Top tips for promoting career opportunities within your organisation
By Cindy Leung
Regardless of generational cohort or tenure, career opportunity within organisations has traditionally had a significant impact on employee engagement and retention. One of the primary reasons why people leave companies is lack of personal growth, job challenges and opportunity for career progression. The issue appears to be even more relevant today, as employees have more diverse job and career options (freelancing, telecommuting, job sharing) and increased mobility. The survey data we collected from over 2,700 organisations across a broad range of industries indicate that only 44% of employees agree that they are provided with sufficient career opportunities. There is clearly room for improvement in this area.
One obvious solution is to provide sufficient supervisory guidance and development opportunities that equip your employees with relevant skills and knowledge for their next jump. But what else could you do?
Research suggests that other HR practices may also influence the perception of available career options. For example, adjusting rewards and recognition based on changes in responsibilities and performance is likely to instil the belief that there is room for career growth, even for flatter organisations. Involving your employees in everyday decision making or organisation-wide projects is likely to enrich their roles and help them develop more insights into the organisation, and prepare them for more senior roles. It is also possible that the more employees think your organisation is successful and growing, the more likely they are to stick around anticipating a growth in career opportunities.
We tested these ideas by analysing employee survey data collected in 2014 from over 6,000 employees in seven large Australian organisations. Our findings were presented at the 2015 Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference in Melbourne.
What did we find?
Employees’ perceptions of career opportunities tend to be more positive when HR practices including learning and development, performance appraisal, fair rewards and recognition and employee involvement are better implemented. Not surprisingly, learning and development is the strongest predictor of positive career perceptions.
Rewards and recognition were not linked to career perceptions for all employees, but were particularly relevant for improving career prospects for men and older employees. Rewards and recognition may appear to be more important in men’s career perceptions because the society puts more pressure on them as breadwinners to earn a big paycheque or simply because there are more comparisons amongst men. Regarding the age difference, it is possible that older employees who are more settled in their careers may see rewards and recognition as strong indicators of career prospects, whereas younger employees who are still exploring their careers may consider them to be less important.
Interestingly, career perceptions were not affected by perceptions of current organisation success, but they were positively related to a strong focus on continuous improvement and innovation within the organisation. So employees can see more career opportunities in organisations that manage change well and are learning from their successes as well as mistakes.
The quality of supervision appears to have little to do with employees’ perception of career opportunities, and this is consistent with the other mixed findings reported in the literature. We need more research to find out under what conditions, and which aspects of supervision have an impact on career perceptions.
Top Tips
Provide ample ongoing opportunities for career planning and skill development, and regularly communicate internal job vacancies to staff
Link pay and recognition to responsibility and performance rather than titles alone
Ensure that your performance appraisal system is properly designed and consistently implemented and gives employees clear guidelines on how and what to improve on for career advancement
Involve employees in everyday decision making and organisation-wide projects to increase the scope and significance of their work
Regularly review and improve your organisation’s practices related to change management and innovation to promote perceptions about long-term sustainability and growth