In today’s world of work, there are no shortage of challenges when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. Whether it’s figuring out the office workplace, managing vaccine mandates or developing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategies and plans, leaders must act with prudence and intention to develop plans that keep the organization running in a positive direction. However, often overlooked are the challenges placed on managers who are losing talent or struggling to keep their employees engaged as a result of the challenges over the past two years.
To be sure, some managers are not helping their companies or employees, or in some cases, they are making it worse. We know from research that a manager can account for up to 70% of the variance in employee engagement, and we’ve all had colleagues walk out the door due to challenges with their own managers.
But for the managers out there who want to help their people and do want to create a place where their employees can thrive, there has never been a better and more urgent time for managers to prioritize career development. In many cases, this is your best bet to improve engagement, reduce attrition, and become a manager who people want to work for in the short and long term.
Managers Should Prioritize Career Development
According to research from 15Five, an employee development software company, career growth, learning and development are among the most important factors for remaining at a company. But, 39.5% of Americans acknowledge that one reason for leaving is due to the lack of career advancement opportunities. Furthermore, we also know that right now, career development has been a challenge for many people, with almost half of employees reporting that their career development took a backseat during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, companies have been slow to step up with career development, and the majority (55%) report that there isn’t a clear track for career growth and development within their existing organization.
For those who have lost employees, what’s done is done, but the battle doesn’t end there, as there is much to be learned and you still have to retain and engage those who have stuck around. One way to do this, is to do what the data suggests and find opportunities for your employees to develop, learn and grow their careers.
6 Ways Managers Can Prioritize Career Development
As a manager, there are plenty of things you can do to prioritize career development and invest in your people. Here are some ways to get started:
1)Make It Clear That You Support Career Development Through Actions and Words
Trust and psychological safety underpin any healthy company and team culture, but are incredibly important when it comes to having employees open up and talk about their career plans and aspirations. Making it known that you are open and interested in hearing about their career aspirations is critical to actually having them speak openly about what they want to do. In the past, many of us have seen or experienced the inverse of this:
You don’t want to open up to your manager because you are afraid of what they might think and you choose to hold it in, only for them to be surprised when you decide to leave. Instead, by creating space and trust in allowing people to openly share their ambitions and making it clear that you hope to coach and help them achieve them, you will allow your employees the ability to be transparent, which helps both of you.
As a manager, your job is to use the talents and skills of your team to achieve business objectives and goals. When you understand what your people are interested in, you have the agency and creativity to help structure your employees’ work in ways that align to their own personal goals, as well as the KPIs and metrics of the team. That can only happen, when there is a sense of trust, so that your employees open up and share what they want to do.
2)Make Space and Time For It
After conducting career development workshops for thousands of working professionals, one thing I hear time and time again is that “I just need some time and space to think about my career development”
One of the challenges with career development is that, left to their own devices, it’s easy to get caught up in work and to not have the time or space to think through individual career development. As a manager, you have the ability to make this a priority, and to structure it in a way so employees do have the time and understand that it is a priority of the team.
For example, a client I worked with sends a quarterly calendar invite to block time intentionally for people to spend time either working on a career development plan, using that time to reflect on career goals, or using the time to learn and grow through courses, self-directed learning, or other types of personal development. A month leading up to the calendar invite, they start talking about it in team meetings, sending messages in the Slack channel, etc, which ultimately creates this “surround sound” of the importance of the career development planning and reflection time. After the invite ends (it’s usually a Friday) they use the next team meeting to talk about what people did and what their takeaways were.
3)Provide Encouragement and Accountability
Make no mistake, an individual employee is responsible for their career development. But as a manager, your job is to help provide encouragement and accountability so they stay engaged and encouraged in working on and toward their own unique career goals. As a manager, you have two things your employees don’t: context (the bigger picture) and experience (more reps and lived lessons) – Providing support as your employees reflect, develop and pursue their own intentional path through providing context and accountability as a critical element of people development.
Another way to do this is to also share your own work. If you are building your own career development plan, let your team know what’s on it, how you are doing, and where you are making adjustments and iterations.
4)Provide Coaching and Mentoring
Each employee is going to have a different kind of career development plan, one common thread for all employees is that they cannot do it alone in a silo. Playing the role of coach or mentor can be incredibly valuable to your employees. Spending time talking to them about their careers, asking probing and thoughtful questions, or in some cases, connecting them with others who can help ensures that they have a great team of others who are helping them with their plan.
For example, a client of mine who recently became a new manager, realized that they couldn’t be the expert for each of their direct reports, but they had enough contacts and relationships within the company to connect them with other people and experts. After meeting with each of their direct reports, this manager then found 2-3 people within the company who they felt would be valuable for their reports to meet, and made e-mail introductions proactively to setup those conversations.
5) Secure Financial Resources
Inevitably, programs, resources etc related to career development come with a financial cost. As a manager if you have financial resources either to provide or that you can get out and secure, I encourage you to do this. First, the ROI of these can be pretty significant in terms of both productivity and retention. Second, by doing this for your people you are voting with your feet and letting them know what you value. This will not only encourage behaviors of your employees to want to invest in themselves, but they will also value and appreciate that you respect and care about their growth and development. While its hard to put a direct cost to that, I am confident you can find one.
6) Focus on The Long-Term Relationship with Your Employees
While some of these benefits will be valuable in the short term, it does take a long game approach. Inevitably, your employees will leave you for another opportunity inside the company or somewhere else, but your bet in investing in their development means by prioritizing and investing in the career development of your employees, you are making an investment of time and resources that you believe when your people feel excited and aligned that their work reflects their career ambitions and goals, that they’ll be more engaged, produce greater work, and contribute more to the team around them.
Careers are long and at times unpredictable, but by taking the time to invest in the career development of your people, you can help manage the attrition, engagement and well-being of your employees in the short term, while cultivating strong long term relationships with the people that work for you.
All of us remember the manager who helped us learn and grow in our career. Investing in the career development of your employees ensures that they remember you as that manager.
Additional Reading