Companies in the UK are having to work harder than ever to keep employees happy and in place. According to Work institute 2024, career-related reasons accounted for 18.9% of all staff turnover in 2024, and career development has been the leading cause of resignations for over a decade.
As HR divisions, we have been pushing the ‘career development’ agenda and often as part of job evaluation or role frameworking exercises, but how often has it resulted in systems being put in place that allow people to actually visualise their future within a company? Sadly, if we are not investing in effective career pathways, and ways to communicate them to our workers, we are pushing workers towards the door and compounding our own staff attrition problems.
The statistics coming out of various studies make for alarming reading:
Early attrition is costly - the same Work institute 2024 research found that around 40% of turnover happens in the first year, often due to poor onboarding or career paths being unclear from the outset.
Internal mobility boosts retention - according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning 2024, companies with strong internal mobility programmes enjoy average tenures of 5.4 years, compared with 2.9 years for those who don’t.
Career investment drives loyalty - according to a LinkedIn 2024 workplace study, 94% of employees say they’d stay longer with an employer who invests in career development. Companies with strong learning cultures enjoy 57% better retention and 23% higher internal mobility rates.
So how can we switch these numbers back in our favour? Here are five things to consider:
Believe turnover is avoidable
When employee exits are driven by factors like career stagnation, poor management and work–life imbalance, we have to believe they are wholly avoidable. In the study by Work Institute only 14% of leaders strongly agreed that their organisation was providing effective career development, highlighting a major disconnect between what employees need and what leaders think is in place. These are issues that employers can address but there needs to be a willingness to look beyond current ways of working. Leadership teams find it difficult to do this and HR can lack the insight and data to push for change.
Invest in up-skilling
Too many businesses hire roles to plug gaps rather than build long-term capability. With AI and automation becoming prevalent, skills have a shelf life because what is needed is constantly being reshaped. Real career mapping provides employees with the pathways they need to reskill and upskill.
Show employees a future rather than a job
Free breakfast and relaxation pods will keep keen workers in place for a while, but what they really want is clarity. Can your people see how their role today connects to the business now and in a year? Do they have the freedom or license to consider a sideways move or to explore new areas and reinvent themselves? With proper career mapping also comes transparency and the ability to show them where they are, where they can go and what they need to get there. If we do not do this, why should we be any more than a stepping stone in their career journey?
Make career growth part of your KPIs
If something doesn’t get measured, it’s very likely that it is not being managed. So, if business metrics are only tracking profit, productivity and staff turnover, they’re probably not actively retaining staff. To build the kind of culture that encourages strong retention, KPIs also need to reflect employee happiness and career satisfaction by monitoring things like internal mobility and skills development. Remember too that this whole piece of work cannot simply be outsourced to HR, it is reliant on the conversations that happen between managers and employees, so we need to make sure that our managers are trained and equipped to recognise these metrics and unlock all the potential in their teams.
Embrace Technology
Tools like the new Innecto Pathfinder address all this head-on by giving workers ownership and accountability for their own career progression. Using the tool, employees can:
Visualise career paths – exploring both lateral and vertical moves, complete with skills and skills proficiency.
Set target roles – mapping from their current or aspirational position to a future destination.
Identify skill gaps – understanding what they need to progress and how to build it.
Gain real-time insights – with data that adapts to organisational changes and future priorities.
Frustratingly, many companies are investing in career frameworks but are still finding it hard to hold onto their people because their well-meaning job architecture never leaves the page it’s devised on. This kind of technology can bring it all to life.
Sarah Lardner is Director of Business Innovation and Senior Principal Consultant at Innecto
