Career development and progression is often an important factor for employee engagement. Businesses that fail to communicate and deliver on development opportunities and career progression are likely to experience an exodus of top talent to competitors.
Organisations with employees who actively learn and develop themselves professionally are also likely to benefit from a more highly skilled workforce, able to achieve greater results.
So, how can businesses understand if their employees feel motivated or unengaged when it comes to career development opportunities?
Employee engagement surveys are the perfect place to start. They help businesses conduct meaningful research into how employees are feeling and address underlying challenges in the business that may be having a significant impact on employees’ experience at work.
To address concerns over employees’ career development and progression in more depth, businesses can deploy what many refer to as “career development surveys.”
What is a career development survey?
A career development survey is a type of employee survey, designed to understand how employees feel with regard to development and progression opportunities.
Career development surveys ensure employees feel fulfilled and happy in their place of work and feel motivated to progress into new roles and responsibilities. This links to a natural human desire to have a purpose within a community and something to work towards.
This can also be a useful tool to help businesses hire internally and leverage existing employees to help support new business growth or opportunities. Businesses with employees who feel empowered to keep learning and developing aren’t as vulnerable to fulfilling challenging recruitment targets.
What to include in career development surveys
The reason businesses need to conduct research such as an employee engagement survey, is the fact that it is very hard to offer concrete answers to questions like “what do employees look for in career development?” If there were one simple truth across all organisations then there would be no ‘war on talent’. The realities, however, are that people are unique, with a multitude of factors influencing their feelings and behaviours at work. This means deploying research, such as surveys, interviews and focus groups, can help businesses make smarter decisions.
Through Primary Colours Surveys, we can offer benchmarking so you can gain some perspective in relation to current feelings towards employee progression.
Understanding how an employee currently feels about something, such as career progression, is the first step in creating actionable strategies and plans. These strategies and plans are how successful businesses can ensure they are creating cultures and working environments that reflect the desires and wants of top talent.
Training employees requires resources and budgets, so it’s imperative that businesses are offering something that will motivate and engage employees. Guessing and assuming what employees want, is a recipe for disaster, or at least ineffective training programmes! When it comes to understanding your employees, it pays to take your time and do your research.
How to use career development surveys
Career development is only one element in a wider list of factors that impact employee engagement. When conducting any type of employee research, it’s always worth first identifying what it is you want to get out of it. We work closely with our clients to help design surveys and research strategies that will yield the insights required to address specific challenges or opportunities the business is facing.
Something we use here at Primary Colours Surveys is what we refer to as the House of Engagement. This illustrates the various factors that should be addressed when thinking about what is influencing employee engagement.
Addressing one area, without others, may not create the impact necessary to overcome challenges. For example, regardless of whether the business is offering great training and development opportunities, if the inherent culture doesn’t connect with employees, the war on talent may still be lost.
Career development surveys are often most effective when conducted as part of a comprehensive engagement survey. This wider approach can ensure all areas of employee engagement are covered and analysed. From here, certain areas may require follow-up surveys, focus groups or analysis.
Getting started with Primary Colours Surveys
If you’re looking to learn more about career development surveys or any other factor that may be impacting employee engagement, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
We’re passionate about helping businesses see the value in using research to make smart business decisions. Our surveys, interviews, focus groups and reports, can all be used to better understand your employees and create meaningful strategies and plans for your business. Our aim is to help you identify and track your levels of employee engagement and the key factors that influence this. We can also support you with a communication strategy and follow-up action-planning, using the survey insights to improve engagement.
