarifies expectations and outcomes
Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a role, doing mundane or repetitive tasks with no progress to go towards? This is what most employees would feel if there aren’t any clear job expectations set. Job descriptions don’t only clarify what an employee should do or aspire to, but it also helps differentiate roles in different levels or specialisations.
A senior executive shouldn’t be doing the same daily tasks as a junior executive; they should be doing more expert tasks that are considerably different than an entry-level role would cover. The senior person would start to feel demotivated as their job title doesn’t match their job description. For an effective career pathing to take place, this is where setting expectations would come in handy.
Establish conversation on career growth
Career pathing can start introducing the conversation surrounding career growth if the company hasn’t started doing that already. Traditional companies would often focus solely on an employee’s performance whenever the appraisal period comes around. However, with a clear career pathing scheme in place, management can focus on career progression as well.
During one-to-one meetings, instead of focusing on behavior and job outcomes, check in with each employee on how they’re doing. Are they satisfied with their responsibilities? Or are there skills they’re interested in learning to make their job easier? These questions can be easily answered if there’s clear communication regarding career growth between employees and the management.
Invest in the right development programs
Career pathing can chart all the possibilities when it comes to career development. This includes which skills need to be prioritised so employees can reach their desired career goals. Management can then invest in the right development programs that can bring the most returns and attract the most interest among the employees. They can allocate the appropriate budget for the programs that are deemed the most important, as well as for the people who need to enhance this specific skill the most.
For example, a team of digital marketers shows interest in attending a conference overseas. Management can use career pathing to see if this conference can teach them the relevant skills they need to progress in their careers.
Conclusion
Career pathing is not only helpful for employees. It can also help companies retain employees longer and better. It’ll also help companies invest in the right programs that are beneficial for all parties involved. Implementing career pathing strategies should be the way forward if companies are keen to invest in their workers.
It also doesn’t have to be intimidating. There are career pathing tools and software available that will do the hard work for you. It’ll automatically chart the possible path for each employee based on historical and current data.
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