How to level up your teams with career maps

The opportunity for advancement and growth within a company is essential to employee engagement and a major factor in retention. When advancement opportunities are not clearly laid out, employers may struggle to retain employees, attract top talent, and/or provide their existing employees with a clear sense of purpose and direction.

Research from the Conference Board suggests that only 37.5% of people are happy with the potential for growth in their current job, while 57% believe that the only way to achieve their next career move is to leave their employer. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, in late 2021, over 4.4 million workers left their jobs, the majority of those, voluntarily. If you are the head of an organization or in charge of hiring or training, and you do not have a clear career map in place for each role, it is near impossible to expect your employees to have a clear direction either, nor for them to believe they have any growth potential, something that is a deciding factor in whether an employee sticks around.

In recent years, employers are placing greater importance on engagement and retention. They are also realizing more that although better pay, more benefits, and flexibility need to work their way into employee career path planning, purpose and direction are driving forces behind engagement and retention.

Career Maps Explained

Before diving in too deep, we will cover what a career map is and why having one helps employers level up when it comes to hiring and retention.

What is a Career Map?

Think of a career map as an advanced roadmap with short and long-term goals and a detailed outline of the path to get there. In most cases, career maps are developed for the main career paths within an organization, i.e., Junior Software Engineering through to VP Engineering or, HR Assistant to Chief HR Officer. Although most career maps follow the same path, this isn’t always the case, and no one path fits all. Therefore, for those individuals on a unique path, you will want to make sure you can customize career maps to ensure that the plan supports the organization’s objectives and an employee's career goals and aspirations. Near the end, we’ll share a tool that will help you customize your career maps so stick around if you are interested in learning more about it.

The Importance of Career Mapping

Apart from the advantage of being able to sync with your employees, the career mapping process provides employers insight into their employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowing this information enables them to offer better support to employees and helps employers address any gaps in an employee’s knowledge or skills that may prevent them from reaching their goals.

Why Create an Employee Career Map?

A career map does not only serve the employee. For the employer, having a career map in place is an important factor in the growth and scale of a business. At a time of global skills shortages and as the war for talent is taking its toll on SMEs, career maps are a great way to grow in-house talent and ensure you are investing in the growth of your workforce. On top of this, career development plans help you avoid a talent exodus.

What are some other benefits?

By providing a career map to employees, you help clarify what it takes for them to be successful in their roles. The bonus here is that the more successful they are, the higher performing they will likely be, and the greater likelihood they will continue to work with you.

If you are still not convinced that every organization needs career maps, let’s zone in on the current generation of workers to see why career maps are so important today. According to a recent Mckinsey interview on attrition,

“The generation entering the workforce right now, Gen Z, or the digital natives, are really thoughtful about the work–life balance piece and not wanting to work forever or work to live. They want to live and have a job. So the flexibility is really important; so is development and advancement. They want to see that there’s a career path that they can grow. They also want meaningful work. Purpose is very important to this group.”

The Key Steps to Crafting a Career Development Plan

When crafting a career development plan, know that career maps do not belong in spreadsheets. Instead, they need to be available, not only to your leaders, but also visible to your teams, so everyone has a clear pathway and understanding of their direction and where they are going. Creating a career plan starts by working your way through each of the four career development components.

What are the four components of a career map?

• Self Assessment - This is where you will have your employees carry out a self-evaluation to provide information on where they are currently. Strengths, weaknesses, likes/dislikes about their current position and skill gaps are worth exploring at this stage.
• Career Exploration - Employees will define their ultimate goal at this step. The key here is to be as specific as possible.
• Career Identification - Your employees may need some guidance on this one. Have them set short and long-term goals that contribute towards achieving their ultimate goal.
• Action Plan - At this stage, you want to map everything out. Feel free to add your input and check in with them regularly to help support them along the way.

Career Maps Templates

Creating a career map is only the first step. The next is getting your employees to use it. So, how do you create a career map template that is easily accessible and visually appealing so that your employees will actually use it? The simplest way is with SuperPath, a tool offering you a user-friendly way to build career maps for your organisation. One of the core elements that most career maps lack, and which SuperPath offers, is the ability to track an employee’s progress through them.

With SuperPath, you can assign individual employees a roadmap level and allow them to track their progress in real-time. Whether you are a small organization or have 1000s of employees, having clear career maps are indispensable to your employees’ growth and advancement and your organization's ability to maintain employee engagement and retention over time.

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