Lack of career advancement opportunities within the company is one of the top five factors employees consider quitting their current job.
Ensuring your company retains employees and offers them ample career advancement and learning opportunities is not as complex as it may seem. All you need to know is your employees’ potential and whether they can access the tools and guidance to be their best versions.
As managers and leaders, you’re tied to making an effort to improve your employees’ skill sets at varying phases of their careers for as long as they choose to work with your organisation.
The first step, however, is for employees to accurately evaluate where they presently stand to map a straightforward step-wise journey for the future.
The article will cover the how. Before that, it’s essential to understand the importance of reflective career planning. Let’s get to it.
The importance of reflective career planning
While self-reflection is a personal endeavor, it directly impacts the company’s overall growth. Sure, investing in analytics tools and using big data to analyze company growth is wise; however, a more centered and root-level approach to development encourages employees to turn within.
Let’s understand how it positively impacts your company’s overall growth.
It increases employee engagement
An employee’s professional journey is wider than applying for a job and doing the bare minimum. When organizations encourage them to reflect on their employees, it results in higher job satisfaction and increased engagement. It is a win-win for both parties indeed.
It attracts and retains top talent
Did you know that 94% of employees would stay at their current employer if they invested in long-term learning? To retain top talent, you must create ample space for them to understand their skills and areas of improvement better. After all, top talent never stops seeking better opportunities.
It pushes employees to be more creative and innovative
When employees are encouraged to reflect on their careers, they automatically explore diverse experiences and perspectives. Such individuals have unique ideas to bring to the table and better decision-making skills, resulting in creative solutions to complex issues.
Now that we know how reflective career planning benefits an organization, let’s understand the how in four ways.
4 ways to practice the art of reflective planning
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Leverage ATS friendly resume template
Using a friendly resume template may not be a straightforward approach to reflective career planning; however, it aids the process as it gives clarity to employees.
When an employee applies for a job or updates their resume, clarity on their skillset is the number one priority. An ATS friendly resume template comes in handy here. It provides structure to the employees’ professional experience and compels them to think about their core strengths and skills. Here’s how:
Optimized keyword usage helps employees reflect on the areas of strengths and weaknesses
ATS-friendly resumes ask employees to include relevant keywords and phrases about the job description. This process of going through the job description and carefully observing the keyphrases and using them when writing the resume encourages employees to identify areas of improvement and strengths.
It promotes clear and concise information
Since the template requires clear and concise communication, it encourages employees to reflect on their achievements, skills, and qualifications. This distillation of employee information helps them boil down to the most essential information.
Employees get to dissect their experience into tangible elements
ATS-friendly resume templates have different sections for work, skills, education, and other relevant details, which allows employees to craft their professional journey coherently.
Employees get real-time feedback
Many online platforms give real-time feedback to employees on the ATS compatibility of resumes. This feedback helps them refine their resumes continually, fostering self-awareness and adaptability.
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Build a consistent review process for employees
For employees to reflect on their skills, they need to know where they stand. This is possible only when they get opportunities to evaluate themselves at each step. Here’s when creating an environment of constant learning and feedback comes into play. Building a consistent review process for employees is a solid way to help them reflect on their careers.
While you could invest in software, below are a few simple ways to create such a system.
Regular reviews give structured and clear feedback to employees
Putting a consistent review process in place gives employees clear and structured feedback on their work performance, strengths, and areas of enhancement. This timely feedback prompts self-reflection and encourages employees to assess their skills. However, ensure you communicate it in a constructive way to the employees.
It builds confidence in employees
Reviews aren’t simply a medium to communicate criticism. Or areas of improvement. The strengths and recognition highlighted during these review meetings help build confidence in employees. Confident employees always take on more challenges and get them done with ease.
They help in identifying learning and development needs
Regular reviews with each employee helps them identify their areas of improvement. Use this data to devise and implement learning and development needs for those employees.
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Create a culture of continuous learning
Management spends up to 50% of their work time on meetings!
Sure, conducting monthly industry-specific workshops and training sessions may give you an edge over competitors.
However, it’s slow and only guarantees some employees’ benefits. With a more employee-centric learning strategy, you can upskill them faster and accomplish company goals in no time.
The real challenge is to create such a culture. We’ve listed a few ways to do so:
Assess your current state of learning
Conduct surveys, review existing policies, ask employees and see whether they’re able to implement the learning in their everyday tasks or not. Look for specific patterns when analyzing employee feedback. After all, spotting patterns is one of the best practices to extract insights from data.
Create measurable goals
Once you gain employee feedback, it’s time to craft an action plan. A few questions that can help you create an effective strategy are:
- What are the current challenges employees face?
- What is the company’s vision for creating a learning culture?
- How can you measure and evaluate the company vision?
Time to implement your learning strategy
Once you have the data and the plan, it’s time to support your vision and goals with an effective learning strategy. Tailor strategies that satiate the employees’ learning preferences and needs and integrate them with your performance management system and workflow.
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Support employee well-being
An employee who feels healthy and more at ease reflects better and generates more work. As a business, you need to offer help in employee well-being and ensure your employees take care of themselves.
Do your employees feel relaxed in your organization, or do they feel fearful?
If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, it’s a sign for you to figure out a way to make your employees be and feel healthy. Below mentioned are a few ways your company can assist them in their fitness journey.
Offer health insurance and other wellness programs
Provide health insurance coverage and gym memberships. Conduct meditation and yoga sessions at regular intervals for mental fitness. Such initiatives foster the importance of health among employees and also create space for them to explore themselves.
Bonus: healthy employees are more productive, too!
Encourage social connections
While reflective career planning is an individual journey, it amplifies when it happens within a community. Promote team-building activities, events, or volunteering opportunities timely. Doing so improves workplace relationships and fosters a sense of belonging.
Schedule regular one-on-one meetings with employees
Scheduling one-on-one meetings with employees and their managers creates space for discussions related to workload and challenges, evaluation, and setting goals. Ensure the meetings focus on the employee’s perspective rather than impose the company perspective. It increases trust and the well-being of employees.
Time to implement these strategies and encourage employees
The tips and strategies mentioned in the article should help you take the first step in reflective career planning. Your job is to figure out which strategies work for you and which don’t.
For companies with a solid employee base, leverage tech as much as possible. Resume templates and employee management systems make your company more efficient. Whichever strategy you put in place, ensure you put employees at the core. Let employees take charge of their professional journey, and be a witness to organizational growth.
After all, self-reflective employees make more informed business decisions. And what is business growth if not a result of consistent informed decision-making!
Author Bio:
Parita Pandya is an Engineer turned Writer. She usually finds herself writing for businesses. When she is not writing, she is either strumming her guitar or penning her thoughts down on paritapandya.com.