How to Deliver Career Development for All

To be competitive in today’s tough labor markets, companies need to expand career development beyond those employees who are considered “high potential.” Helping all workers build rewarding job paths benefits both individuals and organizations. But broadening the reach of career development is not simple. Traditional development programs don’t easily scale, and most managers aren’t equipped to be good career counselors.

Forward-leaning companies understand the imperative. During Work/23, an MIT Sloan Management Review symposium held in May 2023, MIT Sloan’s George Westerman noted that in a survey of 1,016 employees, two-thirds said they want to advance — but “half of them said they were being held back by lack of good career advice.” A majority of those who changed jobs in 2021 cited a lack of advancement opportunities as the cause.

Westerman said managers can’t be fully responsible for developing employees’ careers; many leaders don’t want or know how to help, and many don’t have the incentive to. But organizations shouldn’t think that employees can completely own their career paths. “If you believe this story, then when an employee doesn’t advance, you tend to blame the employee and not the system,” he said.

Instead, companies that are successfully broadening who gets career help are making opportunities and pathways visible, providing opportunities to learn and practice new skills, and delivering rich feedback and coaching. Providing autonomous routes to this information is especially important because not all employees have the psychological safety to discuss job options with their managers.

Lani Montoya, the chief human resources officer at Pernod Ricard North America and a presenter on the panel with Westerman, said that at the premium spirits and wine company, a global job-rating process allows all 18,500 employees to see positions at their level as well as above and below it. “They can see how teams are structured, and if they’re interested in a role, they can see how it sits within what team,” she said.

Tony Gigliotti, the senior director of talent management and organizational development at UPMC, who was also on the panel, said that his organization is working toward similar transparency around career paths and job opportunities. The Pittsburgh-based health care provider and insurer has 95,000 employees in its hospitals and outpatient offices. A career resource site on UPMC’s intranet offers access to assessments and skill-building opportunities, and a feature within its human capital management system shows job postings, job descriptions, and career paths within and outside an employee’s job family.

“Now they have at their fingertips a lot of information,” Gigliotti said. “That will empower more employees.”

Below, Westerman and Gigliotti answer some of the questions from Work/23 attendees that they weren’t able to get to during the event. (Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.)

How do you see career development working for employees who really enjoy their jobs, are individual contributors, and don’t want to become managers?

George Westerman: Many workers don’t want to advance in their careers but can still benefit from development opportunities. Take teachers, for example. Very few want to become principals, but all can benefit from professional development opportunities. Most doctors may not want to move into management, but it’s good for them (and their patients) that they engage in continuing medical education every year.

Tony Gigliotti: It is important to define career development beyond vertical promotion into leadership positions. Otherwise, a portion of your productive and reliable employee population might feel that they do not have opportunities for professional growth, and this may lead to their disengagement.

Our resources for leaders at UPMC take a more holistic approach to career development by referencing the many interventions that support professional growth and development. These include training and learning paths, mentoring, coaching, job enhancement/enrichment, stretch assignments, cross-functional work teams and committees, conferences, and community involvement.

Additionally, our talent-review programs normalize situations where solid performers are content in their current role. Part of that consideration must include the employees’ own intentions. In these cases, we explore ways to develop the employee in place.

Finally, we remind leaders that career aspirations can and often do change over time, so they must seek feedback and listen to their employees as their career needs and preferences evolve.

What criteria work best when considering people for internal transfers for their career development? It seems like transfers could be a problem when the needs of the company and the needs of the individual conflict.

Westerman: If you decide that the needs of the company outweigh an employee’s desire to move to a new role, you’re inviting them to leave the company. They’ll move to another employer instead, leaving you without an employee and with less chance to conduct a smooth transition.

To encourage hiring from within, you may not need special criteria or incentives. Just make the opportunities known to internal candidates, and make the candidates known to the hiring manager. However, you can also try other changes to improve incentives, such as opening a position to internal candidates before listing it externally, or asking the manager to share in the costs of external hiring.

How can companies manage talent hoarding and deal with managers who are resistant to sharing career paths openly?

Gigliotti: There are several ways that our organization addresses leaders who hoard talent and do not focus on their employees’ career growth within the organization. Our organization transparently shares all career paths, including job descriptions, with all employees. So despite some leaders’ penchant for talent hoarding, employees still have access to the resources needed to understand their own (and others’) career paths. This approach is consumer-driven — that is, our employees have expressed a need for this information so that they can navigate their own careers within the organization.

In addition, our organizational talent reviews are designed to identify emerging talent and ready-now talent. The outcomes from talent-review discussions across the organization are compiled and then transparently shared with HR leaders. This information empowers HR to identify potential internal talent who may be interested in and ready for available positions within the organization.

And growth is a key dimension in our employee engagement model. If a leader is not developing their employees, sharing career resources with them, or encouraging their career growth within the organization, then that leader’s employee engagement scores (particularly in the growth dimension) will suffer. Low scores raise a red flag to that leader’s supervisor and the local HR team, who then may intervene. Part of that intervention is to align the leader to our organizational values of responsibility and integrity, which, in part, expect leaders to “support their staff’s … professional growth and development.”