And, yet, we see the number of mistakes and errors people make in thinking about the role career conversations play in their organisational design.

So, today, we want to share some of these with you to enable you to dodge them.

Mistake #1: Avoiding Career Conversations Altogether

“41% of people leave companies citing lack of career development and advancement.”

[Source: McKinsey 2022]

This happens because there’s no natural place for them, or perhaps they don’t quite sit with the manager population or the coaching community. Thus, there is no go-to person who takes on the role of career counsellor, coach or mentor. 

Other times, we find career conversations are missing simply because managers don’t feel equipped or comfortable to handle the conversation. They’re frightened to start the discussion. 

“89% of HR leaders believe career paths at their organisations are unclear for many employees.”

[Source: Gartner - Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2024]

There can be several reasons for this. If your organisation doesn’t have a clear career model, it’s not surprising that your managers might feel awkward about what they should say on the subject. If they are nervous about saying the wrong things, they will skirt the issue – we are all only human!

Managers fear their people will only want to discuss promotion or more money. But engagement data and our experience working with the equation say this does not bear out. Engagement data tells us that the top drivers of motivation at work are: 

• Meaningful and interesting work
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• More opportunities to do what I do best

• Flexibility and autonomy 

• Support for health and well-being
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• Caring and inspiring leaders

Money is rarely the sole motivator when we talk to people about their careers and the impact they want to measure. People discuss leaving a legacy, nurturing others, improving their field of work, building trust, and becoming exceptional at their skill set. 

These are all aspects of a career that a manager, mentor or internal coach can help a person achieve without giving them a new title.  Suppose it is impossible to signpost to where the opportunities lie or how one might achieve development to achieve one’s career goals. In that case, this also might make a manager feel awkward about beginning the conversation.

And lastly, managers tend to have an erroneous perception that they are responsible for the careers of the people in their team. This puts them under much pressure to find suitable opportunities to promote and develop their individuals in a way that enables them to progress within the organisation.

But the fact is that managers are not responsible for the careers of the people in their team.

They discover and develop talent and manage the activities in which that talent engages. However, they’re not recruiters; it’s not their responsibility to drive someone else’s career. One way or another, though, career coaching conversations just often don’t happen. As a result, individuals need to be made aware of the possibilities in the organisation. They need input about where they could go next.

Ultimately, because they want to talk about their careers, they speak to the competition or recruiters simply because you haven’t created a suitable space and time for a career conversation to happen in your business. In fact, in one organisation I was talking to recently, careers are so taboo that the word itself is verboten.

It’s not allowed within the everyday lexicon of the organisation. So, if you search their website for careers, my career in this organisation, or career plans, you’ll find nothing. What message does that send to your people about what you think and feel about their careers?

So, here are some tips if career conversations don’t currently happen in your organisation.

First off, you need to indicate and clearly state what your messaging is around careers. Now, it might be that you want people to stay long-term, or you’re realistic about the job for life. It might be that you think it’s entirely their responsibility and not yours, or it might be that you’re keen to understand people, nurture them, and manage their careers proactively within your organisation with your support.

It is crucial to identify the right message for your organisation and determine how to communicate it effectively. Once you have a clear message, you should establish systems, mechanisms, websites, presentations, and communications that clearly define what employees and managers can expect regarding career growth within the organisation. 

Carry out a quick audit.

• How easily can you find up-to-date career information, courses and live jobs on your intranet?
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• What is your official point of view on careers in your firm, and can it be found online?
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• Do reviews on Glassdoor bear out the truth of your aspiration?

Mistake #2: Allowing Everyone To Do Their Own Thing

"Letting managers self-discover their fit for role increases their likelihood of finding their jobs manageable by 2.3x."

[Source: Gartner - Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2024]

Secondly, you need a straightforward model that works for everyone. 

The Career Equation® is the go-to Career Conversation framework that award-winning employers like Amazon, Capital One and Savills use to transform employee engagement and retention.

Great careers don’t happen by accident. Employees need space and structure to connect with what inspires them, map out their ambitions, and put plans in motion.

Our practical, fast and scalable Career Equation model makes it easy for everyone in the business to talk frankly and openly about their career aspirations and what’s possible in your firm. Once equipped, they have career navigation skills and insights that benefit their entire career lifespan.

