The Incredible Return You Get From Offering Employees a Clear Career Path

When you have a company full of high performers it's important to provide them with a solid career progression if you expect to retain them (if they aren't high performers, you probably better work on that).  Our company is one of those that has turned this into a science.  Now, I can't go into too many details because frankly it's a part of our secret sauce but I can tell you from an employee's perspective how important it is to have clear guidelines and a known process for reviewing and advancing employees in your organization.  I can also provide you with some of the advantages and disadvantages of having or not having a visible career path for all employees.  First, a few questions about this whole career path and review process:

Does your review process and promotion plan need to be clear and documented?

Of course it does!  In fact ideally you will get it as objective as possible with very specific skills and tasks that you expect your employees to be able to do at each level.  This is important because your employees know what they need to satisfy in order to move to the next level.  Some portion of this process will always be subjective but if you can make it as objective as possible and make sure those are consistent with what it takes for your organization to meet your goals it's an easy win/win situation.  For instance, for a developer you may have the languages you expect them to have mastered at each level, the unit testing they should be doing, and maybe some demonstrated devops skills.  Just be specific so they can check off what they know and how they used each of the skills on a project or as a part of their daily work routine.

Should you attempt to promote from within whenever possible?

Of course the answer is yes!  If your high performing employees are meeting the guidelines that you established for them then you definitely need to promote them per your documented guidelines.  If you don't then you run all kinds of risks the most important being you weren't really honest with them.  If you create a career path/plan that says they move up when they demonstrate X number of skills and meet other key performance indicators (KPI's) then you simply have to honor it or you might as well not have a system at all.  Nobody will ever take it seriously if you don't enforce it.  Further more, let's say they meet the requirements and instead of advancing them you hire externally.  Well, that's about as demotivating as it gets and a clear indication to that employee that it's time for them to move on.  You may or may not be willing to accept that but you need to at least realize that is a risk and act accordingly.

Is it important to have multiple levels in your organization with increasing levels of responsibility?

This depends on the size of your company for sure, but the general answer is yes.  This is really helpful because the more levels you have the more opportunity there is for advancement.  Now, the levels should make sense.  Don't create 100 levels just for the sake of levels but having a junior developer, developer, senior developer, architect, senior architect, or something similar is generally speaking a good thing.  This gets back to offering high performing employees a clear career path within the organization so they don't feel the need to look externally to advance themselves.  They may top out and in fact will at some point but that may or may not be a problem (in any event it should take years for them to progress through the system 2+ per level).

Advantages of Having a Clear, Documented Career Path

• Employees have clear goals that they can work towards at each level.
• If the goals are setup correctly if the employee meets the goals it's a win for the organization.
• Employees aren't guessing where they are in the hierarchy or what the next step should be for their career, you laid it out for them.
• The amount of time and resources you have spent on that employee will accumulate over time and pay dividends continuously as time goes on.
• High performers are driven to achieve they are wired to want to advance in their career.  You need to give them that to feed that instinct.

Disadvantages of Not Having a Clear, Documented Career Path

• Employees won't know what you need or expect of them which may lead to them either way under or over-performing (most likely under-performing).
• Some employees will assume that they are boxed in and they have no career path in your organization and they will look to leave if they can.
• Employees will most likely pester you asking you how they are doing and effectively will try to pull out of you what it will take for them to advance.
• Since you don't have a plan, then the chances of you inconsistently giving promotions or performance raises will seem unfair undoubtedly to someone.
• If you haven't setup goals in a clear manner for your employees then how can you possibly meet the organization's goals (which should be the sum total of your employees goals).

The good news is our company is usually voted as one of the top companies to work for in each of our markets and it's undoubtedly partially due to the way employees are valued and developed through a clear, documented, and very fair process.  It just so happens it's that time of year for us at Credera and I'm off to fill out my forms and to start reviewing other employees.  It's so much more fun when everyone knows what to expect.  If you have a great process at your company and want to share it, please comment.  I'd love to hear what you do and/or more about other organizations that feel they are doing this the right way or at least as best they can.  The ultimate reward is hitting your overall goals because if your employees meet their collective goals, that rolls up and equals a win for the company.

If you have question, comments, or just want to tell me I am dead wrong... Please email me at [email protected].  Thank you for reading this article!