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How can I develop career paths for my staff?

People & Team questions

Often, one of the most challenging situations smaller businesses have to deal with is showing employees that a career with the business is possible. While bigger firms have more levels to move through, focusing on skills enhancement, new responsibilities and carving out their own role in the organisation can help keep your best people.

Ways to help you deal with it:

Action plan

Create career paths for your employees

Effort : Medium

With career progression the consistently top-ranked reason why people leave jobs in Britain, showing that your business can provide stimulating and rewarding career paths is essential.

ACTION PLANS are a structured list of steps designed to help you approach tackling a particular business challenge.

We explain why each step is important
Customise by setting your own completion dates and assign tasks
Helpful tools are provided for certain steps
A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available

Action plan

Create your company's future leaders

Impact : Medium

Recruitment is expensive, particularly when it comes to senior leadership roles. Cultivating from within lets you firstly identify who is most engaged with your business and where it is trying to get to and then, bit by bit, set out an individual plan that lets you and your management team delegate more and take on new challenges safe in the knowledge that there are more people to share the responsibility load.

Action plan

Filling the skill gaps in your business

Effort : Medium

Impact : Medium

Factors outside of your control, such as changing consumer habits, development of new technologies or particular regulations, mean it's important to stay abreast of the skills your business has and doesn't have as it looks towards the future. While working this out might sound intimidating, it will allow you to focus on the skills that have the greatest potential to help your business in the short term.

Guide

An introduction to developing career paths for staff

Developing career paths and showing staff that they have a future with your company is an essential component of talent management.

GUIDES break a challenge down, providing important context and real-world experiences.

Based on SME experiences, not corporate jargon
Filled with real-world stories
Achievable steps every business can take

Other support that’s available

Ways to develop your employees

Ways to develop your employees

Investing in the development of employees is the most important and rewarding thing a manager can do. For some reason, though, it’s often the last thing on a manager’s “to do” list.

Creating an effective career plan

Creating an effective career plan

Using career planning templates, like this one from recruitment specialists Indeed, can help you create goals that work for both parties.

How other businesses have tackled something similar

Refused Car Finance MD Craig Rutherford

Real business story

Empower your staff with motivating career paths

Few workers want to be confined to one role for the whole of their careers, so the ability to progress within a company is key if an employer wants to both attract new recruits and keep long-standing members of staff.

Real business story

Developing good lines of communication throughout your business

Communication, communication, communication. It’s a buzz word that many of us might disregard, but in actual fact, communication is key to the success of many businesses.

Real business story

Treat every new employee as a potential leader from day one

Nurturing junior employees to become future leaders not only helps to increase engagement and build solid teams, but it supports business growth in a stable, sustainable way.

The questions lots of businesses are trying to answer

What issue is keeping you awake at night? A bit of targeted support is often all you need to overcome those challenges.

Select a topic

Digital

How can I improve the digital presence my business has? How should I go about collecting data to improve my business? How should I use the data I have to improve decision making? How can I streamline and automate some of our business processes? How do I work out the best digital sales channels to use? How do I assess and choose the right technology to improve business operations? How do I effectively seek external digital support? How can I understand what digital tools or support my business needs? How do I know if my technology is robust enough for growth? How should I best budget and plan for new technology investments?

Leadership & Strategy

How do I learn to become a better leader? How do I improve the communication in my business? How do I get staff interested in our vision and values? How can I reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses as a leader? How do I give my team autonomy and get better at delegating? As a leader, how do I learn to trust others within my organisation? How do I apply learnings from other businesses to my own company? How should my role as a business leader evolve with the company’s growth? How can I balance short-term needs with long-term targets? How do I get better at noticing and reacting to warning signs?

People & Team

How can I improve my hiring and onboarding practices? How can I develop the skillsets of my workforce? How can I develop career paths for my staff? How can I run a better appraisals process? How should I performance manage my staff? How do I deal with a challenging member of staff? How can I increase staff engagement and motivation? How can I keep my best members of staff? How do I manage an effective remote workforce? How can I reduce employee turnover?

Planning

How do I better inform my business plans? How do I know when to scale up my business? How can I define and communicate my vision for success? How do I ensure my business can navigate a dip in trading? How do I know when to invest in my business? How can I get better at looking internally at my business? How can I get staff interested in the financial situation? How can I make my business more resilient to change? How can I balance ambition with setting realistic goals? How can I work out what required skillsets are missing in the business?

Sales & Growth

How can we develop new products and services? How do I develop a clear unique selling point? How can we better serve our most loyal customers? How do I financially plan for new opportunities? How do I build a network to support my business? How can I get a better return on investment from my marketing? How can I identify new customers to target? How do I create targets and KPIs for my staff? How do I make sure my team and processes are ready for growth? How do I benchmark my business against competitors?