Watch this video with Erica Sosna, explaining the power of The Career Equation® →

Mistake #3: Neglecting Management Concerns - A Recipe for Managerial Anxiety

"Less than one in three employees has regular one-to-ones with their manager, while just 22% have clear performance expectations and metrics."

[Source: HR Magazine, 2023]

Managers are the go-to people to discuss your next steps. Indeed, if you have a positive relationship with a proactive manager, they can be a fantastic mentor and coach for individuals within your organisation.

But that may not necessarily be the case; there may be various reasons why an individual doesn’t want to speak to their manager. Some individuals may want to assume their manager’s position, whereas others may have an uncomfortable relationship with that particular individual. 

Alternatively, they may be aware that suggesting the possibility of leaving could cause tension or distress within a closely-knit and high-performing team.

It may also be that your managers are not the right people or the go-to people; they may be too overwhelmed right now, they may be weaker at the core management competencies than you would like, or it might just be that you can see there’s a different population, with whom it might be advantageous to invest in career conversations training.

In a well-known social media company, they replaced the expectation for managers to have quality career conversations with a team of ‘career ninjas’. These individuals came across the business from a variety of roles and backgrounds. They shared an interest in acting as a sounding board for their peers around their careers. This meant that individuals who wanted to have a career discussion could find someone in a completely different business division where they felt they could speak more freely.

And last of all, you need to address the anxieties of your managers or your internal coaches, wherever they sit, about the content of the conversation itself.

You need to be able to equip them with some straightforward and practical tools that make the conversation easy, effective, timely, and short and sweet. It would help if you made it fit for your organisation, and you also need to support them in heading off some of the scare stories that will stop them from having the conversation.

For example, to help them know where to go regarding resources, next steps, and what to signpost in your firm. Managers and coaches need to know that the individual is ultimately responsible for their career, not the manager or the coach.

They need to have the conversation without the anxiety that bringing the subject up will disrupt their team or the organisation’s continued success.

Career conversation training is straightforward, and we deliberately make it simple and practical so that it’s easily applicable within an organisation.  It’s not rocket science, but there are some specific tools, tricks, and processes that we’ve developed over many years of career coaching that make this much easier conversation to start. 

Learn more about how we can help you create this skill set in three days →

Mistake #4: Forgetting That The World Of Work Has Changed

We all know that the job for life is now dead and that organisational tenure is getting shorter and shorter.

People feel more confident about exercising their right to mobility, both within your organisation and outside of it. The perception of job-hopping as being inappropriate or unprofessional is over. The time when a certain amount of tenure was necessary to be credible is no longer, and the risk perceived in moving from one organisation to another has got much lower.

As a result, many of your people will be on a passive job search, with even recruits keeping their eyes peeled once the first 50 or so days are up. Your staff are available for poaching by the competition. We must see this, and we’re conscious of it because the world of work has fundamentally changed, and only the companies who are quick to embrace this and adapt will survive.

Organisations increasingly outsource around 25% of their roles and provide another 20% through fixed-term contracts and consultancy support, resulting in shorter tenures.

That means there are fewer permanent jobs within an organisation, and more and more people are adapting to the opportunities that exist when working remotely, working on contracts, and managing their time, income, and job structure differently.You ignore this at your peril because the war for talent is on two fronts.

“81% of organisations want to build a more people-centric culture and 92% of organisations in the UK are concerned about Employee Retention.”

[Source: LinkedIn Learning, 2023]

It is essential to consider your competitors within your industry and the realm of entrepreneurship and freelancing.

The temptation to be a digital nomad, to wear your flip-flops, to work from bed, to manage your own time and projects in your timeframe, can be alluring for specific communities within your talent population. This freelance and consulting lifestyle will expand over the next ten years, where more and more of the best people will stop exchanging their time for money in the formal 9 to 5 and instead will work on critical projects that they choose as and when. So, we actually won’t even be able to hire them.

However, firms of all sizes offer valid and exciting career opportunities, and the chance to promote what you’ve got going for you should not be missed.

For example, if you want to compete in a sexy area of work, if you’re going to deal with the latest technology, if you want to do projects at a phenomenal, large, global scale, if you want to be part of a real community, a family, if you want to be invested in and developed by mentors much more experienced than you, it’s much, much easier to do all of those things within an organisation like yours.

