The key to retaining talent is career progression. Here are three ways to start

Undoubtedly, the massive shift to remote work during the global pandemic has had a profound impact on how people think about when and where they want to work, leading to difficulty for businesses in retaining talent.

According to Skillsoft’s survey of more than 2300 workers or people looking for work across Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, 89% wanted at least one COVID-19 practice adopted permanently in their day-to-day lives. On average, just 11% of respondents were happy to return to how things were.

The trouble is, once everything started to reopen, businesses expected employees to jump back on the 9-5 bandwagon, picking up where they left off pre-pandemic. Employees are reacting to that expectation, deciding they’d rather ditch the commute and daily office grind.

Here’s why businesses need to put their employees’ career progression first in order to avoid losing top talent.

Employee experience

The concept of employee experience has been gaining traction among business decision makers. A study by Deloitte found that 84% of survey respondents rated improving employee experience as important, and 28% identified it as one of the three most urgent issues facing their organisation.

A great employee experience improves retention, discretionary effort, and work performance, which all lead to improved financial outcomes. MIT research shows that enterprises with a top-quartile employee experience achieve twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25% higher profits than organisations with a bottom-quartile employee experience

Delivering a great employee experience requires thinking about every touchpoint with your organisation to create an integrated, holistic experience. Employee experience is about more than a ping pong table and a beer trolley.

And herein lies the challenge — the components of a great employee experience are varied and dispersed across different tools and people throughout your organisation. So how do you glue these pieces together to make your employee experience consistent and enjoyable?

Offer opportunities for growth

People love to learn and feel they have opportunities to progress, which is why a great employee experience includes having the opportunity to grow.

According to Skillsoft’s Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report, for the third consecutive year, respondents that switched employers within the past year cited a lack of growth and development opportunities as their top reason for doing so (59%), taking precedence over better compensation (39%) and work/life balance (31%).

When employees do not feel inspired, and the company does not support their progression, their eyes will wander towards the job market. That is why companies are offering more career mobility opportunities, which support employees who want to move across different departments or even change their occupations.

To start career planning in your organisation, you need to start by building individual employee profiles, including their interests, experience, skills, and competencies. Starting with the employee’s interests, map what they are interested in working on against their current role but also against aspirational roles or currently open roles. You can then identify the skills the employee needs to progress and recommend the relevant training. Then you can design and create an individual development plan based on their potential within your organisation.

Track goals and provide learning recommendations

Once the development plan is in place, it will be imperative to check in on how employees are tracking against their goals and continue to provide learning recommendations to help them achieve those goals. Continuous feedback and on the spot learning, will help build a culture of learning and development across the organisation.

A growth-based culture rewards learning and creates talent agility. High-performing organisations treat employee satisfaction as a business objective and, as a consequence, link their employees’ development and career progression to business results.

If you want a thriving workforce, successful business, and happy customers, you need to start with your employees. How you treat them will have a knock-on effect that ripples throughout your company.

As we approach the New Year, make the time to examine your employee experience and, where necessary, get started on making positive changes.