Career growth and development are critical drivers of employee engagement globally. Organizations that prioritize these aspects of the employee experience can create a more motivated and productive workforce. However, a common barrier to career advancement is the perceived need for more time for development activities. In this post, I want to explore employees' challenges in finding time for growth and offer practical solutions at the company, manager, and individual levels.
The Time Crunch: A Universal Challenge
When asked about obstacles to their professional development, employees consistently cite "time" as the primary barrier. This sentiment isn't limited to individual contributors; managers also struggle to find time for their own growth, let alone supporting their team's development.
I recently conducted a series of focus groups with leaders at a Fortune 500 retailer. My work with these groups revealed that constantly shifting priorities and unreasonable workloads left little room for personal or team development. This creates a cycle where managers, often lacking proper leadership training themselves, struggle to effectively support their teams' growth.
Company-Level Strategies
To address these challenges, organizations can implement several strategies:
- Invest in Robust Leadership Development Programs
Invest in comprehensive leadership development for employees identified as having managerial potential. These programs should extend beyond initial training, incorporating ongoing development throughout a manager's career to reinforce and enable effective leadership behaviors continually.
Crucially, companies must allocate adequate time for participation in these activities. Without dedicated time, even the best-designed programs will fail to achieve their goals.
- Create Differentiated Experiences for Top Talent
Create distinctive development opportunities for high-performing employees. This could include mentoring programs, increased access to senior leadership, or assignments in different areas of the business. By investing more heavily in top talent, companies can accelerate their growth and retention.
- Implement 180 or 360 Multi-Rater Feedback
Incorporate 180 and/or 360-degree feedback — available in Perceptyx’s People Insights Platform — into your employee listening strategy. This type of feedback provides managers with insights from multiple sources on key aspects of their roles, supporting continuous development and improvement.
- Communicate Your Strategic Direction
Establish a well-defined, intelligently communicated company strategy with clear objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This clarity helps employees prioritize their work more effectively, potentially reducing unreasonable workloads that hinder development activities.
A clear strategy should make it easier to identify which tasks align with organizational goals and, even more importantly, which do not. This prioritization must be supported from the top down to be effective.
Manager-Level Strategies
Managers play a crucial role in facilitating employee development. Here are some strategies they can employ:
- Establish Clear Team Priorities
Work with your team to create a prioritization strategy that aligns with organizational goals. This collaborative approach helps focus efforts on the most critical work, potentially reducing overall workload and freeing up time for development activities.
- Host Regular Career Discussions
Consistently engage in career-related conversations with team members. These discussions have a significant impact on employee satisfaction and engagement, as evidenced by numerous surveys.
- Encourage Cross-Team Collaboration
Intentionally seek opportunities to collaborate with other teams. Sharing priorities and projects can help identify redundancies and create synergies, potentially freeing up capacity across the organization.
- Practice Weekly Capacity Planning
Start each week by asking team members to share their top priorities and any support they need. This practice helps identify who might have capacity to assist others, promoting a more balanced workload across the team.
- Block Calendar Time for Development
Work with your direct reports to establish a regular cadence for blocking time specifically for development activities. During these discussions, refer back to individual development goals and provide recommendations on how to use this time effectively.
- Evaluate Meeting Effectiveness
For office-based employees, ineffective meetings can be a significant time drain. Regularly assess the necessity and efficiency of team meetings, looking for opportunities to streamline or eliminate unnecessary gatherings.
- Be a Good Example for Your Team
As a manager, it's important to model the behavior you want to see in your team. Make your own development activities visible and discuss them openly, reinforcing that it's not only appropriate but encouraged to dedicate time to personal growth.
Individual Contributor Strategies
While organizational and managerial support matters a great deal, individuals still play the starring role in their own development. Here are some strategies for employees:
- Be Intentional
When time is blocked for development, use it purposefully. Work with your manager to identify specific activities that align with your development goals, whether that's cross-functional shadowing, catching up on industry research, or participating in training sessions.
- Practice Flexibility
Recognize that workload and stress levels fluctuate. When you're feeling overwhelmed, it's okay to recharge. Taking a walk, getting some fresh air, or simply taking a break can be valuable for your overall productivity and well-being, and may leave you more inspired.
- Find Your Motivation
Reflect on what gives you meaning in your work and be creative in approaching those elements. Remember that you ultimately own your growth and development. If it's truly important to you, you'll find ways to make time for it.
- Speak Up and Advocate
Don't hesitate to communicate your needs and aspirations. Whether it's requesting more development opportunities or seeking support in managing your workload, advocating for yourself is crucial in ensuring your growth needs are met.
Employee Listening Data Can Help Unlock Career Growth, Identify Barriers
While strategies at the company, manager, and individual levels will foster career growth, implementing these requires a deep understanding of your organization's unique challenges and opportunities. This is where an employee listening partner like Perceptyx can offer valuable assistance. By leveraging comprehensive employee listening solutions, organizations can gain access to the data-driven insights that will drive their development initiatives forward. Here's how:
- Comprehensive Insights Through Multi-Channel Listening: Perceptyx's advanced People Insights Platform goes far beyond traditional surveys, offering a multi-channel approach that captures the full spectrum of employee sentiment. By combining engagement surveys, pulse checks, lifecycle surveys, and always-on feedback channels, organizations can gain a holistic view of their employees' experiences and needs related to career development.
- Identifying Barriers to Growth: Through sophisticated analytics, employee listening can help pinpoint specific barriers that are preventing employees from engaging in development activities. Whether it's time constraints, lack of awareness about opportunities, or misalignment between employee aspirations and organizational offerings, these data-driven insights allow companies to address the root causes of development challenges.
- AI-Assisted Action Planning: Found in Perceptyx’s Activate solution, AI-Assisted Action Planning allows you to leverage up-to-date organizational insights from your most recent listening events. Activate can help managers quickly focus action with the greatest impact in alignment with organizational goals and team priorities.
- Measuring Business Impact and ROI: By consistently tracking employee sentiment and engagement levels, Perceptyx enables organizations to study the impact of their development initiatives over time and track them against measurable business outcomes. This allows companies to refine their approaches, allocate resources more effectively, and demonstrate the return on investment in employee growth programs.
- Benchmarking and Best Practices: Perceptyx's vast databases allow organizations to benchmark their performance against industry peers and high-performing companies. This comparison can provide valuable insights into best practices for career development and help organizations set realistic yet ambitious goals for their programs.
- Personalized Learning Experiences: By leveraging employee feedback and performance data, Perceptyx’s Grow solution can help organizations create more personalized learning and development experiences for their leaders. This AI-powered approach ensures that managers (and managers of managers — the secret sauce for great management) receive the most relevant and impactful development opportunities, maximizing the value of the time invested in growth activities.
- Fostering a Culture of Continuous Feedback: Implementing Perceptyx's listening platform can help cultivate a culture where feedback is continuously sought and acted upon. This ongoing dialogue about career development needs and aspirations can make growth conversations a natural part of the employee experience, rather than an annual or quarterly event.
Schedule a meeting with Perceptyx today to explore how we can help energize your people, enabling you to unlock their full potential and drive your organization forward.