How Can You Encourage Your Employees to See Their Future Within Your Organization? Internal Career Pathing is Key to Retention

As recruiters and career coaches, we’ve found that the most common reason individuals decide to leave an organization is lack of career growth potential. That’s particularly troubling in light of the fact that a significant percentage of these individuals were employees that the organization had hoped to retain– a loss magnified by the high cost of employee turnover. What contributes to this missed opportunity?

Sometimes it’s the company’s linear approach to career advancement– a ladder that doesn’t allow for employees to explore other functional areas, develop new skills or flex their professional muscles in new ways.  Often, it’s because managers don’t have so-called “Stay Conversations” and don’t know how to engage in those conversations. And, most frequently, companies simply haven’t proactively addressed the issue.

We've seen some best-in-class companies take an intentional approach to ward off these scenarios, and there's a lot to learn from their experiences. Internal Career Pathing describes the way in which organizations can design and implement a programmatic solution intended to empower and encourage employees to take an intentional approach to advancing their career within the organization. 

Cargas, a 200+ employee-owned software company based in Lancaster, PA, has the concept hard-wired into their business. Heidi Bianco, VP of Human Resources,  explains: “As opposed to a traditional career ladder framework, our career pathing philosophy, which our founder, Chip Cargas, envisioned, places the responsibility on the individual to be fully engaged and to take ownership of their career, clarifying skills and abilities, [utilizing the tools we provide] to link to different opportunities.” 

Heidi further explained that intentionality is an essential part of the process as individual employees are encouraged not to just “climb the ladder,” but gain self-knowledge (about strengths, non-strengths, interests, etc.) and actively/proactively explore how to leverage and lean into those strengths as well as exploring new skills and abilities. When fully realized, the concept not only allows employees to do what they’re good at, but to evolve and grow in ways that are meaningful to both themselves and the organization.

For other organizations, career pathing isn’t formalized; rather it’s a management philosophy, giving employees latitude to explore new areas of the company and to take on developmental assignments. David Iankelevich, a management consultant and advisor to start-ups and scale-ups, notes, “One of the companies that does it really well is Muck Rack, a leading platform for the PR industry. They’ve been so mindful about their internal process and mapping growth paths for employees. They’ve given people who may not have been otherwise completely qualified for a role a shot to take it on– as a stretch opportunity.” 

Muck Rack’s Chief Partnership Officer, Natan Edelsburg concurred: “We focus on potential, soft/transferable skills and enthusiasm over someone having a specific work history. For instance, one team member moved from Customer Success to Marketing and another from Customer Success to Revenue Operations, [both of them retained, and now, thriving and contributing to the company in their new roles.]” 

“Career Pathing is a concept that’s doable– and it’s an easy win,” said David Iankelevich. “However, sometimes uncomfortable things come up in those conversations and not every manager is prepared to handle that. So there’s another level of coaching for managers that may be required.” He added,  “Of course, you have to have paths for people to pursue. And you’ve got to have manager follow-through: You can have a great initial conversation, but  there’s got to be an embrace of this philosophy from the top down with corporate leadership and HR support.” 

Chelsea Lee, Senior People Development Manager at Cockroach Labs, a 500+ person global software development company based in NYC, noted, “Employees may know what they want, but management needs to support that process. It’s important to note that not all employees are seeking to climb the career ladder, however, they may want to develop certain skills or branch out to work on collaborative projects. Managers have to understand what motivates each individual, while sometimes growing them in ways they may not have considered or expected.”

Start-ups have the additional challenge of not knowing what their talent needs may be, nor what opportunities may or may not exist for employees as they continue to ramp. Coaching management to have open dialogue and ongoing career conversations with direct reports lets employees know that they are valued– and that’s key to retention.

So how do you avoid your employees jumping ship due to a lack of growth potential? The consensus among the experts is that you must be intentional and proactive: implement programs that cultivate talent development, provide your managers coaching around having future-oriented conversations with their teams, and support the efforts from all levels of the organization. 

CFW Careers and our coaching partner Know & Flourish are focused on developing solutions to these issues by designing and implementing Career Pathing programs, and providing essential coaching to managers and employees. Contact Rachel Fagnant-Fassler rachel@cfwcareers.com or Cynnie King cynnie@cfwcareers.com to learn more.