This article is the third installment in a three-part series on building and keeping great teams. Part One covers how to onboard new employees and set them up for success. Part Two demystifies employee engagement through meaningful touchpoints during the year.
My college president took a sip of her soup and looked at me from across the table.
My direct supervisor had unexpectedly left the college a few days prior, and the president asked me to have lunch with her. Off campus. Alone.
She put down her spoon and cut to the chase.
“What are your plans after you get your master’s?”
Gulp. I was weeks away from graduating with my master’s degree in business administration. Truthfully, I couldn’t recall ever being asked that kind of question by a leader. I managed to answer with the most honest, albeit off-the-cuff, response: “I’d like to invest my time in an organization that invests in my growth.”
Silence.
“Well, how do you feel about a career in development? I’ll mentor you. You have all the soft skills to move into a director of development role, and I’ll teach you everything else.”
I left the café, and as the saying goes – the rest is history.
In just a few months, I’ll celebrate my 14-year anniversary with my institution, having grown from a public relations specialist in 2012 to the vice president of advancement.
In my previous articles, I discussed onboarding employees for success and creating an environment where they remain engaged throughout the year. But if organizations want to retain great employees long-term, there is one more critical piece of the puzzle: growth.
According to the 2023 Work Institute Retention Report, the number one reason employees voluntarily leave their jobs is a lack of career development opportunities.
Employees want to know that their organization sees potential in them – not just for the role they hold today, but for the role they could hold tomorrow.
The good news? Supervisors can significantly influence this outcome.
So how do leaders move beyond simply encouraging growth to creating it?
As a manager and college leader, I must make staffing decisions that are in the best interest of the institution. While I cannot guarantee positions for my people, I can confidently make this promise:
I will invest in YOU.
But leaders must move beyond words and make growth intentional in their shops.
Many organizations talk about professional development and growth but never create a structured process to support it. A few conference registrations or occasional webinars are helpful, but they are not a development strategy.
Two years ago, I introduced a Professional Development Plan for every member of my team (a link to download the template is available below). It has become ingrained in our annual performance evaluation and goal-planning sessions.
The purpose is simple: create intentional conversations about where employees want to go and how I (and/or their direct supervisor) can help them get there.
Each team member identifies:
- Short-term professional development goals for the upcoming year
- Training opportunities, conferences, or certifications they want to pursue in the next 12 months
- The estimated institutional investment required for each opportunity, including registration, travel, or other costs
- Long-term aspirations for the next three to five years
- The education, experiences, skills, and competencies needed to achieve those long-range goals
Requiring employees to estimate the cost of each opportunity serves two purposes. First, it helps them think strategically about their development versus selecting opportunities based solely on habit or convenience. Second, it gives leaders a realistic picture of the resources needed to invest in that employee’s growth.
By asking employees to identify both the developmental value and the approximate cost of each opportunity, the conversation becomes more strategic and transparent for everyone involved.
The most important question on the form is not about performance. It is about possibility.
Where do you want to go, and how can I help you get there?
That question changes the conversation from what employees are doing today to who they hope to become in the future. Growth does not always mean climbing the organizational chart. For some employees, it means moving into leadership. For others, it means deepening their expertise, mastering a specialized skill set, or becoming the go-to expert in their field.
One of my newer team members at the time was blown away. Similar to my earlier experience with my then-college president, no one in her previous jobs had inquired about her career goals or what part they could play in them.
One of my favorite examples is a member of our team, Brianne. She joined our division as Advancement Services Manager. During these regular development conversations, she expressed a strong interest in communications and marketing. Rather than viewing that aspiration as something unrelated to her current position, we worked together to identify opportunities for growth, skill development, and expanded responsibilities. Over time, she took on communication projects for our fundraising team, continued pursuing her master’s in communication, and even taught social media courses at our neighboring university as an adjunct professor.
Two and a half years later, Brianne serves as the Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing for our institution, beating out a dozen well-qualified applicants. Her supervisor credits the strategic development activities that deepened her understanding of the role and her potential.
Her journey provides an important reminder: professional development is not always about helping employees climb the ladder they are on. Sometimes it is about helping them discover a different ladder altogether.
When employees see that leaders are invested in their future, they become more invested in the organization’s future as well. And although sometimes we may lose great people to great opportunities, with thoughtful development and planning we can often match their skills with open vacancies and see our investments make huge returns.
Stories like Brianne’s should remind all of us leaders that employee development is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing investment of resources and time.
And when this kind of growth becomes part of the culture, it shows up not only in individual stories – but in measurable outcomes.
Employee engagement surveys can reveal a great deal about workplace culture and how strongly employees feel connected and loyal to your organization. One metric I pay particularly close attention to is the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). The eNPS asks employees a simple question:
“How likely are you to recommend your work environment as a good place to work?”
Scores range from -100 to +100, with anything above 50 generally considered excellent.
Our division’s most recent eNPS was 86, with prior years also in the 80s.
This data confirms that the process works. These successes are the outcome of strategic culture-building via:
- intentional onboarding
- regular engagement
- clear expectations
- meaningful feedback, and
- genuine investment in employee growth.
Employees want to know that their leaders care about more than today’s tasks and deadlines. They want to know that someone is paying attention to their goals, aspirations, and potential.
People stay where they are seen.
People stay where they are supported.
And most importantly, people stay where they can grow.
