In HR’s quest to prove ROI and tie itself to a company’s bottom line, there’s a lot of talk about best practices in hiring, onboarding and offboarding, creating and honing corporate culture, tending to the company’s brand proactively, and other issues that land squarely in HR’s wheelhouse. One issue that doesn’t get a lot of airplay, however, is career management.
Just as it’s vital to attract and hire the best people (an increasingly difficult task in this job seeker’s market), it’s also vital to keep them happy. And career pathing, illuminating the climb up the ladder for employees, is a great way to do that. But if the Workplace Health Survey by Mental Health America (MHA) is any indication, we’ve got a long way to go in the sometimes delicate dance of keeping employees.
MHA surveyed 17,000 employees across the U.S. about culture, stress, and other workplace issues. It found that a staggering 70 percent of them were actively looking for new job opportunities or thinking about it.
Diving deeper into the study, it gets even more bleak. Only 21 percent believe they’re paid what they deserve, and only 36 percent said they could rely on the support of supervisors and colleagues. Seventy-seven percent said skilled employees were not given proper recognition.
Alarm bells should be ringing throughout companies nationwide, and HR is the perfect department to answer that call.
One way to turn those stats around is to invest more time and effort into closing the loop on the employee performance management process. While most employees receive annual feedback on their performance and discuss development goals very little is done to support the employee in their effort to expand their skills and enhance competencies.
One devilishly simple but powerful way to get started, even if you don’t have a formal career management program in place right now is to ask all employees to do some thinking about where they want to be within your company over the next year. Have them write down that goal and include it as part of the annual performance review discussion. Then, have the employee and the manager commit to a six-month check-in where progress toward the goal is reviewed.
We’ve found that employees with a clear vision of an aspirational role or developmental goal are more motivated and more productive. Employers that empower their workforce in this way reap the benefits of a greater employee engagement.
According to a recent study, employees who have written goals and routine check-ins are as much as 78 percent more successful in achieving those goals.
GetFive’s unique approach is to combine planning and pathing tools with quality coaching support. Our planning process leverages our vast career management experience to create plans with real ownership and our coaching support is what separates our approach from generally underutilized software programs.
The benefits of our coaching-based approach can be seen in a recent study by HCI/ICF, interviewing more than 500 organizations. According to the study, coaching led to the following outcomes:
• 70% of organizations saw increased productivity
• 79% of organizations saw higher engagement levels
• 73% of organizations experienced a higher level of commitment
• 33% of organizations reported cost reductions
Bottom line: The right career management solution has a tangible ROI. Employees with clear goals invest in themselves and reach higher levels of productivity faster.
