In today’s competitive work environment, your highest-performing employees are quite marketable to the outside; they could be top prospects for headhunters as the economy continues to recover.  Competition for labor is high, and many organizations may be making attractive offers to your employees.

The traditional annual performance review to discuss employee career goals is no longer adequate. Employees today seek more than a rating about work performance; they are interested in improving their careers. An organization focused only on improving employee performance, without recognizing the need for improving employee career growth, will find its ability to retain and compete for top talent hampered.

To protect top talent, organizations must work hard to provide resources, processes, and tools that employees can use to manage their careers, and to align individual career success with strategic business goals and objectives. Discussion topics for the Council include: 

• Career growth: what it means in different organizations and how to make it happen in existing positions (internal mobility programs, informal learning, volunteerism)
• Changing the organizational culture and mindset
• Issues associated with growth and development in global organizations
• Innovation in managing careers, talent reviews, career mapping
• Establishing responsibility/accountability of leaders and empowering them to help with staff development
• Engaging employees in career conversations
• Methods to measure the business case for investing in career development
• Tools and technologies to help people manage their careers: knowledge sharing; building the right frameworks, systems