How to attract, keep and grow brilliant people
Effective competency frameworks and career pathways are often the secret ingredients that make or break people’s experiences of working for an organisation. From the moment someone joins your business, it is important to paint a picture of what is expected of them, how they can be successful and where their career could take them in the future.
When you commit to competency frameworks and mapping out career opportunities, you send a clear signal to people that you care about their development and this in turn engenders loyalty.
So where do you start? The important thing is to think of developing competencies and careers as an integral part of your culture rather than as separate projects. It’s all about delivering an exceptional employee experience and to do that you need to join up the why, what and how to help your people unlock their potential.
Firstly, take a step back and consider in the broadest terms why people work. This is personal and linked to what motivates, drives and engages us. However if you look at it from a macro perspective and consider career, community and cause, as discussed in Harvard Business Review, you’re able to discover the key factors.
If you don’t show people what they need to do and how they could do it to achieve their career goals, then you are not tapping into the intrinsic motivating factor that is fuelling why people work.
All too often, we’ve seen what happens when employers don’t invest time and resources in developing clear career pathways for their people or cut corners and take a half-heated approach. This includes:
- Losing brilliant people to competitors that do provide meaningful opportunities to grow and develop
- Processes that are not fit for purpose because they are not underpinned by robust thinking, know-how and a joined up approach that considers the whole employee experience
- Falling engagement levels and an overall lack of drive and motivation
- Missed targets and a low performance culture
- A ‘mini-me’ culture lacking in diversity of thought as people increasingly hire in their own image
If any of this sounds familiar and you’d like help structuring competency frameworks and career pathways for your people, then please get in touch with me or visit Let’s Talk Talent to find out more.
About the author
For over 20 years, Jo Taylor has been working in HR and management. She started her career at the BBC as a storyteller which gives her a unique insight into HR. Before founding Let’s Talk Talent in 2015, Jo was Director of Talent & Resourcing at TalkTalk Group and has had senior roles at Dentsu Aegis, Channel 4 and Harper Collins UK. Jo has a natural ability (and an abundance of high-level experience) when it comes to complex, customer-facing organisations and a deep appreciation of employees as consumers.
With seven years of experience at board level in a variety of leadership roles, Jo is adept at creating and implementing people-centric talent strategies, designing performance management processes, blended learning and development solutions, talent mapping and redesigns of recruitment, succession, and reward and recognition strategies globally.
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