Gain Employee Loyalty by Putting Them on a Career Track

Small businesses are the most susceptible to employee turnover. And when workers leave, companies lose money. Helping employees forge a career path to grow with your company will foster loyalty and likely keep them from straying.

While larger companies task human resources departments with establishing career development programs, most small companies don’t have that luxury. But no worries: You need not have a mammoth HR department to successfully develop your employees. A little extra effort from you and some key staff members can launch a career track program.

Manager Buy-in

Before you start any program, be sure your supervisors aren’t just clued into the programs but are an integral part of them. Managers are huge assets in developing career track programs because they know the skill levels they need in their departments and how employee career growth will benefit them and the company overall.

Front-line managers can be resistant to career development programs, fearing their employees will leave them or even that they themselves will be replaced. It’s critical that they have assurances that neither will happen if they assist in getting career advancement training for employees. Be sure they, too, are eligible for these benefits to develop their own skills.

That said, keep in mind that career track development shouldn’t be mandatory, for managers or other employees. Expect that some employees will resist additional training. That’s perfectly OK. Concentrate your efforts on those longing to grow professionally.

Outreach

The first step is to evaluate your existing workforce, identifying which types of jobs have the highest turnover. In general, entry-level employees tend to experience the highest rate of dissatisfaction and are the hardest to retain. That’s often because they do not see a path forward.

Managers should meet with employees to find out what their goals are. Many may not quite know, so be prepared to guide them, explaining what kinds of opportunities tend to become available within your company. For example, say you own several mall kiosks in a three-state area. Your front-line retail salespeople, an employee category with notoriously high turnover, may not even know there’s anywhere to grow within the company. To keep these employees engaged, show them how they can develop into a kiosk manager or learn to do marketing or ordering for the company at your headquarters.

Once you identify a few areas of interest, help create opportunities for employees to gain exposure. This can be through a stint in another job or department, perhaps shadowing another employee. It can also be through more formalized onsite and offsite training.

Training

Formal or informal, training employees to tackle additional challenges is key to successful career tracking. Training can be accomplished in several ways:

• Hire an expert: Reach out to professionals in your field through your chamber of commerce or other local business organizations or colleges to conduct a training.
• Tap employees who have the skills: Pay them for their time and expertise to train co-workers.
• Ask vendors to participate: Dealers who provide equipment, for example, might be willing to give a how-to or refresher class in utilizing that equipment. Typically, these lessons are free of charge.
• Try online classes: Employees can access courses on just about any topic, from bookkeeping to photo-shopping, at home, on breaks, or during their lunch hour.
• Offer to pay for continuing education: It’s more costly and time-consuming but is a great benefit that can help motivate employees.

The Waiting Game

From the onset be clear with employees before they embark on their career track training and professional development that there aren’t necessarily imminent job openings in their area of interest. Communicate to them that when openings do arise, you will consider them for a position.

While waiting for positions, employees are oftentimes willing to make a lateral move that shakes off some of the dusty boredom of doing the same task day after day. Offer them a chance to transfer to another department or location. Explain how working in a different environment will help them improve their experience and skills.

Another effective way to engage employees when job openings don’t exist is to offer them more challenging work where they can implement their new skills. Say you run a day-care center and one of the teachers is interested in moving into administration. Although there may be no openings in the office, you could pull him or her from the classroom for a few hours a week, where he or she can assist with some office duties. This gives the employee the exposure, and some experience, in the area in which he or she is most interested in working.

Success Tracking

Helping employees develop a career track at your company pays dividends only if the programs and policies you institute are successful. It’s critical that you have a tool to measure the success of the program.

At least twice a year, meet with individual employees who have been part of your career track development program to see where they are in attaining additional skills, what worked, and what didn’t. Also, analyze which types of employees were most likely to seize career track opportunities and what it was they were most interested in pursuing. That’s import information you can use to help develop next year’s targets, career track opportunities, and plans. And keep track of turnover to determine whether your career track programs are actually retaining employees.

Some small business owners resist investing time and capital into employee development, wondering if they’ll ever get a return on their investment. After all, even the most inexpensive programs cost money and time to implement. Couldn’t employees take advantage of your training and then leave the company, becoming valuable employees to another company? Of course they can, and some do. But not as often as you think.

Don’t underestimate the loyalty you build when you make investments in people. There is little incentive for employees to leave when they can see the next rung up the ladder they’re climbing with you. And when employees stay, with their enhanced knowledge, they become more valuable to you and, in turn, your business becomes more successful.