If an employee does not have a career path with their current employer, they may leave. In today’s cautious employment market, where workers are weighing stability carefully and employers are taking a deliberate approach to hiring, career growth as a retention strategy is key to keeping valuable people engaged while building the workforce to support future company growth.
However, offering training or telling employees that advancement opportunities exist does not constitute a retention strategy. Leadership must incorporate career growth into the workforce strategy including employee management, skill development, and internal movement. When those pieces work together, career growth gives employees a reason to stay while helping organizations evolve a workforce that is continually developing.
Retention Means Your Employee Wants to Stay
A traditional retention strategy often starts with a familiar and reactive question: “What will keep this employee from leaving?” Asking “Can this employee see themselves continuing to grow here?” is a better approach.
According to recent research, one in four U.S. employees said they lacked opportunities for career advancement. At the same time, 63% said their organization provides advancement opportunities, suggesting availability of opportunities does not guarantee advancement is accessible to all employees. Regardless of whether advancement translates into promotion, employers need to create meaningful ways for team members to expand their skills, responsibilities, and contributions. Employees need to see that growth is possible for them and understand how they can prepare for it.
What Has to Be in Place for Career Growth to Work?
First, employees need to be able to envision a path forward even if it may not necessarily be a straight path. Their path might include learning innovative technology, taking on greater responsibility, moving into another function, cross-training with another team or preparing for a position opening in the future.
Second, growth needs to become part of the ongoing employee experience. Annual performance conversations still have a place, but managers and employees should discuss strengths, development needs, goals, and future opportunities consistently throughout the year. Ongoing feedback creates opportunities to recognize potential as it develops. A successful project, a newly demonstrated skill or an employee’s interest in taking on more responsibility can become the starting point for a development conversation.
Third, managers need to be part of career growth strategy. Managers see employees in action every day. They can recognize who is ready for additional responsibility, where someone has untapped potential and which experiences could help that person develop. Managers play a key role as coaches and mentors, from providing useful feedback and identifying strengths to creating stretch assignments and connecting employees with learning opportunities. Career development becomes much more powerful when it is part of the way management collaborates with employees rather than something that exists primarily as an HR program.
Career Growth Does Not Have to Mean Moving Up
One of the challenges with career development is the assumption that growth always means a promotion. Realistically, organizations cannot create a higher-level position for every employee who wants to advance. Furthermore, not every employee wants to move into management. A strong career growth strategy recognizes that people can develop in different directions. An employee might broaden their responsibilities, become a subject matter expert, learn another function, or develop skills to prepare them for a different role. These experiences can increase the organization’s capabilities while giving employees reasons to continue building their careers within the company. As employees develop, organizations can see where internal capabilities are growing, where additional training is needed and where outside hiring will still be necessary.
The Unexpected Benefit: Every Promotion Can Create a Hiring Opportunity
Career growth becomes particularly interesting from a workforce planning perspective when an employee moves into a new position. The organization has not necessarily eliminated a hiring need but moved that need somewhere else.
Think of it as a vacancy chain. An employee advances into a new role. Their previous position becomes available. Another employee may move into that position, creating another opening. Eventually, the organization may need to bring someone in from outside to fill the position at the end of that chain. Internal mobility and external hiring do not have to compete. They can work together.
A successful career growth strategy creates opportunities to bring new people into the organization. The key is to anticipate those moves instead of treating each resulting vacancy as an unexpected problem.
A Vacated Role Is an Opportunity to Recalibrate
Another advantage to workforce movement is a vacated position gives employers a natural opportunity to reconsider what the job should look like today. A position that management designed years ago may not have the same requirements now. In fact, forty-one% of respondents to a recent survey said their role has evolved faster than their company’s ability to train them. New skills may have become essential, while other requirements may no longer be as important. Instead of automatically replacing the person who left with someone who matches the old job description, employers can pause and ask what the organization needs from the role now. An employee’s advancement creates a valuable connection between career growth and better hiring. In other words, an internal promotion can lead to a better-defined role and a more intentional hiring decision.
Workforce Planning Should Account for Advancement
If an organization knows which employees are developing toward expanded responsibilities, they should begin thinking about what that movement could mean for the rest of the workforce. Which positions could open? Which roles could management fill internally? Where might outside hiring be needed? Are those roles still structured the same way they were two years ago? This visibility gives employers time to prepare and changes the way management communicates staffing needs. Rather than approaching a staffing partner only after an employee moves and a position is suddenly vacant, employers can begin discussing potential needs earlier, giving a staffing partner the opportunity to understand the role, the local labor market and the skills required before the opening becomes urgent.
How Peoplelink Can Support Workforce Growth
Peoplelink supports organizations as employees move into new roles by recruiting for newly vacated positions. We help employers think through changing role requirements, identify the skills needed for the current position and connect with external candidates who align with the role requirements. Rather than preventing every vacancy, we take the opportunity to prevent gaps in productivity while ensuring candidate capabilities match what the organization will need to thrive. For employers managing a changing workforce, that combination of internal mobility, external recruiting and workforce planning can create a more sustainable approach to growth.
The goal is not to prevent people from moving, but to create enough opportunities for strong employees to continue building their careers with the organization while the business continues building the workforce it needs.
Retention and Recruiting Can Work Together
Career growth as a retention strategy results in more intentional recruiting. Organizations that make this connection recognize retention and recruiting as parts of the same workforce strategy, with internal movement helping management to create a clearer picture of where they need external talent next.
Whether you are preparing for an anticipated internal advancement, reassessing a role after an employee moves or need qualified people to fill the openings created by workforce growth, Peoplelink can help you build the external talent pipeline to complement your internal workforce strategy.
