Do You Offer Career Advancement Opportunities?

Marcianne Kuethen

November 17, 2014

Are you in danger of losing some of your best talent? If you don’t think you are, perhaps a better question is, Does your company provide career advancement opportunities for your employees? And do you offer useful career planning tools? If you don’t, rest assured that you’re not alone. Information from the Towers Watson Global Workforce Study shows that less than half of employers have career advancement planning tools or opportunities to offer employees. Does this mean you can breathe easier?

Not if you’re planning to hire anytime soon. In order to attract good candidates, you’re going to want to have a good career management program in place. According to the study, “employers rank career management opportunities as the number one reason that employees would join a company, ahead of base salary and challenging work.”

Career advancement opportunities are also crucial for employee retention, says the study. While pay is the number one reason that employees leave an organization, the number two reason is the lack of career advancement opportunities. Roughly 4 in 10 employees surveyed believe they would have to join another company in order to advance their careers.

In some cases, that belief is well-founded. One company with whom we work realizes that its two-tiered structure will never be able to provide employees with career advancement opportunities. They have a small management team at the top, with lots of workers below who all do the same level of work and receive equal pay. With no middle management to which they can promote this many employees, the leadership expects employees to leave after about two years. But they’ve also made a conscious decision to pay their employees very fairly, treat them well, and factor employee turnover into the company’s budget.

What’s your strategy for employee retention? Do your employees believe they need to leave in order to advance their careers? The message from the study is urgent: If your organization offers career advancement opportunities, you’ll need to make them apparent and attainable for your employees. But if no advancement is possible, it’s time to come up with alternative ways to hang on to your best workers.

Click here for an easy way to boost employee morale!

By Marcianne Kuethen