BrazilHow career pathways can improve employee experience and retention
By taking a more forward-looking approach to career paths, organizations can improve their employee experience and retain talent – critical elements of a competitive talent offering, writes Dubai-based Aon leader Greg White.
People spend on average around 90,000 hours of their lives at work – somewhere around 12% to 15% of their time. That means that career is a huge part of anyone’s life story.
We are all seeking an employee experience that allows for personal and professional growth and expansion, but are companies and organizations able to deliver proper career development to meet our expectations?
The traditional career paths moving up a managerial or technical track with promotions every few years no longer fit the needs of the workforce today, especially for Millennial and Gen-Z employees in the Middle East:
- 60% believe that they can do their jobs remotely with the right technologies
- 81% have already worked remotely in a different country in the last 12 months
- 83% find their jobs fulfilling if specialist skills are required, but only 43% if not
- Only 46% are satisfied with career development at their current organization
The new expectations
The new employee demands are for a sense of purpose and meaning, flexibility and work-life balance, integration of the latest technologies like AI into everyday work, personal fulfilment, opportunities for growth, and job security and stability.
For organizations that can deliver all these and more through their employee experience, the flight risk for critical talent and high potentials is greatly reduced, especially in these times of high turnover – expected to rise again across the GCC for 2024 to between 22% to 27% depending on industry compared to 15% to 20% in 2022.
Lack of career opportunities is the main reason for around 30% to 40% of employees leaving their jobs – they will feel stagnant in their current roles without clear pathways for promotion and so look elsewhere to find what they need.
Fixing the situation is not easy – the HR function faces some additional challenges in creating career development opportunities due to major shifts in today’s workplace:
- More and more employees (over 42% led by the younger generations) are pushing for faster career progression with promotions and pay increases
- Flatter and more agile organization structures have reduced the layers of management and also opportunities for promotion
- Skills requirements for the new world of work are changing very rapidly with technology advances – it’s estimated that 33% of the skills that were seen as critical for job roles in 2019 are no longer relevant today in 2025
- Job roles are becoming more specialized with advanced skills and there are fewer and fewer generalist roles in organizations than before
Transforming career pathways
HR must take the lead now, working together with the business and other functions to transform career development in organizations, through initiatives such as revamping job architectures, creating new behavioral and technical competencies frameworks, mapping the pathways for employee moves within and between different job families, and dedicating time for discussions with employees on their career goals and plans.
Aon is currently working with many different organizations across the public and private sectors in the GCC to help them tackle this burning issue for employee retention right now.
