Article • January 9, 2023
Keeping Motivation High & Turnover Low When Many Team Members Work Remotely
In mid-2022, Pew Research Center reported that nearly 1 in 5 workers are actively looking for a new job while in their current role, a rate we haven’t seen since the 1970s.
One key reason for leaving? They feel they have no opportunities for advancement.
With the large increase in remote work, many people feel like they’ve lost their connections to their leaders, the purpose of their work, and their opportunities for growth.
But there is hope! Here are three integrated strategies for addressing this challenge.
Strategy One: Make Career Paths Clear
By talking to tenured team members about how they advanced through the organization, you can create a single-page Career Path document for each role.
Career Path documents show current team members their potential paths forward. The Career Path can also help attract new talent who may be looking to move up, and thinking two or more roles ahead.
Strategy Two: Use a Capability Model to Guide Team Member Development
Well-written job descriptions are pretty good at helping you hire the right person. Job descriptions age rapidly, and are not great at providing guidance about how to do the job well after a person is hired.
That’s why a Capability Model is so important. A Capability Model is a concise yet robust statement that describes what a person needs to know and be able to do to excel in their current role, grow into future roles, and meet the demands of a rapidly changing marketplace.
Combined with a Career Path, a Capability Model provides excellent guidance for any team member to develop and advance with confidence.
Strategy Three: Put a Capability Model Into Action With a Capability Planner
While the Capability Model outlines what a person in a given role must know and be able to do, a Capability Planner helps each individual assess where his or her skill level is at the present time, clearly identifying areas of strength and areas where more development is needed. Then, the individual and their leader can create development goals and action plans that support the individual’s career goals and the company’s performance goals.
Regular development conversations between the manager and team member are essential to keeping things on track. To support your leaders in driving meaningful development conversations, we recommend our leadership guide which provides support that deepens conversations and identifies specific actions leaders can take to support their team members.
Salience Learning’s team of biopharma industry veterans and learning experts is here to help you build a motivated, productive, high-performance team. We help our clients boost performance with concise Career Paths, effective Capability Models, and actionable Capability Planners and Leadership Guides—built for specific teams and roles. We also design engaging and impactful learning experiences that drive development in individuals and teams. We can do the same for you.