Career Development: How to support employee growth at work

We might think of career development as checking off boxes on a to-do list of skills to learn and moving up the career ladder. But it’s rarely that straightforward, especially in today’s working world. With the average job tenure at around four years and the nature of work becoming more dynamic and unpredictable, it’s increasingly rare for people to follow a linear trajectory in their careers. 

Despite these changes, career development is still critical. This ongoing process of defining your professional strengths and interests and pursuing roles and projects that are aligned with them involves a combination of looking inward to understand yourself and taking action to test out the hypotheses you’ve formed.

We shouldn’t assume it’s only the individual who’s responsible for their career development. Companies and managers have key roles to play, too. According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. Let’s explore a few ways companies, managers, and individuals can prioritize and pursue career development. 

How companies can support career development

At the company level, investing in your employees’ career development just makes good business sense. Deloitte finds that companies with a strong learning culture are 92% more likely to develop novel products and processes, 52% more productive, 56% more likely to be the first to market with their products and services, and 17% more profitable than their peers. So how can you develop a strong learning culture? Here are a few ideas to consider. 

Offer learning and development opportunities

There are countless ways to provide learning and development opportunities to employees, whether it’s through formal training programs, access to courses, formal coaches or mentors, or discretionary budget that employees can put towards workshops, conferences, or learning materials. Make sure that all employees know what resources are available to them. You can include information about learning and development in new hire onboarding and encourage managers to regularly remind their direct reports about any benefits or resources you offer.

Encourage cross-team communication and collaboration

Learning from peers is one of the most common ways to develop new skills in the workplace. Give your employees the chance to learn from each other by encouraging cross-team communication and collaboration. You might create a Slack channel or offer workshops where employees can share resources or ask for help with a challenge they’re facing. This can be especially effective when you have a cross-section of people from different teams such as new managers or people looking to develop data literacy. 

Establish an internal transfer program

In high-growth companies, roles are dynamic and quickly change. While this creates an exciting work environment, it also means that people might find themselves in a role that’s not as aligned with their strengths and interests as they initially believed. You can boost retention by encouraging and facilitating internal transfers or assigning employees stretch projects that give them a chance to try out a different set of skills. If you already have an internal transfer program in place, regularly remind employees and managers that it’s available and share how they can apply.  

Train managers to be good coaches

Just as the nature of work has changed, the role of the manager has transformed as well. In the more rigid workplaces of the past, managers were often training their direct reports to move up the career ladder. But today’s managers are much more like coaches, guiding the process of self-reflection for their direct reports. Learning how to be a good coach is a skill that takes time to develop. Managers will also need to tailor their approach to career development depending on their direct reports’ experience and goals. Generally, more junior employees or those new to a field will need more structure while more experienced workers will have more agency in their career development. Consider how to support your managers so they can best support their teams. We’ll offer a few more concrete suggestions in the next section.

How managers can support career development 

Research shows that managers who give their team members responsibilities and tasks that align with their goals for the future are much more successful in building engaged teams. Let’s look at some specific tactics you can employ as a manager to facilitate these experiences for your team.

​​Have a career development conversation with your report 

A career development conversation should be open and exploratory; not prescriptive. It's about helping your report find the right fit, not just the next step on the career ladder. During a career conversation, you’ll do more listening and asking questions than you might be used to. This conversation is definitely a time to be curious, listen more, and talk less. For more on this topic, check out our Pyn on how to have a career development conversation with your report.

Coach your employee to the next career level 

Most companies have job levels that set the responsibility level and expectations for roles. Each level is typically associated with a salary range and a series of job titles. Job levels create a consistent language when it comes to promotions and career development, so as a manager you will likely field questions from your team about how to move from one level to the next. Levels often include a mix of general skills and more technical, job-related skills and expertise. Help your team member identify a few areas to focus on for the next quarter and try to assign specific tasks so you can check in on their progress during your next one-on-one. For more guidance on this topic, see our Pyn on how to coach your employee to the next career level.

Have a lightweight career conversation after a new hire’s first 90 days

Asking someone what they want to do with their career can be too big of a question. Sometimes people don’t know. And putting together a comprehensive and detailed career development plan is useful, but is often super time consuming and quickly forgotten about. You can start simpler with something like a “Love and Loathe” conversation, which is a practical and simple way to quickly understand your employee's interests and motivations. This is often the first step to guiding someone down a path of career fulfillment. During this conversation, you and your employee step back and identify what about their current role truly energizes them and what doesn’t. Instead of developing them for a different role, this exercise focuses on making adjustments to the scope of their current role. For more on the specifics of running this conversation, see our Pyn.

How you can take control of your own career development

While companies and managers have important roles to play in career development, as an individual, it’s critical to take control of your own career development since no one will be as invested in it as you are! Here are a few tactics to try.

Define your goals

Start with a few short-term goals that you can tackle in the next quarter or two and also consider a few longer-term ones. These don’t necessarily need to be career-focused checklist items like “get a promotion,” but can be more general like defining what your ideal day looks like, what kinds of projects you’d like to be working on, or what kind of impact you’d like to have on your company. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, that’s okay! Your first step can be to explore and learn more about your own preferences. Pro tip: Check out our Pyn on having a lightweight career conversation for some inspiration on the type of self-reflection that can help you get started. 

Check out the resources that are available to you 

Your company might provide learning and development benefits like access to online courses, coaching, or a stipend to spend however you’d like. There are also plenty of easily accessible options like TED talks, books, and local meetups. Product Leadership coach Petra Wille describes the “Learning Menu” as a pyramid, with free and low-cost options at the bottom of the pyramid and more expensive options at the top. When you’re in the early stages of learning and career development, it makes sense to start at the bottom of the pyramid. Once you’ve established some foundational knowledge and skills, you can invest in some of the “top of the pyramid” options like workshops, training, and coaching. 

Make the most of your relationships with mentors and managers 

Some companies offer formal mentorship programs, which can be a great way to learn more about how to navigate the working world and some of the challenges you’re likely to face. And since mentors tend to be outside your immediate team, you might find it easier to ask them for advice on handling specific situations with your manager or team members. But whether you have a formal mentor or not, your manager is the person you’re most likely to speak with about career development on a regular basis. If your manager isn’t bringing these topics up, don’t be afraid to initiate the conversation yourself! And for more advice on how to do this, see our Pyn on career development questions to ask your mentor or manager.