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A career path is a career development program catered toward an employee’s unique goals and skills, usually developed by employers that employees follow to advance in their role in the organization, it serves as a timeline providing short- and long-term goals for employees to accomplish. A career path can also be seen as a roadmap for your employees, which contains a list of concrete steps and instructions that would lead them to their ultimate role at your company. Career paths include diverse forms of career progression, which includes the traditional vertical career ladders, dual career ladders, horizontal career lattices and career progression. Career paths are usually set and developed based on a team member’s skills, experiences, competencies, interests and preferences, this way, they can identify opportunities and potential pathways for reaching their full potential, while under your employment.
How To Develop Employee Career Path
Understand And Build A Career Development Plan If you don’t understand the skills and talents of your employees, you may not be able to set career paths for them, therefore, you have to work one-on-one with your employee to understand their career goals. Then, collaborate with them to build a customized career development plan that represents how they’ll advance in the company once they hit certain milestones.Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
Set Clear And Achievable Goals To initiate a successful career path for your employees, you will need to implement a solid and well-organized career and development plan that prevents employee stagnation and turnover. Clearly set goals for your employees based on their current strengths, skills, knowledge and experience, with this, you gain an insight on certain skills to be added to the company. You can go ahead to ask your employee which goals they want to achieve in their role and where they see themselves in their career over the next few years. Communicate The Goals To Your Employee To make this employee career path effective, you should properly communicate your plans to your employees, work hand in hand with the employee to develop clear milestones to hit, communicate deadlines for each goal and plan regular one-on-one meetings to discuss the employee’s progress. Communicating your plan to employees helps them stay on track and hold themselves accountable. In addition, ensure you provide your employees with the necessary resources to improve their performance and knowledge. Track And Evaluate Employee Performance It is important that you consistently track and evaluate the performances of your employees to see how far they’ve gone. Follow through by sitting down with employees at the scheduled times to discuss their performance. Give them credit for being on track with their performance goals and provide guidance and resources if they’re falling behind. Diversify Employee Roles As an employer, you can develop a mentorship and job-shadowing program to give them first-hand experience in leadership positions. Provide opportunities that help them learn new skills and ask in-depth questions about the role. In addition, you can rotate roles in the company, that is allowing employees to shift to different roles occasionally to learn their daily tasks, gain new skills and better understand how the company functions. Developing an employee career path may not be easy at first, but the benefits it brings to your employees and to the company at large makes it worth the stress. However, as you develop a career path for each employee, be sure to provide him or her with ongoing encouragement and resources to help him or her reach their goals. Being in a positive, collaborative environment makes employees want to stay with your company long-term, as they advance and improve their performance. Featured Image Source: The Balance Careers
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