By Barry Rubenstein

As I think about the issue of career development, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with an employee who told me, “it is not my job to develop my career, it is yours”. While I certainly don’t agree with this notion, it gave me pause for thought. The conclusion I came to is that in order to be effective, career development processes need to be collaborative in nature. The development of a career development structure entails the following:

Solid Supervisory Structure
Provide employees with one-on-one supervision. This process provides a mechanism for feedback, assists in problem solving, and provides teaching and mentoring to employees. In addition, strong supervision is the foundation for good management. These efforts result in the employee’s desire to achieve at a higher level. For top performers, give leadership roles such as leading meetings, heading up projects or coaching new employees; for “B-level” employees, identify ways to improve performance to get them to the “A-level”.

Recognize Special Talents/Provide Motivation
Recognize employees’ special talents and abilities. Speak up and commend employees for their special abilities; it’s a good way to motivate them. People want to feel good about themselves and feel that they are making a recognized contribution. Follow what behavioral psychologists suggest — strive to give 4 praises for every criticism. While this is difficult to achieve, it is important to keep in mind that employees tend to believe they do not receive enough positive feedback regarding their work. Instead they feel like they hear about the one aspect of their work that isn’t 100% up to par — and not about all of the other ways in which they contribute to the organization.

The use of PI is critical here. Knowing one’s pattern provides valuable insights into an employees’ career development and helps us to determine the types of teams and projects that maximize a particular employees’ strengths.

Strength Identification
Identify each employee’s strengths. You need to know your employees to help you learn their strengths. Again, supervision and the use of PI is of great assistance in this area. In addition, a skill-gap analysis can be conducted to determine major strengths as well as areas of weakness. This analysis relies upon feedback from managers that identify employees’ strengths and weaknesses. The results of the skill-gap analysis provide rich data regarding the overall functioning of your employees. In order to conduct a skill-gap analysis, questions need to be developed. Some examples include:

1. Please describe the current skill-set that your employee has that satisfies their job description/requirement.
2. Please describe any areas in which your employee demonstrates performance deficiencies.
3. Follow up questions included: Is your employee(s) working on a management, or technical path? Have you had discussions with your employee(s) regarding their growth and professional development?

Positive Work Environment
Create and maintain a good working environment that rewards good performance either through opportunity or financially. This type of focus increases retention and overall job satisfaction.

Be sure to give employees assignments that utilize their strengths. Assign them to teams where their strengths can complement one another. Clearly PI plays a pivotal role in this process as PI gives us an important edge on determining the strengths of our employees.

Build Career Ladders
Many organizations have informal processes to develop careers. These include both lateral and promotional opportunities. To take this a step further, an actual career ladder assists both companies and employees. A career ladder creates a visual representation for employees which demonstrate potential career paths that they can take. A strong career ladder shows employees some of the steps they need to take in order to be considered for a promotion. As such, career ladders include the following items:

1. Job Titles
2. Job Accountability
3. Key Responsibilities
4. Specialized Knowledge and Skills
5. Career Development Opportunities
6. Training Opportunities

A career ladder assists employees in knowing where they want to go and provides a roadmap that will help them get there.

Career Development
Along with the above, it is critical that companies take a flexible approach when it comes to careers. Not only do the top performers need to be nurtured, the “B-level” employees also need to be nurtured and taken care of. Career development processes, when used effectively, identify ways to maximize your employees. In addition, a strong career development focus keeps your pipeline full when it comes to succession planning.