Career development and planning

Dissatisfaction with development is one of the primary push factors driving employees to look for new jobs. As a manager, you provide employees essential information about career development systems at the company, you often control access to training and development opportunities, you may be involved in promotion decisions, and you work with employees one-on-one to help them plan their careers. In order to ensure that all employees are receiving the maximum benefit from career development and planning systems, you will want to consider the following:

Strengthening the employee relationship

Participate in diversity awareness training. By participating in diversity training, you can better appreciate the individuality of each and every employee. You should supplement the training with books, videos, and friendships with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. As you increase your knowledge and understanding of differences, you will learn that individuals from various cultural and ethnic groups approach career development differently. In the dominant culture, you expect your employees to ask for what they want and take charge of their career. Nevertheless, employees from other cultures may need more coaching, you may need to offer them specific suggestions of training they'll need to move ahead, and you may need to encourage them to participate in developmental opportunities like task forces and special projects.

Build authentic relationships with every employee. Building authentic relationships will facilitate two-way, open and honest conversations. You will be able to discern individual employee needs and help them leverage the appropriate human resource programs. In turn, they will feel comfortable giving you crucial feedback about the work environment.

Identify "high potential" employees and let them know that they're valued. You should determine whether your company has any special programs for high potential employees and make sure a diverse group of employees are included. Even if there are no formal, company-wide programs for high potential employees, you should let them know that they are valued. The retention of these key employees is one of your most important managerial tasks.

Make sure that performance evaluations are fair and unbiased. It is in performance management that you will be able to apply the lessons of all of your diversity awareness activities. Often, we do not realize how our beliefs and attitudes can influence our evaluation of an individual's performance. You will want to be careful to evaluate employees on objective measures of what they have achieved instead of subjective measures of the style of that performance. In addition, during performance management conversations, you will want to explore potential turnover triggers that may encourage employees to seek opportunities outside the company. By building an authentic relationship with each employee, you hopefully will be able to identify and address turnover issues before an employee starts looking.

Involve employees in the community. You should encourage your employees to seek leadership opportunities with community groups. By representing the company, they will naturally feel a stronger tie to your organization.

Involve employees in recruiting events and activities. When employees have to "sell" the company to potential recruits, it will reinforce the company's strengths to them.

Focusing on employee development

Ensure that all employees have an individual development plan. Having a written development plan helps employees navigate the career development programs and maximize their opportunities within the organization. In particular, written development plans have been found to be helpful for women and people of color. You should consider your employees as free agents and make sure that they have opportunities to grow within the company. You will want to meet with your employees at least once a year to have a conversation on where they would like to be in one, five and ten years and help them identify the competencies and experiences that they will need to achieve these goals.

Communicate key competencies and attributes for success. Employees are often unfamiliar with exactly which competencies and attributes are needed to assume positions with increased responsibility. For example, technical employees may be unfamiliar with the keys to ascending the technical ladder. You can hold open forums so all technical employees can learn about the technical ladder. Similarly, you can disseminate information on key competencies for other departments such as sales, etc.

Identify training opportunities within and outside of the company for every employee. Training is essential to employee development. You can help your employees make the time to take advantage of these opportunities. If necessary, you can encourage employees to take an "English as a Second Language" course.

Support employees in taking advantage of developmental opportunities. You should encourage your employees to take lateral, rotational, or special, short-term assignments. Similarly, you can encourage your employees to volunteer for internal task forces or project teams. They can also assume leadership roles in employee identity groups as a developmental experience.

Make sure that a diverse group of employees are offered the opportunity for high-risk, high reward assignments. Typically, managers select employees with whom they feel most comfortable to take on the high-risk assignments. Often, this comfort comes from sharing the same general characteristics like race, sex or educational background. You want to make sure that you move beyond relying on comfort as the criteria for making important recommendations for high-risk, high reward assignments. You also want to allow candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply for these assignments.

Provide every employee with the opportunity to be mentored. Several research studies have documented the essential role of mentoring in advancing within the organization. Mentoring can be accomplished in many ways – through formal programs, informally through employee network groups, and/or by developing a culture of mentoring. You should make sure that mentors receive training that includes communicating and coaching across differences. You also want to encourage (and support) your employees in participating in external development/mentoring/leadership programs.

Provide opportunities for formal and informal networking. Like mentoring, many research studies have documented the benefits of networking in career progression. By having a large network, employees are more likely to be considered for new jobs and developmental opportunities when they become available. However, many employees fail to see the value of cultivating a network. You should educate your employees about networking as well as serve as a role model by attending a wide variety of networking events.

Know the specifics of the corporate succession planning process. As the navigator of employee development, you need to be familiar with any corporate succession planning system. In particular, you will want to make sure that a diverse group of employees are considered for inclusion in any special fast track or high potential programs.

Issues for senior managers

Senior managers may want to consider the following additional recommendations:

Embed diversity in career development programs and processes. Senior managers can influence the design and implementation of career development programs and processes. You will want to make sure that none of these programs unintentionally excludes certain groups from participating. Moreover, you should make diversity an explicit component of these programs. For example, the promotion system should require that a diverse slate of candidates be considered for every position. Similarly, the succession planning process should include a diverse group of employees.

Identify and remove any barriers to the promotion of internal candidates. At higher levels, there might be barriers to promotion for certain groups of employees. Senior managers should research these barriers. Once identified, you may need to implement a new program, such as formal mentoring, or modify an existing human resource system, such as expanding the group of candidates included in high potential programs. At the very least, you can make sure that information about all position openings and developmental opportunities are listed in a company-wide posting system.

Partner with internal staff. If you want to begin a major retention initiative, senior managers should partner with staff from organizational development, change management, or training and development to identify appropriate tools and programs. You will want to make sure that diversity is incorporated into the design and implementation of any retention initiative.

This toolkit is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace legal, compliance, or other professional advice. TWP assumes no liability for the use of this toolkit.
Web-based Leaders' Toolkit, © Copyright, 2002. Technology Workforce Partners. All Rights Reserved. Technology Workforce Partners was a consortium of high technology companies that worked collaboratively on diversity issues in the workplace from 1995-2005.