Develop a culture that advances employees from within
By adopting a team culture that values advancing employees from within, you’ll be a superstar to both employees and your organization. A “promote-from-within” culture supports career opportunity for employees, leading to higher engagement and retention, and also helps keep an organization’s leadership pipeline filled with strong internal candidates. Plus, it’s ridiculously hard to fill technology and engineering positions. So why not grow competitive candidates from within?
To grow competitive candidates who are eligible to promote, you need a way to help them develop in-demand skills. That’s where learning programs come into play. An effective learning program empowers employees to gain competitive hard and soft skills. With a learning program in place, it just got a whole lot easier to build the most epic technology team possible.
According to a LinkedIn report: Ownership (taking initiative) is the #1 soft skill Hiring Managers are looking for in IT professionals – but it’s challenging to find
72% of Hiring Managers trying to hire IT professionals agree that “The lack of soft skills among candidates is limiting my organization’s productivity.”
You may be thinking “”wait if I’m promoting from within this means the junior level positions need to be backfilled” which is true! So it’s important to build a predictable pipeline of junior level technology professionals as well as senior.
Employ managers committed to helping employees grow.
In the world of technology, where leaders are expected to be well equipped with technical and business skills, good managers have never been more critical. Not because employees can’t function without direction, but because managers play a huge role in day-to-day morale and in determining whether the next step in an employee’s career is reached. Skilled managers are talent magnets. They attract candidates and drive performance, engagement and retention. They play a key role in achieving business goals. On the contrary, poor managers cost an organization a ton of money in turnover costs – and wind up the target of a lot of shots. So it’s important to employ managers who care. Just as important, managers who are 100 percent committed to helping employees grow should be rewarded for their efforts. Why? Because it’s easy to de-prioritize this responsibility when things get busy. To ensure managers stay committed, measure their performance in supporting employee development by including this as an area of focus on annual reviews, hold quarterly check-ins to track whether career conversations are taking place, and survey employees on their satisfaction of career conversations with their direct manager. When they succeed, be sure to reward them.
A top reason employees quit their jobs is a negative relationship with their direct manager. According to LinkedIn’s report, 3 out of 4 employees say dealing with their boss is the worst and most stressful part of their job.
According to the Huffington Post, 50% of employees who don’t feel valued by their boss plan to look for another job in the next year.
Career opportunity is what your employees are looking for. It’s the key to attracting and retaining top tech talent. By providing ongoing learning opportunities, creating an environment that advances employees from within, making work meaningful, and investing in managers that are focused on helping employees grow, you’ll be winning. An organization is only as strong as the collective talent of the people who work there. They’re worth the investment.