Career Growth as a Competitive Edge: How Employers Can Attract and Retain Top Talent

Monica Green, global head of early careers and talent pipelines at State Street, encourages her new employees to take their development into their own hands. “I tell every new person that joins the organization, you’re going to have to meet at least 50 people within your first six months. I’m not going to prescribe it. It could be a coffee chat. It could be an elevator conversation, but I want to see that you’ve met 50 people, because as you build your network within your organization [it] will enable you to identify folks who can be your sponsor,” she said. 

She never wants workers to be shy about their goals. “Make sure people know what you want to do. You know it is your job to make sure that you are driving your career.” By establishing a culture of individual growth, Green says leaders can build a self-driven workforce eager to acquire talent from within. 

Today’s workforce puts a high value on career growth when evaluating both prospective and current employers. How can companies design equitable career development strategies that attract top talent, retain their best employees, and foster an inclusive workplace? Green and other leaders discussed these strategies during a panel at From Day One’s Atlanta conference.

Making Career Growth a Competitive Advantage

Modern candidates are looking for more than just the basics like wages, benefits, and pensions. An attractive total compensation package, says Eldridge Banks, VP, HR, at Kaiser Permanente, includes opportunities for career development. This can include anything from tuition reimbursement, skills training, or courses in emotional intelligence or cultural dependence. “Those things really make us understand how you can take your career to the next level,” Banks said.

But you are not necessarily just offering skills training so that employees can switch to a new company–instead, development can lead to retention as workers find new ways to follow their passions within the same organization. “Retention is the new talent acquisition,” said Jason Burgamy, managing director, Americas, SHL.

Development programs also need to keep in mind the unique challenges faced by today’s professionals, including increased pressure on middle managers. “How do we equip this critical segment of our population to deal with the pressures that we put on those folks, equipping them with the leadership skills, the technology skills, and finding ways to develop those people within their role quickly?” Burgamy said.

Keeping such development at top of mind can keep its association with the current workplace stronger, encouraging retention. Melanie Moore, head of global talent acquisition at Honeywell shares that her organization has workers revise their individual development plan (IDP) every six months. “Once you have something written down, it makes it visual, it makes it attainable. And when you’re updating it twice a year, it just really keeps it fresh in your mind,” she said.

Pathways For Development

Many companies now offer a wealth of courses that employees can pick and choose from to build their own unique learning path. “At Honeywell, we have a system that we call Accelerator, and there are literally thousands of classes that are self-driven,” Moore said, citing courses in everything from communications to public speaking to business. 

Of course, during the day-to-day, learning might be the farthest thing from people’s minds. “When everyone at work is just trying to execute and do their jobs, it can be hard for some people in your workplace to think longer term,” said moderator Kelly Yamanouchi, reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

That’s why organizations should actively encourage employees to take advantage of internal learning opportunities. Honeywell, Moore says, has one development day per month, during which everyone clears their calendars to participate in webinars and focus on their personal improvement.

Green says her organization encourages employees to take their career growth into their own hands, “managing themselves up” through the company’s skills program, rather than relying solely on their supervisor for support. “Don’t wait for someone else to tell you, ‘Hey, you need to work on this.’ You should be taking that for yourself,” Green said. Volunteering for stretch assignments can help leaders recognize your potential too. 

In the same vein, Burgamy says, while mentorship and leadership are key, more and more organizations are recognizing that not all managers are cut out for helping their team members grow. “We all would like managers to do a better job of sharing feedback and articulating what an individual needs to do to develop their own skills. A lot of organizations are asking employees to take short assessments to better understand themselves, highlight what skills they need to develop, what kind of assignments might be leveraging their strengths, and which might be a stretch. [Then they can] seek input from a mentor or a peer or a manager to help them in that journey,” he said. 

To do this, Burgamy says, SHL offers a 15-minute global skills assessment that measures 96 skills across the working world. This allows workers to get a handle on their strengths and areas for improvement, and can help them decide what stretch assignments or new roles to pursue. “Then you start to aggregate that across an organization, and you have a view of your talent and all the skills, and how those line up against the strategic and operational priorities of the organization,” he said.

Encouraging Organic Networking

All of this lead’s back to Green’s task for the early career professionals: share what you are interested in and meet as many people as you can. In other words, always be networking. And, Green said, “make sure you’re showing up as your best self.” She also encourages young employees to identify people within the organization who have the skills and pathway that they want, and to pursue them for support. “People love to talk about themselves! You can learn from them and most of the time they’re very willing to help you.” 

Organizations can nurture networking opportunities by setting up employee resource groups (ERGs). Moore encourages workers to join all employee networks, even if they don’t meet the criteria if it’s based on gender, ability, veteran status, or cultural background. “That’s a great way to meet new people [including] senior leaders,” she said. “Don’t sit at your desk and do your job. That’s never going to help you advance to the next level. Approach people and have your elevator speech ready.” 

Being your authentic self is key, Banks says. Letting colleagues and leaders get to know you as a full and unique human being will encourage deeper connection and investment in your growth and wellbeing. 

Ultimately, career growth is not a choice–it’s a necessity in today’s workplace. “The job that you’re in today will not likely exist, certainly not in the same form, in five years,” Burgamy said. “If you’re not developing, if you’re not expanding your views and your horizons on what your career can be, and building up those skills on a regular, consistent basis, there is a good chance that AI will take your job or there will be some other reason you’re looking for something different. You can prepare for it. You can own it. But it’s a good idea to start today.”

Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

(Photos by Dustin Chambers for From Day One)