16th March 2022

Career Progression Plan for Employers

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Knowing the importance of career progression is vital for your career development. But when you are focusing on your own career progression plan, it can be easy to forget about the development of your employees.

As an employer or manager, it is your responsibility to offer career development opportunities to help your employees reach their ultimate goals.

This is particularly important if you are looking to boost employee retention in your workplace. If you are wondering how to enhance career development in your company, then look no further.

We have developed the ‘5 Golden Rules’ of career development strategy that you can encourage your employees to use to enhance their career progression.

To give you a helping hand, our recruitment experts have given useful insight on how to optimise your career progression.

“Career progression is becoming increasingly important to career professionals today. Statistics have shown that 87% of millennials say that professional development or career growth opportunities are very important. Whether this has come from higher levels of competition, economic factors, or employment rates, we do not know. But what we do know, is how you can manage your own career development with our 5 golden rules” – Nathan, Recruitment Consultant

5 Golden rules of career progression:

1. Create a career progression plan to achieve your goals

Creating a strong career progression plan is imperative to helping you achieve your goals.

Suggesting that staff write out tasks that they have achieved, what you would like to do for your company, and where they visualise themselves currently is a great way to envision your career progression.

Creating a plan will also help them to understand exactly what they need to do to achieve business goals, and see realistically when can be achieved.

Having a career progression plan enables you to understand and visualise the career development stages that your employee is working towards.

You will be able to understand exactly what they want out of their role as well as prove to you that they’re willing to put in the effort to pursue it.

2. Develop a timeline and include milestones

Timelines are a good way to boost productivity in your career development.

If you have a deadline for when you want to achieve something, then you are more likely to plan your day-to-day workload around it and ensure that you prioritise your career development.

As succession planning can span over a long time, it is important to remind yourself of deadlines and milestones so it doesn’t get forgotten in the hurry of day-to-day working life.

Milestones are also important to reward yourself. You might have one big end goal, but it is still a great achievement to get a step closer.

You should reward yourself accordingly for your efforts, take some time off work, or treat yourself to something you’ve been saving up for.

3. Utilize your opportunities

Succession planning takes place every day in your workplace. As an employer you should be keen to help build your employees’ skills and experience, as it is in both of your interests; they are interested in progressing while you are keen to retain their employees.

Building up the skillset of your employees will enable them to be innovative and knowledgeable about what they can bring to the company.

Remind them about opportunities at work. Is there a new project coming up that they might want to be a part of? Encourage them to voice their interest.
Many employers nowadays offer training to their employees. If you think there is a training that might be beneficial to you and your company, ask your employees if they would like to take part in more career development opportunities.

4. Do more than your job

As a manager, you should be there to help your career progression. You can do this by being proactive and offering your employees career progression examples and development strategies. This is something that will help you to be a good manager and benefit your employees.

Offer work shadowing opportunities. Shadowing a role in a different department or one to which they might like to progress, will help them learn the skills they might need to include in their career progression plan.
Attend training days/ programmes with your employee. Attending a variety of work events such as a morning breakfast, evening seminars or all-day events is a great opportunity to network, get your name out there, and introduce them to roles which they might like to progress into.
Make the most out of your appraisals and reviews. Use this time to your advantage and ask them to prepare a career progression plan. It is likely that they will be interested but potentially unsure how to get started, so offer some valuable advice on succession planning and career development examples from your own experience.

5. Write it down

Encourage your employee to write down their career progression. Firstly, you will be able to go back and reference their plans, remind yourself of what their long-term and short-term goals are, and edit them accordingly.

Secondly, you will be able to see clearly how far they have progressed, making it easier to reward them when they reach each milestone, which is important for employee retention.

Finally, it is a great way for your employee to present their succession plan to you, as you will be able to clearly see their goals; making it easier for both parties.

Encourage your employees to stand out by:

Doing more than their job: Doing charity work, attending company events, or taking part in on-campus recruiting is a good way to meet senior people and increase your chances of getting their contributions noticed.
Become an expert: Encourage your employee to master a new skill. This will be beneficial to the company if they know about a certain topic and are able to learn the skills, write about it and speak about their experience and knowledge.
Seek a mentor: Seek a mentor from a different department. Ask for advice on their managing style, how to enhance career development and the importance of career development at your company.
Give feedback: After a presentation or a piece of work, give your employee feedback. Keep it simple, listen and thank them for their hard work.
Encourage them to self-evaluate: Know your strengths and weaknesses. Get them to write down 10 things that they do in their role, and highlight which ones they class as a strength and which ones you class as a weakness. Then try and work out, and offer advice and opportunities on how to improve on the aspects they aren’t as comfortable with in the most pro-active way.

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