Why should you build a career framework and offer career and growth opportunities?

The lack of career development and advancement opportunities was the number 1 reason for quitting one’s job during 04/21 and 04/22, according to McKinsey’sGlobal Attrition research (n= 13 382). The second reason was inadequate total compensation. These two reasons already provide the WHY for building career and growth paths for your organization. They are essential for attracting and retaining employees, keeping them skilled, and staying successful. All of these are also essential in improving your Employer Branding.

To stay successful in the fast-changing business environments, this is the perfect time to drill deeper into why you should be focusing on building career and growth paths for your people. This blog will guide you through the process and help you understand, why it is critical to start the work now.

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Why should you offer career paths to your people?

We learned from the McKinsey findings that missing career and advancement opportunities can and will drive your talents away and that’s already a good reason to start working on them. Other reasons are to help people understand, what is expected from them, what they need to work on to move forward, and what is needed to stay relevant and skilled.

When we talk about career and growth paths, we are referring to several different paths:horizontal (expanding or deepening one’s skills in their current role), vertical, up-, and reskilling paths. Each path will help individuals understand their growth opportunities and set clear goals and objectives for their professional development. This enables them to map out and achieve their goals and work towards their desired career trajectory and towards the organization's strategy.

Having a clear career path allows individuals to identify opportunities for advancementwithin their chosen field and organization. This includes identifying necessary skills and qualifications, as well as potential job roles and responsibilities that can lead to promotions and career growth.

Career paths can also help individuals develop personally by encouraging them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and work towards improving their skills andknowledge. This can lead to increased job satisfaction and a greater sense of fulfillment in their professional life.

A well-defined career path can provide individuals with a sense of job security,as they have a clear understanding of what they need to do to progress in theircareer and stay competitive in the job market.

Finally,career paths can lead to greater career satisfaction by helping individualsalign their professional aspirations with their personal values and interests.This can lead to a sense of purpose and fulfillment in their work.

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What are the consequences of missing growth and career advancement opportunities?

In addition to a higher churn, there are other consequences to not offering career paths. When people leave their employer, they feel that their career is stagnating, they’re frustrated and not getting compensated well enough. They might also fear that their market value is dropping rather than increasing. You don’t want your brand to reflect those, do you?

Without access to growth opportunities, employees may become stagnant in their roles, performing the same tasks daily without any new challenges or learning experiences. This can lead to boredom, disengagement, and a lack of motivation.

When employees are denied opportunities for advancement, they may become frustrated and disillusioned with their employer, leading to decreased job satisfaction and potentially, high turnover rates, as seen in McKinsey’s findings.

Advancement opportunities often come with increased salaries and benefits. Without access to these opportunities, employees may miss out on potential increases in their earnings and benefits, and they will start shopping for a salary increase from your customers or competitors.

According to GartnerTalentNeuron, skillsets per job profile are increasing at 10% each year. So, staying relevant in one’s current job requires can be seen as a career path –having visibility to the required skills needed to stay relevant and systematically developing them. Career advancement often requires new skills and knowledge development. Without these opportunities, employees may miss out on important learning experiences that could benefit them in the long run.

In today's fast-paced, constantly changing work environment, employees need to continually develop their skills and stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies. Without access to growth opportunities, employees may fall behind their peers and become less competitive in the job market.

Overall, missing growth and career advancement opportunities have negative impacts on both employees and employers, including decreased motivation, job satisfaction, and competitiveness, as well as potential turnover and lost opportunities for growth and innovation.

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Steps to Build a Career Framework

Now that we’ve identified why you should have and the consequences of not having career and growth paths, it’s time to get the "pencil and paper" out and start drawing the career framework that fits your organization. You can start out by building career frameworks for individual contributor and managerial paths. Start by follow these 6 steps:

1. Conduct a job analysis

2. Define job families

3. Establish job levels

4. Determine competencies

5. Define job profiles/roles

6. Establish career development paths

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Conduct a job analysis:

To create a career framework, you need to have a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each job within your organization. Start by conducting a job analysis, which involves identifying the key tasks, responsibilities, and qualifications required for each role.

Define job families:

Once you've completed the job analysis, you can start grouping them into job families. Job families are groups of jobs that share similar characteristics, such as required skills, experience, and responsibilities. This step will help you establish a clear structure for your career framework.

Establish job levels:

After defining your job families, you can establish job levels for each family. Job levels typically reflect the seniority of the role, with higher-level jobs requiring more experience, skills, and responsibilities. This step will help you establish clear career paths for employees within each job family but also moving from one job family to the next.

Determine skills and competencies:

Competencies are the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required for success in a particular job or level. Once you have established your job families and levels, you can identify the competencies required for each role.

Create job descriptions:

With the job families, levels, skills, and competencies defined, you can now create job descriptions for each role. These job descriptions should clearly outline the responsibilities, qualifications, and competencies required for each role, and they should be used to guide recruitment, performance management, and career development.

Establish career development paths:

Finally, you can use your career framework to establish clear career development paths for your employees. These paths will outline the skills and experiences required for employees to progress through the levels within each job family or from one job family to the next. They will provide a roadmap for employees to follow as they advance their careers.

Build transparency into salaries:

If you are in a country, industry or organization, where salaries or salary ranges are or are becoming transparent, go ahead and add them also to your framework. Transparent salaries will promote fairness, boosts morale, encourage productivity, and enhance recruitment.

Follow these 6 or 7 steps and you can create a comprehensive career framework that will guide your organization's talent management strategy, support your employees’ career development and keep them skilled and retained and your organization successful.

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Connect the dots

Building a career framework takes time and effort, but once it is done, it will help you build the career and growth paths relevant to your organization and employees. Connect the dots and make the different and diverse career paths visible for all.

After selecting their future path, the levels, competencies, behaviors, and skills will guide each employee in taking the needed steps in their personal growth, helping them reach their next level, whether it is staying relevant in their current role or moving along the career ladder to the next position.

A well-drawn-out and communicated career framework with diverse career and growth paths is a roadmap for career progression, retaining current talent, attracting new talents and staying relevant and successful.

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Talbit

Talbit can support you in building the career framework and visualizing the diverse growth opportunities to your people. You can save time and efforts by using the ready-made templates and getting a visual view of your current skills within minutes after onboarding.