Organizations that have made a strategic investment in employee development, Gallup finds, report 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain their employees. And there’s no better person positioned to help employees invest in their career development than the manager.
The manager’s role in career development is not a new subject. For years, we’ve known that a manager plays an outsized impact in the employee experience. And we also know that the same reason why many employees choose to take a job is also the same reason that they choose to leave – for career growth.
But while these statistics are not new, organizations traditionally have not helped their managers see the value in even talking to their employees about their career growth, or actively investing in it.
Public-opinion research company The Harris Poll administered a survey using responses from 1,433 full-time employees at 310 workplaces. Nearly all of the companies surveyed said they provide career-development tools. Only one in four employees surveyed, however, felt the employer helped them grow “very well.” Around 77% of employees feel “on their own” to develop their careers at the company.
But we do know that if managers do take an active role in their employee’s career development, that it can benefit both the employee and the company.
In research from 15Five, 82% of employees who have conversations more than once a month are highly engaged, compared to the 53% who only talk about their careers once a year or less. That’s an entire 29 point difference in engagement favorability. And Culture Amp found that from their data, the top 3 areas where employees felt managers could improve were all related to how a manager can help an employee develop in their career.
Many People Are Still Figuring Out How to Manage Their Career (And that’s okay!)
In my experience advising organizations and leaders around career related topics, there is absolutely an interest in employees who want to develop and grow their careers. In addition to this, it’s also true that many people struggle with being self-directed on this.
Oftentimes, when I ask leaders how they learned to manage their career, they often say things like “I learned by trial and error, “I’m not sure” or “I’m still figuring it out.” This is not a criticism, if anything, it’s an affirmation of just how challenging it can be to tackle this topic and build the career navigation skills you need to feel confident in you growing your career on your own terms.
While this is a worthwhile challenge to tackle, this is also difficult for another reason: These same leaders are not only responsible for figuring out how to manage their own careers, but they also play a critical role in supporting and co-facilitating the career growth of their employees.
This results in a sort sort of a domino effect – If you have managers who are not confident in their abilities to manage their own careers, and then you put them in a position to support the careers of their direct reports but they don’t know how to do that effectively, it’s easy to see how we get to a point where many people don’t feel supported in their careers.
Conversely, when you have a manager who both knows the steps to take to manage their career, and is actively talking and advocating for it for their employees, it can inspire their employees to do the same.
How Managers Can Play a Role in Developing Their Employees Careers
After working with a number of organizations on defining the role, expectations and behaviors for managers for their employee career development, I’ve come up with five behaviors/roles that managers can play to help their employees in their career growth.
#1) The Purpose Enabler
Each individual employee has a choice to decide what kind of role purpose and meaning play in their work life. For those who want purpose, a manager can assist or enable an employee to develop their own unique view on their purpose and to help them find that in their everyday role. One of the benefits of a manager is that they have two vantage points – altitude (the ability to see up and down) and width (the ability to see across) Using those vantage points, a manager can help an employee identify and connect that employee’s individual purpose to discrete tasks, projects, and actions in their job that help the business in a positive way.
#2) The People Connector
Organizations are just a bunch of people working toward shared goals. But since our work and career success is a team sport not an individual one, relationships matter. Using their own social and career capital, a manager can facilitate introductions to new people and help their direct reports build social capital that can help an employee gain additional opportunities they would not otherwise have, enhance their personal brand, and grow both in the short and long term. This also helps an employee improve their own engagement and connection to their job.
#3: The Role Redesigner
A manager’s job is to get their team to an agreed upon outcome. It’s upon the manager to design and assign “who” does what and certainly guide how it gets done. One way that managers can do this is through re-designing an employee’s role.
By using principles of role design, a manager can make choices about the tasks, assignments, projects that an employee can do that is more appealing to them, or that leverages the employee’s strengths or interests. By first asking and over time learning what makes an employee light up, and what gives them energy or what leverages their strengths, and using that to inform how you assign work, a manager can ensure the right people are working on the right projects.
#4) The Opportunity Creator
A manager has perspective and experience their employees may not have. They can use this to spot and create opportunities for employees, especially ones they either cannot see or could not get on their own. By providing a stretch project, writing a recommendation for a leadership program or helping them tackle an exciting new project, a manager can use their power to create opportunities for their employees.
This is also why, helping, mentoring, and coaching employees in their careers is a critical element of equity and inclusion. Being intentional about how you facilitate opportunities, especially for those who traditionally have been left out of them, is a way to ensure that everyone has a shot at career mobility.
#5) The Slingshot
In some cases, a manager may not be able to offer something that is relevant to the employees growth. In these instances, a manager can set an employee up for success by offering a “slingshot,” or assisted acceleration in finding the next best opportunity, internally or externally of the organization. This could mean
Very few people come into the workforce understanding the mindset and habits for proactively and strategically managing their career. Furthermore, the first-line manager is often the critical connection point that an employee has with their organization. Making sure that managers have the right toolkit for how they can help their employees grow in their careers is critical to any organization that is serious about linking career development and internal mobility to improving engagement and retention.
Nobody goes to work wanting to do a poor job, or wanting to be disengaged. However, many things often get in the way of employees and their ability to do their best work.
When manager’s take responsibility for enabling the potential of their employees to help them perform and grow their career, employees are more likely to be engaged, and have the ability to grow and evolve to thrive in today’s world of work.
If you’re a people manager or leader, consider these as things you can do for your team today, and if you’re a leader in talent or leadership development, consider this a starting point for defining behaviors and expectations for your managers in your career development strategy.