Implementing career management into your HR process improves employee engagement, aligns employee development with business requirements and provides greater insight into the existing talent pool to aid future learning and hiring efforts.
Career management should begin within the workplace. It involves two parts. The first involves the development of lifelong learning and experiences. This includes the daily interactions – meetings, work groups, tasks, cross functional efforts. These interactions take place in both informal and formal settings and enhance the experiences of employees. The second part involves building a network of meaningful relationships. These are the relationships employees build through various interactions inside the company. Relationships resulting from these interactions can fall into multiple categories such as peer, mentor and even mentee.
Make sense? If so, then why are companies placing so little emphasis on career management initiatives? I speak to HR executives on a daily basis, and all agree on the importance of having career management initiatives in place, but none of them know how, or what is required to implement it effectively. Well not to fear. The good news is that career management, in some form, is already taking place inside your company right under your nose. The bad news is that you are doing little to enhance the process and thereby losing all of its benefits.
Career management does not occur in a vacuum nor is it triggered by a seasonal HR event. Career management is taking place inside your company every day through employee interactions. Therefore, it’s no longer a matter of wanting to implement career management initiatives, it’s more a matter of how to facilitate the process more effectively. This way employees get a better sense of what is required of them to advance, and you gain better insight into the existing talent pool of the company.
Here are three benefits to integrating career management processes inside your company.
Employee Engagement – Engagement has a direct impact on employee morale and productivity. Today, most HR systems do little if anything for employee engagement. Involving career management into your HR process improves employee engagement by letting them take ownership of their career path while giving them instant feedback into the skills and experiences they need to acquire along the way. Once employees understand what is required to move up their career there no longer has to be questions on employee career path or employee learning.
Align Employee Learning with Business Needs – Employees need to build their own career path in the context of your organizational needs. This means you need to define the skills and experiences required for key functional areas that satisfy the needs at the present and future.
Better Visibility into the Talent Pool - Once employees begin building their career path inside the company, you receive almost instant visibility into the existing skill sets inside the organization. With this data, you can isolate potential skill gaps, identify areas for critical learning, and guide more effective hiring decisions in the future.
Stay tuned for next week when I post Part 2 to this topic where I will share a few simple techniques for facilitating career management into your HR process.
