Featured image by DISRUPTIVO on Unsplash
Perhaps the most comfortable and natural way for workers to build a career is to seek out employee development within the company. However, it is often easier for employees to enter the labor market than it is to get promoted within their company. As a result, the company loses loyal and talented employees and managers have to spend time and money replacing them.
Why does an employee who copes well with their tasks and has the potential for growth leave a company? Quite often, it is because the employee sees few opportunities for career development in their current job.
Does Your Company Promote Employee Development?
Surprisingly, there are still many companies where internal transitions are not welcomed and employee development is stifled. There may even be a ban on managers poaching employees between departments. As a result, heads of departments try to avoid conflict situations, and employees do not have a chance to move up.
Talented employees then depart the company, leaving only those who hang onto their jobs. Often, this can be due to an employee’s inability to find a more suitable position elsewhere. These employees are used to staying in their “comfort zone,” and they are doing well at their current salaries. As a manager, you can look into trying paycheck stub templates free. A good examination of each employee’s pay stub will help you calculate each person’s salary, including taxes and other deductions.
RELATED ARTICLE: MANAGING AN EMPLOYEE WITH ADDICTION
Supervisors Don’t Want to Lose Talented Employees
Supervisors vigorously promote the culture of closure and even discourage employee development. Of course, every manager is happy when an employee performs tasks competently. Naturally, they will never be ready to let that employee go. The fear of facing the need to find a new specialist wins out. Therefore, managers prefer to take ready-made specialists from the market rather than develop their own. Under such conditions, the company does not create processes that contribute to employees’ professional growth.
RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO STAND OUT AMONG YOUR COLLEAGUES
Even in companies that do focus on workers’ development, an employee might fear that they will not get a hoped-for new position. Therefore, they hesitate to spoil relations with their current manager. Meanwhile, in fact, the manager might have already started looking for that person’s replacement, and the employee could find themselves out of a job despite their best efforts. For this reason, some employees come to believe that it’s better for them to remain within a closed market job. They hesitate to search elsewhere, even within the company. Simply put, they stay in their comfort zone.
In some companies with a hierarchical structure, the CEO sometimes closes in on all employee development issues. Sometimes, the head executive even makes decisions without informing the heads of subdivisions. This approach demotivates line managers and leads to hidden conflicts within the team. No one is likely to want to build a relationship with an employee the CEO imposed on them.
Keep Your Best Employees by Offering Opportunities for Development
If you don’t want to lose talented employees, build a culture that gives tools for internal development.
- Establish employee advancement as a value within the company and continually support the process.
- Describe the process for transition to employees. This should be a step-by-step guide that tells employees whom they should go to and how and who makes job offers. It’s important to make the transition clear and accessible. A process that drags on for months leads to a loss of motivation. When this happens, you risk losing valuable employees.
- Post job openings on your internal portal, on social media, and in chat rooms. Do a weekly mailing and hang job posters in your kitchens and break rooms.
- Make it a rule that internal job candidates are considered first. For example, for the first two weeks, only post the vacancy internally.
- Develop career matrices. They will help both managers and other employees. For example, employees can use these as reference points that tell them in what direction they can develop and what knowledge and skills they need to have.
RELATED ARTICLE: HOW EMPLOYEE BENEFITS CAN GROW YOUR BUSINESS
- Assist with employee development by holding regular one-on-one meetings. Assist each employee with making a career plan.
- Pay small bonuses periodically. For example, when you give an employee $100 or more as a bonus, it will motivate them. In the process, you make a nice gesture toward person who did a little more than their norm. This represents only a little cash out of your pocket, but an employee will appreciate it nonetheless.
- Implement an internship process wherein an employee can perform tasks in a new role for two or three months. If they achieve results, they can move to that new position. At the same time, give them an opportunity to stay in their previous post if the work turned out to be different than the candidate imagined or if their performance at the new level was below expectations.
- Develop your managers not just as good managers but as mentors.
Show Employees You Value Them by Offering Ample Opportunities for Career Development
Employees are not your property; they are people. Therefore, they always have choices. They can either stay within your company or move on to another company where career development is a part of the culture.
Sometimes managers’ desire to keep employees in their current roles can lead to their departure. It is important to monitor employee motivation and continually build an open relationship. Indeed, an employee should feel safe in telling their manager that they want to grow. Such an open relationship will help you ensure the succession process and keep the best people within your company.