You provide the stability, the structure, the infrastructure, the mechanisms, and the route to market. Your organisation has vast opportunities for people to learn, grow, enjoy themselves and do great work. And yes, it might be that in the longer term, their goal is to take what they’ve learned from you and work for themselves, but that’s just how work is going. So, instead of fighting against that, try messaging to show that you know about that and the choice they’re making to stay within your organisation.

“The behaviours of highly engaged business units result in 21% greater profitability.”

[Source: Gallup, updated 2022]

This recognition can be compelling. Only some people dream of working for themselves; the day-to-day reality of it can be very challenging.

For example, why not present the opportunity for people to be entrepreneurial at your expense?

Let them have a trial run of what they want to do in their career.

They might enable you to do all sorts of innovative and more agile things that wouldn’t be possible if you kept them within their role description – like launch a new product line, enter a new market or take a whole new approach to your online marketing.

And this is the way you drive employee engagement.

Mistake #5: Being A Mind Reader

A career conversation can enable you to understand better what experiences your key talent are looking for and to provide opportunities to meet those that are not only a win for them as an employee but, potentially, a massive win for you as an organisation.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to spend a weekend at the Aspinall Foundation, the phenomenal space on the Kent coast where you can see rhinos, giraffes, and all kinds of exotic safari animals being bred safely. If you think about a safari park or a wildlife conservation space, each has guards carefully patrolling the perimeter.

Keeping the animals safe from poachers who are out to get them is essential. It’s also necessary to keep the animals in to enable them not to wander off in random directions where they may not be so well protected, the food may not be abundant, or life may just be dangerous; they may be at risk of getting shot.

The same is true for your talent. Over and over again, companies carelessly allow their perimeter to go unguarded; they’re allowing recruiters and the competition to sneak in through the perimeter fence and steal their very best talent.

Nowadays, your competitors’ access to conversations with your talent is better than it ever was with things like LinkedIn. At a moment’s notice, they can find out who your key engineers are, find out how long their tenure has been, and contact them directly.

This is your perimeter; you need to guard it. You do that by having regular career conversations. Because if you aren’t staying close to what your people want out of their careers, you can bet the competition are. 

“Businesses benefit from a 50% increase in productivity when employees feel their organisation has a greater career management focus.”

[Source: Right Management, 2022]

So, are your talents escaping under the fence by accident?

Are they moving out and taking you by surprise?

If so, you need to invest in plugging the gaps through an effective career conversation.

Top Tips For Having Efficient Career Conversations

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• Career conversations and structured, personalised career plans can allow you to stay close to the best people in your organisation, understand what’s missing for them, and see what can be done to capitalise on it. 
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• You don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything because even the conversation is an engagement tool. It can drive engagement, loyalty, action and interest.

• You need a modality and model that works for all your people, regardless of role, experience or tenure. That’s where our Career Equation comes into its own. One model that works for everyone, making it easy to scale and deliver quality conversations whenever they’re needed.

• Lastly, keep your talent safe from the poaching community from the competition.

Of course, you can’t stop them from applying for roles and opportunities, but you do need to be able to have a conversation with them; that means that you are close to the things they need, that means that they are going to come back to you first before they engage in a conversation with your recruiters.

Career conversations also enable you to maximise the levels of employee engagement. And when people are fully engaged, feel that their roles are maximising their learning opportunities, and do exciting and meaningful work, they become immune to approaches from other organisations because it is better the devil, you know. They love being loyal and working for you.

So, I hope these three elements have been helpful to you, and we’d be happy to come in and have a further conversation to help you plug the gaps and make sure that these mistakes are not the reasons your talent goes elsewhere.

Want to talk top talent retention?

Find out how Career Matters can help by Booking a Call →

We have now unlocked the Confident Career Conversations - A Free Video Course For Managers that includes the secret ingredient award-winning employers like Amazon, Savills, Dassault Systèmes or Monzo use to ace their retention. In just 15-minutes you will:

• Connect with your employees and banish unexpected resignations with a simple but effective framework.

• Discover how to have a career coaching conversation that connects you to your teams, reignites their passion and makes them utterly un-poachable.

• Banish unexpected resignations with effective career coaching techniques – this training shows you EXACTLY how to do it (AND gives you a framework and career plan template you can use immediately).

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