At a glance:
Good people leave when they can't see a future with you, and pay and perks rarely fix that on their own. Helping each person map their career inside your organisation, with managers who can run a real career conversation, gives them a reason to grow with you rather than around you.
One of the Chief People Officers we work with expressed this perfectly. One of their top performers announced they had accepted a role somewhere else, it was the step up they've been hoping for. Her immediate thought “But we had a plan for you!” The frustrating part? His manager hadn’t shared that plan or even had a conversation about that individual’s future. Ouch. It's exactly the moment employee retention strategies are meant to prevent, and too often they don't.
Plenty of retention strategies focus on pay, wellbeing and the odd team lunch. Those things matter, but countless pieces of research show they play a back seat to the biggest impacter on retention… the answer the question sitting quietly in the back of a good person's mind: "can I develop my career here?" Great people stay when they can see a future at your company. When they can't, the grass on the other side starts looking very green indeed. Helping your people map their careers inside your organisation is one of the most practical ways to answer that question, and it's often the piece that's missing.
In this post, you'll learn why good people go looking elsewhere, why a career map beats a career ladder, and how your managers and your organisation can help people see a future with you.
Key Takeaways
Most good people leave because they can't picture a future with you, not because of one bad week.
A career plan isn't just a ladder or an obvious pathway. It’s having clear options and feeling like I am growing. Sideways moves, stretch projects and new skills all count.
Managers don't need all the answers. They need their coaching hat on and good questions.
Your organisation's job is to make the options visible and safe to put a hand up for.
Career planning works early, long before a counter-offer is on the table.
Why good people go looking elsewhere
Here's the thing. Most people don't leave because they had a bad Tuesday. They leave because they can't picture where they'll be in a couple of years, and nobody has helped them work it out. We know a lack of career development is one of the top reasons people leave their job, and it's a drum we've been banging for a while (we looked at it in Don't resign yourself to the Great Resignation post Covid) and since then, it still shows up in a plethora of research from Seek here in New Zealand to Harvard to McKinsey globally.
The trouble is that career development often rests on a few shaky assumptions. That people know what they want next. That managers understand how much influence they have. That managers know how to have the conversation in the first place. All three tend to wobble, and we dig into why in why career conversations are so hard. So the conversation doesn't happen, or it becomes a once-a-year tick-box exercise, and your person quietly starts scrolling job ads. When the only visible way to grow is out the door, it's no surprise that's the way people go.
Career planning isn't creating an obvious pathway
Career pathing is dead in most organisations. As soon as you have created the pathway, another change process happens so roles change and/or roles are changing fast with AI, so the pathway is redundant.
We believe in creating prototype career plans. These are high level options or directions that match a persons interests, strengths skills among other things. It's first about helping people understand what they need for a fulfilling working life and what they bring. Then it’s about helping each person see the routes open to them inside your organisation, and what it would take to get there. The issue is most individuals can’t articulate clearly what they need for a fulfilling working life and have never been given the tools or resources to do that. So most ask ‘what’s my pathway’. It’s a catch 22 for the People team who then feel the pressure to create pathways that will likely not change the outcome for individuals.
Helping your people create meaningful career plans starts with providing them with tools or resources to be able to articulate their career aspirations - what do they want and what do they bring. They can then use that to create options. It might be a step up. It might be a sideways move into a different team; a stretch project, a new skill to build, or a way to grow the current role so it fits them better. What matters is that the options are visible, talked about and owned by the person, not decided for them. Two people in the same role can have completely different plans, and that's exactly how it should be.
There is very little point creating plans if they sit there unactioned. As Eisenhower said “Plans are worthless. Planning is everything”. The way to keep these plans alive is to first and foremost test them out. Look before they leap, if you will. A simple framework helps a person weigh up three things. Do they genuinely want it, can they realistically get there, and does it stack up long term? We walk through one in a framework that makes all the difference. When people can see a real path and a plan to get there, the offer from down the road loses a lot of its shine.
Your managers hold the key
Employees look to their managers first for their development. That's a lot to ask of someone who may never have been shown how to run a career conversation. Their worries are pretty consistent: they don't have the time, they're not sure it's a safe enough space, and the big one: "What if I don't have the answer?"
Newsflash: they don't need to have the answer. The best career conversations happen when a manager puts their coaching hat on, asks good questions and lets the person do the thinking. It's their career, so they need to take the driver's seat. The manager's job is to be a trusted sounding board, help shape the ideas and open doors where they can. That's a skill, and like any skill, it can be learned. Our coaching skills for manager training give leaders practical tools they can use on Monday, so career conversations become normal rather than something everyone dreads.
Your organisation has a part to play too. People need to know what's actually possible, whether that's internal roles, projects, secondments or whatever growth looks like in your world. They also need to trust that putting their hand up for something new won't count against them. When the individual, the manager and the organisation are all pulling in the same direction, development stops being a once-a-year form and becomes part of the everyday. We've set out who owns what in supporting the development of your people.
And here's why it's worth the effort. When someone is already halfway out the door, a last-minute counter-offer might keep them for a while. But if the real reason they were looking is that they couldn't see a future, money alone won't fix it. Career planning gets in early. It shows people you're interested in where they're headed, and it gives them a reason to grow with you rather than around you. That's good for retention, engagement and your reputation as a place people want to work. In a small market like New Zealand, that reputation counts!
Ready for a fresh approach?
If you'd like a fresh approach to career development in your organisation, we'd love to help. Our Careers that Work programme gives your people the tools and frameworks to map a path that's right for them, with actionable steps, and it pairs well with training for their managers. We're based in Auckland and can run it in person or virtually, mixed and matched to meet your needs.