4 Tips for 2020 Career Development

What happens when you disappear raises, slim down bonuses, freeze salaries and/or jack up benefit costs? Career development no longer has to share the total rewards spotlight, and it becomes the go-to form of employee recognition.

Looks like we're in for that kind of year. And while employees are going to sorely miss the dollars, they'll be thrilled that you'll finally be giving attention to their career. Most employee surveys have reported this yearning for years.

You may think that addressing career development is no big deal. After all, the goal is to imagine the future -- no commitments involved. The thing is, experience shows that when this kind of year comes along, there is a potential for lots of miscalculations that can trip you up and that disappoint employees now and in the future.

Why not skip them and head right for a career development experience that gives value? It can be one of the most powerful employee recognition efforts you can undertake. These are field-tested tips that you can slip into your planning right away.

1. Don't trade titles for raises. Titles mean recognition to employees, and also status, social recognition and much, much more. Many managers yearn to gussy up titles as a way of making employees feel better in a down market. This is a guaranteed way to disappoint employees over the long term (and get your pay practices out of wack). The disappointment begins because the employee's job abilities haven't moved up a career level, so the title--in fact--has limited validity and social recognition. More disappointment rolls in when you have to tell employees that the title doesn't align with a promotion, even when pay practices go back to normal. Plus you've put yourself into a situation that will be difficult to explain to anyone's satisfaction unless your employees are well-briefed on your company's compensation philosophy and administration.
2. Speak clearly. Career development has a language of its own. Managers and employees need to be able to talk about job levels; compare skill development with competency development; identify experience in one job that can be successfully transferred to another; and so on. It's critical that everyone is "singing from the same hymnal" or there will be serious misunderstandings about what's being promised. Clarity and consistency are what you need to shoot for, so Human Resource-developed talking points and discussion outlines, plus guided employee involvement worksheets are needed this year.
3. Make an effort. I bet you're going to tell me that your company doesn't have career paths yet. Well, there's still time if you start with the basics. Use your most critical job category. Map out the steps it takes to move up through the career of someone in that job category. There are at least three steps: Entry, developing and expert. In many companies there are a few more steps, but never more than seven. Odds are the career path for a manager is different than the professional or administrative career paths. Once you have your first career path mapped out, make sure your job titles align well with the career steps. Then use your first career path model to develop paths for the other job categories, being sure to align your job titles with the steps in each career path. When you have created a career path for each job category in your organization, assess whether the job titles align consistently across career paths, too.
4. Don't blue sky it. As you know, managers have a bad habit of over-promising. (Who doesn't want to be a hero?) So when they talk about upcoming stretch assignments or job openings, they need to have them pinned down. It's hard to exaggerate how much career opportunities mean to most employees. Experience shows that when a manager reneges on a employee's career plan, the trust level between the two is almost impossible to fix.

Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. A former Board member for the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA), Margaret coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.