How to Create Career Growth Opportunities for Employees: Career Pathing and Planning
When you offer opportunities for advancement and growth within your organisation, you help your employees to develop their skills, their knowledge and their careers. And contrary to popular belief, supporting job development isn’t just good for the employee. It’s good for the business, too.?
The numbers speak for themselves. Clear career-developing opportunities, along with the right L&D support, help you to create an engaged, motivated and well-skilled team.
So how do you go about creating career growth opportunities for your employees? Let’s start with a few definitions before diving into the world of professional development planning.??
Contents
What is career pathing?
Types of career growth
Creating career growth opportunities for employees within your organisation
What is career pathing?
Before we define career pathing, let’s all just agree on what a career is as well.
A career is a series of jobs you have throughout your life, usually related to one particular industry or area of expertise. You may undertake a number of different jobs during your lifetime but — if they form part of your career — you’ll be making progress as you move from one to another.
This progress is referred to as a career path. But there are a couple of different routes you and your colleagues can choose to take. So, enter career pathing.
Career pathing involves both employer and employee. It’s a process of career plan development — establishing what an employee wants to achieve during their time with an organisation.
Career pathing means mapping out the roles an employee would like to occupy, and then detailing the skills and experience they’ll need in order to move into those roles.
By creating a career development path, employees can work towards their career goals in a systematic way, whilst managers can easily support employees. It’s also a great way for employers to engage and retain staff, and to address any skill gaps within the company.
Types of career growth
What’s the definition of a career path?
There isn’t a single correct way to advance as a professional. Career growth is not always linear, but most employees end up (either consciously or subconsciously) following one of the following career structures.
Ladder career growth
Ladder career growth is the more traditional type of career growth. At one point in your life, you’ll no doubt have heard the phrase ‘climb the ladder’ — this is what it refers to.?
You move up within the company jobs ladder, taking on roles with more responsibility, higher status and higher pay throughout your career.
Ladder career growth makes for an impressive CV. It’s clear to your managers and to other prospective employers where you’ve been and where you’re heading.
However, when your job development progresses in a very linear way, you may miss out on developing a wider skillset or gaining experience of other departments and perspectives within an organisation.
Lattice career growth
Lattice career growth doesn’t just move up the jobs ladder. It’s a more holistic style of career progression, with an employee making sideways moves into various departments. Think: climb the ladder, hop to another ladder, climb up, rinse and repeat.?
Employees who pursue lattice career growth are often well-rounded and engaged. They get to know different departments and different perspectives.
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This lattice career path doesn’t always look so great on paper — it’s not immediately obvious that this style of career development path demonstrates real and tangible progress.
Prospective employers may need a little more context to understand the path an employee has taken to develop as a professional.
Nevertheless, a lattice career can help employees to develop a wide range of skills and experiences — and a deep understanding of how organisations work. They can also provide better opportunities for connections and higher-paying careers.
Whichever career structure employees wish to follow, knowledge and skills-based growth can help to support their progression.
Creating career growth opportunities for employees within your organisation
What can an employer do to support employees and create opportunities for advancement?
Career pathing
Work with employees on career plan development. Find out where they want to take their career and map a route that will get them there.
Succession planning
Succession planning helps you to identify opportunities for advancement within your organisation.
When you have a clear idea of your staffing needs over the years to come, you can ensure you have the people and the skills to keep business running smoothly.
You can also map out the ways in which employees can develop careers with your company.
Commit to professional development planning
With both an employee’s career goals and any succession planning in mind, identify areas for improvement in work, focusing on the skills and knowledge gaps that prevent employees from making an advancement in career progress.
Then offer the right learning and job development opportunities to help employees fill those gaps and move closer towards their career goals.
What can employees do to develop their careers?
Learning and development varies from career to career. But there are plenty of career-developing skills that can be applied across the board. Managers will often find that time and time again the same area for improvement in work crops up.
Some common areas for improvement include:
Improving your abilities with the software you use at your organisation and keeping up to date with industry-related changes are also good ideas for employees to independently develop careers.
Want a simple and effective way to provide L&D opportunities at your organisation?
L&D is most effective when employees are motivated. By linking your L&D initiative to career growth opportunities, you ensure a high level of employee engagement.
Here at My Learning Hub, you can use readymade modules from our library or build your own learning content to provide the right career development opportunities for your team.
You can also focus on Competencies, or Learning Paths, where you can create a sequenced course bundle on a particular topic and support employees to upskill or reskill.
However you choose to use My Learning Hub, you’ll find plenty of ways to create career development pathways, whilst ensuring that your organisation always has the right mix of skills for success.
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