Why Investing in Your Employees’ Career Success is a Win-Win

“Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative: it’s not your way or my way; it’s a better way, a higher way.”

~Stephen Covey

There was a time when it made economic sense for employers to provide career development for only a select few employees whose retention and engagement was deemed critical to operational performance. This investment typically took the form of leadership development and succession planning for management ranks and professional development and progression management for experts in individual contributor roles.

Fast-forward to today, a time when skills shortages are a growing reality, disengagement levels are persistently high, and the values and expectations of new generations are reshaping the psychological contract between workers and employers. A new, more encompassing strategy is needed, one that looks to the ‘future of workers’ in a mutually beneficial way.

Gearing up to help potential new hires as well as inhouse talent to identify their right-fit career direction and potential is a powerful attraction, retention, and performance improvement strategy that organizations can no longer afford to ignore. Done right, it can:

·         Differentiate the employer’s brand – By using a high-quality predictive behavioural analytic that gets at talent-task, talent-team, and talent-culture fit, employers can clearly demonstrate that they understand and care about whether individuals will experience career satisfaction and career success in their organization.

·         Strengthen worker engagement and commitment – By ensuring that new and existing workers have a clear line of sight to potentially rewarding and challenging future roles, employers can overcome one of the biggest drivers of worker disengagement: the feeling that they are invisible consumable, and expendable (a state brought on by decades’ worth of right-sizing, restructuring, and under-investment in staff development).

·         Enhance organizational performance – By tying an individual’s predicted performance capacity to the organization’s performance and aggregate propensity requirements, employers can help individuals find fulfilling careers while simultaneously systematically improving job, team, and structural performance, creating a win-win.

The key to success in using this strategy is being willing to move beyond the conventional vacancy-based paradigm for hiring, allocating, developing, and promoting talent. Choosing instead, to grow the organization with a systemic talent management methodology that squarely aims at growing people, who grow teams, who grow the organization.

This is an exciting evolutionary time for HR functions that have long been struggling to be valued as true strategic partners to the business.

By introducing a strategy that is made possible by the powerful marriage of business analytics, people analytics, and predictive behavioural analytics, HR functions can be at the forefront of helping their organizations survive and thrive. Working with these types of data, HR functions can diagnose human system performance capacity challenges, prioritize propensity gaps for recruitment and development efforts, and rapidly design high performing, fit-for-purpose teams that are fueled by the intrinsic motivation of employees. That is a game-changer!

Germaine Watts is a thought leader, author, speaker and co-founder of Predictive Potential – a consultancy and workshop/retreat provider dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations thrive. As a mindfulness coach, SuccessFinder expert, and facilitator with the Centre for Courage and Renewal, she seeks to foster connection between soul and role in ways that support of personal, organizational, and societal transformation.