Most successful leaders and managers know how they can contribute to the career growth of their employees. They know that if they help their employees build their careers, it will also help the organization as a whole in many ways. It’s a win-win situation for all the parties concerned.
Employers should always put employee career development at the forefront, if not the talented employees feel that they are not being valued enough which would lead to a high turnover rate. According to Benepass, employee development becomes smoother and more cost-effective when you attract top talent excited to explore professional growth. Showing that you back your employees to progress would help them improve their productivity and the company growth as well.
Why should employers guide their employees in their careers?
When a young professional joins an organization, he/she will have lots of expectations in mind. Of all the expectations, career advancement is probably the topmost along with the monetary rewards. Investing in your employees would help to:
- Retain the top talent: When you invest in your talented employees and help them grow in their careers, you build an emotional connection with them. Because you helped them build their careers, they prefer your company over another company which might offer them a better salary. They would always choose you because you built an emotional bond by helping them thrive in their careers. This helps to build a loyal employee base who are willing to do anything for the growth of the organization.
- Helps the organization to grow: When you are investing in the growth of your employees, you are inadvertently helping the organization to grow as well. If the productivity and skills of the employee improve, it eventually helps the organization grow its revenue. With a talented pool of employees, your organization can achieve great results.
- Builds a strong brand value: When you invest in the growth of your employees, it sends out a message that the organization is employee-friendly and values them. This helps to build a strong brand image in the market which will help you get more customers and clients. Also, young talent would also love to work in your organization seeing all the employee benefits that you provide.
Along with these, there are countless benefits if you invest in the growth of your employees. But, how do you actually go about it and help your employees grow? To help you better with it, we have listed down a few ways through which employers can help their employees grow in their careers.
1)Know your employee’s aspirations:
You cannot just release a generalized career development plan every year, you need a personalized approach to find out what the majority of your employees want. Communicate with your employees regularly especially if you are handling a remote team to find out what are their aspirations and career goals. Managers’ support would help your team feel valued and bring the best out of them.
Ask your employees how they are visualizing themselves with the company and find out what all resources they need to achieve them. Clear and selfless communication from the manager about career advancements would help your workers feel more engaged.
2)Offer training opportunities:
To upskill your employees, you need to offer them training opportunities. Even if the training budget is leaner, you can offer quality employee training by leveragin LMS software. A learning management system helps to offer training with minimal costs and maximum returns. Many learning management systems even offer free trials before you take the subscription so that you can get familiar with the tool.
Along with helping them nurture their specific skills, it’s also important for them to keep up with what’s happening in the wider industry. Host lunch-and-learn sessions featuring internal or external guests to give your employees a wider perspective on various topics. Also, give your employees the opportunity and time to involve in events related to their industry.
3)Mentor your employees:
Every now and then, arrange a formal mentoring session for your employees which would help them to make personal and professional growth. Mentoring helps all people involved in it. New and inexperienced employees can gain valuable insights from seasoned employees, and seasoned employees can gain fresh perspectives from the younger lot. This would be a good exchange of knowledge, insight, and perspectives.
4)Encourage smart work:
Hard Work is a must for advancements in a career but smart work is also equally important. Encourage your employees to channel all their energies on how to make things easy, simple, and clear. Let them figure out innovative ways with which they can finish their tasks more efficiently. This will leave them more time and energy which would be helpful to focus on career development tasks.
5)Switch employee roles:
If your employees do the same job for years together, they hit a plateau, and the job excitement also slowly dies. So, try to bring in a little variety in jobs but are related to their department. This will help your employees gain new skills and have an overall and complete perspective on each job position in their department in the long run. This would also bring some variety into their job and add a new skill set to their arsenal. Also, when your employees are multi-dimensional, they can finish certain tasks if anyone in the department takes sudden leave.
6)Help them find their passion:
Help your employees find out their true passion so that they can excel in that path. They should find out what they’re good at and then build their career around it. Self-awareness is the key to growth. Once they find their passion, help them build leadership skills, courage, compassion, authenticity, and other professional capabilities which would help them grow in their career.
7)Create a development path:
To achieve any goal, you need proper direction and planning and then comes the execution. To make your younger generation of employees future leaders, create a plan to achieve it. It can help your employees to motivate themselves to reach their goals because they have proper direction and planning in place. Make career advancement a high priority and you will build a talented and skilled workforce.
Conclusion:
To wrap up, organizations need to have a specific plan on how they would help their employees grow in their careers. Managers should consider this seriously and lay out a plan that will benefit the employee and the organization in the long run. We hope this article helps you to find ways to help your employees progress in their careers.
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