The question of how to foster employee career growth should be a top priority for managers and HR managers with a well-rounded view of their work. After all, we must recognize that one of the aspects most valued by any employee when choosing a company to work for, or deciding to stay with the one they already work for, is the possibility of a promising career development perspective.
Companies have an essential role in providing valuable and fulfilling employee career growth while they have them on board and afterward. They can encourage them to shine wherever they work once their time with the company has come to a natural end.
How can companies foster employee career growth?
Making it happen depends on many factors, always considering that employee career growth within a company and throughout their career is rarely a straight, easy or quick path. Some companies take these factors into account in their employee assistance programs. In any case, those organizations interested in attracting, developing, and retaining the best talent by helping their employees grow professionally seek to understand how to help employees develop their careers and, to do so, can take certain aspects into account.
1. Consider the employee’s overall journey
First, helping employees develop a promising career can be done by taking care of that person’s journey in all its phases, including the phases of a selection process, to generate a good employee experience. Career development within a company starts from the very beginning and should last until the end.
Unfortunately, the daily demands or the lack of expert support that some HR managers have in carrying out their tasks mean that these nuances should be addressed. As a result, the idea of employee career growth is reduced to the promotional path that an employee has in front of them, which basically consists of moving up the hierarchy.
However, each phase of an employee’s life cycle within a company has different requirements because the employee is different when they arrive, progressively increase their seniority, and when they leave, perhaps after several years. Career development within a company is not only about promotion but, more importantly, about growth.
2. Strengthen skills training
Secondly, to find out how to help employees develop a professional career, it is necessary to encourage formal training to acquire soft and hard skills and enhance the employee benefits strategy.
Learning processes within teams can be enhanced in a more or less structured way and occur from the top down (all employees appreciate having a manager to learn from) and also between colleagues belonging to the same hierarchical level. This way, employees can work together as much as possible with people with whom they connect positively emotionally and from whom they can learn. These processes must be complemented by appropriate team development.
3. Prevent glass ceilings
At ifeel, we also believe that it is important for companies to take appropriate measures to prevent the appearance of glass ceilings due to different factors related to diversity within the team, such as gender identity, ethnicity, or others.
These undesirable phenomena for the proper functioning of companies and, of course, for the well-being of staff members at work can hinder and even prevent employee career growth within the company. Any corporate well-being program must prevent them since they undermine work motivation and facilitate the talent drain of employees who perceive it impossible to develop a good professional career within the company successfully.
4. Encourage mentoring within the team
Finally, and in line with what we have mentioned about having peers and managers to learn from, there is something more concrete that can help employees develop a career. Employees value assertive mentoring that allows them to broaden their career development perspective beyond the margins of the company they currently work for.
Therefore, for proper professional development, it is necessary to consider the employee’s biography as a whole and the exploration of other sectors of their interest, in addition to functions, responsibilities, or skills that could be added to their background and that are not limited only to what they have already done or what they already know.
If the relationship with your direct manager is based on trust, they can provide valuable mentoring. However, any other member of the team or close to it can provide, from their wisdom and experience, a very valuable accompaniment in this direction.
Supporting emotional well-being in organizations
At ifeel, we believe in people’s importance for companies since these are only viable with a motivated team, proper training, and support from the company to develop employee career growth. The psychological well-being of these people also depends on this.
To convey this idea to corporations, our team of psychologists, experts in well-being at work, has created an emotional well-being service for companies that relies on a company’s entire team, including those responsible for Human Resources.
These managers are crucial in the professional biography of the people who make up their teams, in addition to performing a fundamental role in ensuring that the company’s final results are as close as possible to the needs identified and the objectives set. Here lies the importance of supporting them in properly guiding employees’ life cycle and ensuring that it is as fruitful as possible.
That’s why, through our service, you can receive personalized, data-driven advice on improving your teams’ psychological well-being. Are you part of your organization’s Human Resources department? Try our program now and find out how it could help you.
In addition, this program offers all employees a complete mental health care service that they can access in different ways depending on their needs. Those who wish can access an online therapy service with one of our psychologists, specialized in cases like theirs, or interact with one of our professionals to receive emotional support in a more specific circumstance that concerns them.
Of course, in our Resources section, you can find different materials, such as podcasts, HR Guides on various topics (e.g., employee experience or how to design a good HR strategy), or interviews with important HR positions. In addition, we have a Psychosocial Risk Factors Template, which you can use to comply with the requirements of the Labor Inspectorate.
We hope you found this post on employee career growth interesting. If you would like more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, just ask us, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
