Career paths exhibit employee growth. Modern-day employees have been vulnerable to change. They need a clear vision of their short-term and long-term goals. Growth is not a by-product but a simultaneous phenomenon for them.
Employee performance is a way to track your employee’s productivity. It empowers your employees with a better understanding of their job duties. Making necessary changes to your training programs becomes uncomplicated.
Employers can start aligning career path benchmarks with performance reviews. Getting rid of unstructured and unplanned performance reviews will guide the career roadmaps. So better formalize the systems now!
Here we present an article on how enhancing employee performance can impact career paths-
About career paths
Where does the career path start?
It commences after a college degree or with your first job. The paths become more evident as you learn more about the market and where you fit in. By constant learning and advancing at your own pace, career paths reveal where you will be five, ten, or twenty years from now.
A slight difference between career paths and career ladders – career paths encompass the individual career growth inside and outside an organization. Career ladders are individualistic growth from the lowest to the highest job post, responsibility, and pay in an organization.
Earlier, a career path was almost a fictitious concept. Most men chose a career path according to their socioeconomic status, gender and family. For most women, the choices were limited. Now things have changed for good.
When recruiting, employers need to prioritize career development for their employees. It ensures a diverse workforce, a flexible workplace, and the ability to find the right people for the right jobs.
Boosting Employee Performance
Performances are nothing but how well an employee performs his job duties. Though measuring performance differs across departments, few factors can help determine such accomplishments.
Some factors such as the time taken to complete a task, the quality of the work, and self-management are measures that decide performance levels. Chalking out a performance review plan aids in boosting employee performance.
An elementary step for performance review is one-to-one meetings with employees. It should be about understanding their shortcomings and expectations. Giving constructive feedback is another way to show interest in their progress. Nothing can beat direct feedback!
Employees shouldn’t fall from grace due to underperformance. It means a scope of improvement and that should be encouraged. A positive work environment is essential to having an engaged employee.
As HR tech advances, companies should invest in platforms for employees to work better in hybrid workforces. HR analytics is a great way to keep track of employee performances and also provide seamless employee engagement.
Time for a story!
Once an employee accidentally sent a whole payroll file on an office group email. It was one big blunder having the potential to get him fired instantly. Let’s call this person Jack.
As soon as Jack realized this, he mustered the courage to walk up to his manager. The calm and rational manager laughed and gave him two choices. Either Jack corrects his mistake and gets a chance to survive or the manager would correct the mistake and he would be fired for the damage.
Jack soon assessed the situation and ran to the IT department. He blocked the emails as they were to be accessed in the morning and sat the whole night deleting 150 emails. He did rectify the mistake.
Jack learned an unforgettable lesson and now is a CFO at an organization.
Takeaways
The story gives us a practical way to understand the career path and performance.
Here, the manager gave him chance to take accountability for his mistake. He showed trust and empathy for a mistake of this stature. It’s a skill to handle collateral damages and it brings out the best in an individual in such situations.
A leader’s capability to impact determines the quality of employee performance. If you feel concerned about your employee’s career growth, the employee will automatically focus on giving better performance.
