If there’s anything that attracts employees and makes them stay, apart from a fat paycheck, it’s career advancement. This is true for any company, whether you’re running a custodian service franchise opportunity or a digital marketing firm. It’s evidenced by a recent study featured in the Harvard Business Review.
Researchers asked employees about how important attributes like the quality of management, compensation, interest in work, growth opportunities, and more affected their decision in choosing a new job. More than half of millennials answered that room to grow was extremely important to them.
Your employee’s advancement is beneficial to your company in the long term as well. For one, it increases their satisfaction with their career, so they’re more engaged and motivated, according to UC Berkeley’s Guide to HR management. However, you can’t just promote every worker and call it a day. So, how can you support the career development of your employees?
Plan Their Development
It’s essential for every manager to have a development plan for their employees. Sit down with them and list down the career goals they want to achieve in the following years. It’s important to do this one-on-one, as every worker has unique achievements they want to attain. Next, work out a timeline. Ask them when they want to achieve their goals and how they want to do it. Guide them to ensure that their goals are achievable within the time span they give.
Create Performance Goals
Once you know what your workers want to achieve in the future, it’s time to discuss what they need to do to get their promotion, raise, or even new title. This should be based on measurable metrics like productivity and quality scores. These provide objective proof of your employees’ progress.
These numbers also make your employees feel accountable for their advancement, as they can look at it and see if they’re on track and things they need to improve on, if any. Review their performance with them every month to assess any roadblocks they may have from reaching their goals.
Provide the Necessary Training
With career advancement comes new and often more difficult challenges. As such, you need to provide your promotion prospects with the necessary training to make sure they’re ready to take those challenges on. Take an hour or two off their regular schedule to provide training sessions focused on the duties of their future role.
If you don’t want them to lose out on productivity, set up a Learning Management System or LMS. An LMS lets you deploy a complete training course online. Your employees can easily access this system any time to read up on training materials and answer the necessary exams.
Career advancement is necessary to keep great employees engaged. As such, you shouldn’t hesitate to develop and promote your department’s achievers, regardless of their age and experience. These suggestions help you create a solid career development path for your workers. Remember to give them all the guidance they need throughout their advancement and you’ll be rewarded with a highly-skilled and satisfied workforce.