how to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

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How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

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Post on 11-Jul-2015

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Page 1: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Page 2: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Employers need to do more to understand their people’s career expectations, and helpthem realise their ambitions.

This was the clear message to emerge from the latest CIPD Employee Outlook survey,which showed a definite link between satisfaction and career development and plansto find a new job.

Page 3: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

The survey found that although job satisfaction overall was on the up, levels ofdissatisfaction with career development were significant. This posed a significant ‘flightrisk’ for employers, with nearly half of those who felt they couldn’t achieve theirambitions with their current organisation actively job-hunting.

At a time when the economy is on the rise and the war for talent is hotting up,employers cannot afford to lose their best people. So what can organisations do tomanage employees’ career aspirations more effectively?

Page 4: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

How often do managers in your business have honest and constructive careerconversations with their people? Do they know what their employees’ aspirations areor what talents they may be hiding? It’s not unusual, particularly following difficulteconomic times, to find people sitting it out in roles that are way below theirpotential and where their skills are not being used.

Have open career conversations

Page 5: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Performance reviews are a great time to discuss where your people see themselvesheading, how they could make best use of their talents, and how the business cansupport them going forward. Make sure the subject of career development is on theagenda not just at the annual appraisal, but also during informal check-ins. People aremore likely to stick around if they feel they can talk openly about their ambitions, andthat the business will do its best to support them in their goals.

Page 6: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Take a more flexible approach

One of the key recommendations to come out of the CIPD survey was for HR to thinkless rigidly about job roles. Often, organisations are so hidebound by complicated payand grading structures that they can’t promote people or expose them to new, growthexperiences even when they want to. HR and line managers need to collaborate inorder to identify how they can best deploy the skills of their staff to meet people’sexpectations and serve the needs of the business. If people can see that there is noway up – or indeed that up is the only way – they will soon become frustrated and willstart to look for an employer with a more flexible approach.

Page 7: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

The annual performance review is generally a very backward-looking exercise. It’sabout reviewing the past year, (hopefully) celebrating achievements, and highlightingwhat could have gone better. Managers often regard it as little more than a box-tickingexercise: they go through the motions, get it over as quickly as possible and file thereport until next year. No wonder so many employees are dissatisfied with theircareer development.

Make performance reviews developmental

Page 8: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Organisations need to shift the focus of their performance reviews to make themmuch more developmental. It should be about identifying training needs (andfollowing up to make sure they happen), looking for stretch assignments that will helpthe person step up a gear, organising secondments to other departments, and helpingpeople find a mentor within the business who can support them. If employees feel thebusiness is ‘investing’ in their future, they are more likely to accept that althoughpromotion may not be immediately available, there are opportunities for them todevelop in their current role.

Page 9: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Performance management is often not given the priority it deserves because managersfind processes long-winded and time consuming – it gets shoved to the back of the list,and HR has to spend inordinate amounts of time chasing people to make sureappraisals happen. It doesn’t have to be this way. Sophisticated HR software is nowavailable to take the strain, and help organisations streamline and bring consistencyto processes.

Give managers tools and support

Page 10: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Systems can be set up to prompt managers whenappraisals are due, for example. All the necessaryforms can be made available on line and there’s acentral place where information about what’s beendiscussed and agreed can be stored. Technologyhas moved on apace and these systems are nowwithin reach of even the smallest business. Somesolutions, like Cezanne OnDemand, are extremelyquick to implement and can be up-and-running ina matter of weeks, before the traditional yearend/new year round of appraisals kicks in.

Page 11: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

Lack of budget for training can be one of the key barriers to people developing theirskills and moving forward. But development doesn’t have mean sending people onlong and expensive training programmes. Organisations need to think more creativelyabout how they can help people develop the skills they need. Lunchtime learningbites, mentoring programmes, job shadowing schemes… these are all low costinitiatives that can help people build new skills. The social portals that are integral tosome of the latest HR software solutions can also support a ‘learning culture’ bymaking it easy for people to find the information they need and allowing them to shareknowledge, work collaboratively on projects, and network across departmentalboundaries.

Take a creative approach to trainingand development

Page 12: How to help your employees achieve their career ambitions

What is your business doing to support employees in their career aspirations? Let usknow what kind of initiatives are working well for you.

Let us know in the comment section, or tweet us at @CezanneHR