The “career ladder” is broken. Here’s how to develop your employees instead.
In our 2024 L&D trend report, we identified a couple of seismic shifts taking place in the world of work: the usual suspects, AI and digital transformation, and the job market buckling under the ramifications of the economic slowdown of late 2023.
Amidst these vicissitudes, previously “in-demand” skill sets are quickly reaching the end of their shelf life. Already overwhelmed managers are struggling to handle heavier workloads, a new generation of workers with an all-new set of quirks, and a widespread waning of career ambitions.
In this setting, learning and development (L&D) is rightfully becoming a top priority, but another thing needs to change: we must stop thinking of employee development as happening vertically on a “career ladder.”
The “career ladder” is broken
These days, the conventional “career ladder” metaphor can only take employees so far before it breaks. The first problem with the ladder is that it only gives a small percentage of the workplace access to predictable career progression.
The even bigger problem is that it does not equip companies to get people rapid access to the skills the organization most needs in the midst of rapid growth and/or change.
But most employees still look for development opportunities in the old-school way: the “move up the ladder” mindset that frames growth as synonymous with a new title or promotion. As a result, even companies experiencing great growth and transformation often find that their people still don’t see employee training and development opportunities available.
If it doesn’t look like traditional “career progression,” all those growth opportunities remain undervalued at best and invisible at worst. This paradox results in a less agile and resilient company and threatens employee engagement and retention. When employees believe there is no longer room for progress at their company, motivation, productivity, and intent to stay plummet.
Your Employees Want To Grow – Here’s How To Support Them
A TalentLMS study of 1,000 employees working for U.S. companies found that 71% of employees would like to update their skills more often, and an overwhelming 80% want companies to invest more in upskilling and reskilling. Gen Z is very anxious about this: They worry that they can’t use their existing skill sets at work and feel they cannot control the next steps in their careers.
Instead of responding reactively to the perception of limited career growth opportunities (as most companies do), here’s how companies can strategically address the desire and need for developing employees:
Articulate Your Growth and Development Philosophy
The first step to improving the perception (and reality) of career growth at your company is getting explicit about your growth and development philosophy. Without this step, every employee will interpret it differently, making dissatisfaction and confusion inevitable.
A clear definition will help you recruit people who are bought into this view of growth. And best of all, it makes creating a career growth strategy possible. Share your definition early and often -- for example, during recruiting, onboarding, and performance reviews.
Here is a Sample Growth and Development Philosophy We Like:
Career growth at our company is not a ladder. It’s much more like a rock climbing adventure. We don’t offer predictable, linear paths because we’re constantly evolving as an organization. Instead, we invite everyone here to climb around and explore — collecting lots of transferable skills, experiences, and relationships along the way. We hope that you will apply these skills here within your role and as new opportunities open up, but we’re also excited that these skills will open new doors for you beyond our company too. We’ll promote opportunities for development often, and we also ask that you own your own development by seeking out ways to learn and grow that most interest you while also contributing to the company.
Dictionary moment: ‘Transferable skills’ are knowledge sets that can be used in multiple scenarios, including technical skills (like Excel and PowerPoint) and more conceptual skills (such as giving good feedback, strategic planning, or management). In short, these are skills that easily ‘transfer’ into multiple roles, goals, and situations. The greater a company's skill diversity, the greater its resilience.
Try it: As a thought exercise, jot down in 2-3 sentences describing what you believe your company’s growth and development philosophy is currently. Next, outline what you think the philosophy should look like.
Identify The Awareness Gaps in Your Current Development Opportunities
Once you’re clear on what career growth means at your company and how professional development for employees should look in action, it’s time to find out if people are aware of the development opportunities they already have.
One mistake companies tend to make is focusing their energy on creating more employee development opportunities. However, if employees aren’t aware of those opportunities, they can’t actually help them grow.
1. Check in on Your Employees’ Perceptions
To gauge that awareness, take a quick pulse on your employees’ Perceived Investment in Individual Development (PIED). Build a short survey using the following Gallup Q12 index questions:
Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?
2. Measure Participation
You can also measure participation in your existing employee development programs before attempting to iterate on them or create new ones. Are people utilizing them? Do they find them helpful? Is there evidence that these programs result in meaningful change?
Inclusion Bonus: Look at the patterns you extract around your PIED and participation data.
Are there particular demographics, departments, or roles that seem more or less satisfied?
Are there particular demographics, departments, or roles that seem more or less involved in existing programs?
Start with the quantitative data, then dig into qualitative responses about people's reasons for getting involved (or not) and how they learned about these opportunities.
Increase awareness of development opportunities
Once you understand the awareness gap at your company, it’s time to close it! Here are two strategies:
1. Use managers as your multipliers
Creating visibility is one of the easiest ways to increase awareness, and your managers are your best allies when it comes to scaling that awareness. Ensure managers have development conversations with their direct reports outside of just talking about promotions. Organize management development programs to teach them to help their team members extract learnings from their existing work, share feedback, and point their direct reports toward existing opportunities related to their interests, strengths, and gaps.
2. Demarcate in-role career growth:
Another great way to make people more aware of the career growth opportunities that exist at your company is to help them see the growth they’re already experiencing. Without this visibility, it’s easy to assume that getting a new job or job title is the only way to grow. For example:
Publicize successes often. If your company has a monthly all-hands meeting or newsletter, share examples of people who have developed new skills or achieved great results. Not only does this create a feeling of recognition, but it can also inspire other employees to pursue similar learning paths.
Train managers to speak in the ‘language of development.’ Managers should give feedback through the lens of growth and learning by labeling specific skills.
For example:
“I really see progress in your project management skills.”
“The way you facilitated that meeting shows you’re developing your organizational skills!”
Create learning extraction rituals. Develop a company-wide cadence of pausing in weekly one-on-ones (or at least once a month) to extract lessons learned and milestones reached. Managers can simply ask reflection questions, or you can go a step further by sharing an Individual Development Plan (IDP) template focused on learning from the past and making development commitments for the future.
Rethinking Employee Development
Ultimately, how people feel about development is almost as important as the development opportunities themselves — and the truth is, those opportunities are already all around us. In our current work environment, career paths must be nimble for companies and employees to succeed.
As your employees’ satisfaction with development increases, they'll be more motivated and empowered to do great work. You’ll have the necessary skills on your team to reach organizational goals, all while developing a reputation as a company that invests in its employees.
Want to invest in training? Our LifeLabs Learning workshops have got fantastic results for Fortune 500 companies (hear it from our clients!) Set up a quick conversation with one of our consultants to explore options for live workshops.
If you’re not looking at a private program, get LifeLabs Learning memberships for your teams!
Learning & Development Toolkit
Set up your Learning & Development strategy for success with these three tools: L&D Philosophy Template, L&D Curriculum Builder, and the L&D Calendar Template
