Blog:

It’s good business to offer career coaching to your employees

Career management is the conscious planning of activities and engagements in the jobs a person undertakes during their life for personal/professional fulfilment, growth and financial stability.

With the changing demands of new generations of workers and the need for organisations to be more agile and responsive in a world where there’s ever more volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), forward thinking organisations are taking the lead and offering outsourced career development support services to their staff.

Through a career management program, employees can:

·       Identify their strengths and interests and review their current performance.

·       Identify gaps in their knowledge and experience to target specific jobs of interest.

·       Create a clear career path and plan steps to achieve it.

·       Identify pathways within their organisation that align with their career goals.

The benefits to organisations in bringing in external career development practitioners are many and varied.

Research indicates that more than 50% of organisations globally have trouble retaining their most valued employee groups.

Several factors impact on employee retention:

  • Employee Engagement – engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organisation

  • Employee Morale –  studies by Dailypay demonstrate that employees who do not align with their organisation’s culture are nearly 15% more likely to think about a new job.

  • Financial Reward – Financial reward, while not the only factor in retention, is still of importance to your workforce.  35% of employees indicated in research conducted by Glassdoor that they would look for alternative employment if they did not receive a pay increase within the next year.

  • Defined Career Paths – Research by Randstad indicates that 43% of employees point to limited career paths as their top reason for leaving a job.

Employee retention is important because staff departures cause a disruption that effects bottom line profits.  Replacing an employee can cost your organisation 150% of that individual’s annual salary.  High staff turnover can severely impact your organisation’s bottom line.

If you have an organisation of 1000 workers with  a turnover rate of 20% and an average salary of $50,000, the cost to your bottom line of turnover in a year is $10M!  Conversely, a 5% increase in employee retention will provide a savings of $500,000.

Poor employee retention will impact on remaining employee effectiveness, knowledge retention and succession planning.

A proactive approach to retention is a high yield approach to saving costs, retaining knowledge, increasing effectiveness and maintaining succession pipelines.

Four key activities will ensure your organisation’s success:

  • Build a conscious company culture within your organisation.

  • Hire the right people.  Ensure new hires are a good fit with your culture first and have the technical skills to perform the role.

  • Implement career development programs to support your employees in growing their careers.

  • Be transparent about the culture, activities and decisions within your organisation.  Management transparency builds trust and contributes to 30% better employee retention.

Udemy research indicates that 42% of employees list learning and development as the most important benefit received from employment.

In conducting in-house career development, employees can see that their knowledge and skills are valued within your organisation.  Gallup research indicates that 93% of employees indicated that they would stay within their current organisation if they provided professional growth opportunities.  This does not necessarily mean promotion and linear progress but can simply be development and an opportunity to identify their own career path.

The benefits of offering a career development program can include:

  1. Increased employee engagement

  2. Internal development of a leadership talent pipeline

  3. Development of individual career paths – ensuring that your employees are able to communicate their strengths and interests in identifying how they can best add value within your organisation- often in ways that you may have not yet identified.

  4. Increased positive culture, where top talent remains and your organisation becomes an employer of choice to attract further talent.

At Strategic Career Management, we provide workshops and assistance to develop and promote conscious company cultures within organisations.  We also provide both face-to-face and online career development programs to support your workforce.