What Is Career Pathing? Create a Plan for Internal Success
Bradford R. GlaserEstablishing career goals gives employees a roadmap for their future at your organization. By mapping out their careers, employees can remain motivated, engaged, and productive as they work toward their ultimate career objectives.
Employers should take an active role in helping their team members plan their careers, as doing so benefits not only employees but also businesses. This allows them to increase employee retention rates and encourage long-term loyalty.
Here’s a closer look at what career pathing is and how you can create a plan for internal success and long-term growth.
- Leverage employee strengths
- Create a career path for each employee
- Show appreciation and recognition
Table of Contents
What Is Career Pathing?
Career pathing is the process of mapping out an employee’s career at their current organization. It answers the classic interview question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Career pathing helps employees evaluate their skills, interests, and experience to identify internal advancement opportunities. This process allows employees to plan their careers, starting from entry-level positions and progressing to leadership roles in their department. Career paths can also focus on lateral movement instead of vertical advancement.
Career pathing is an essential process for personal and professional growth.
Advantages of Career Pathing for Employers
By taking an active role in helping your employees plan their career paths, you can achieve several great benefits that improve workplace performance.
Employee Retention
Retaining high-level talent is critical to maintaining great workplace productivity. Career pathing prevents employees from feeling stuck in their roles or becoming uninterested in their work. Instead, they remain focused on achieving the career goals that they have established.
A well-thought-out career map encourages employees to pursue internal advancement opportunities rather than seeking new positions at other companies.
Prepare for the Future
Career pathing creates a plan for internal success. By gaining insight into your employees’ skills and abilities, you can identify which employees are best suited for more advanced positions that will need to be filled when current employees eventually retire.
Employee Engagement
Career pathing is a great tool for keeping your team motivated, happy, and engaged in their work.
Effective career pathing practices give employees valuable insights into their competencies and potential career opportunities. Knowing what opportunities lie ahead encourages employees to remain dedicated as they work towards the future.
Employers can take this a step further by offering training opportunities to help employees develop new skills, which help them get closer to achieving their goals.
Career Pathing Benefits for Employees
Career pathing doesn’t just help employers; it also provides several great benefits for employees working at your organization, including:
- A sense of job security. Career pathing gives employees a sense of job security, as it signals that you want to build a long-term working relationship with them. This helps employees remain engaged as they aren’t concerned about their future at your company.
- Creating a plan for advancement. Employees want to know their jobs aren’t dead ends. By mapping out their futures, employees know they have something to work towards and won’t feel they need to look for external opportunities for advancement.
- A sense of trust. Employees need to trust their employers, and career pathing builds that trust by giving them a clear idea of where they stand and how they can continue to progress.
Career pathing is a mutually beneficial process that helps employees remain engaged and motivated while boosting productivity and employee retention for employers.
Career Pathing Tips
To achieve these benefits, it is important to approach career pathing effectively and thoughtfully.
When working with employees to map out their careers, employers should keep these key tips in mind:
- Identify and analyze employee skills and capabilities that can contribute to their long-term career goals.
- Identify ways in which employees can develop new skills that will help them achieve their goals (e.g., employee training, attending industry conferences, etc.).
- Establish clear internal career paths that demonstrate opportunities for advancement.
- Continue to invest in employee development to help your team achieve their career goals.
- Conduct regular employee assessments to evaluate their progress and help them identify areas for improvement.
- When applicable, give employees access to mentors who can support their career development.
Career pathing doesn’t have to be difficult; by keeping these tips in mind, you can set your employees and your organization up for success.
Improve Employee Engagement with HRDQ
Career pathing is an important tool for increasing employee engagement, retention, and loyalty. By implementing this process in your organization, you can help employees plan for the future, benefiting themselves and your organization.
At HRDQ, we offer high-quality education and training resources to help employers improve the overall performance and productivity of their businesses. Employee Engagement is a Reproducible Training Library course that helps employers improve engagement through career pathing and other important management tactics.
