Managing Employee Growth Expectations
Rethinking What Employee Growth Truly Means
An aspect that every leader is expected to manage is that of providing growth to his/her people. What comes to your mind when someone talks to you about employee growth or employee growth expectations?
It is quite natural that most of us immediately start thinking about progression within the corporate ladder, or, simply put, of vertical growth for an individual from one position to a higher position within an organization. Regret to break this to you, but it is quite a myopic view of the term, and something which is on its way to becoming outdated in the coming times.
Why Growth Expectations Often Go Unmanaged
Having said so, the effective management of employee growth expectations is a very important subject, unfortunately, one that is often overlooked, as it is an ‘intermediate phase’ with no immediate impact. An aspect whose impact is only seen or felt by the management in the last stage, when it is often already too late to reverse. The optimism or pessimism an employee has around the likelihood of his/her ‘growth’ within their organization has a direct link to the employee’s motivation and their performance.
Now that we have expressed the importance of this subject, it is imperative that we understand the term ‘employee growth’ in today’s context – i.e, as is relevant today.
A Modern Definition: Growth as an Enhancement of the Work Situation
Thanks to our relatively better understanding of the areas of sociology, human psychology, and human resources, we now know that every individual is unique when it comes to their levers of motivation. These motivation levers and the strength of their leverage are a function of many factors, such as individuals’ age, their upbringing, present family circumstances, their intrinsic belief & value system, to name a few.
For example, for one employee, salary may be the key motivator, for someone else, recognition may be the key motivator, while compensation may just be a hygiene factor. Similarly, for someone, professional development may be the key lever, while for someone else, the availability of an avenue of expression with social impact may be the key lever.
This variety has become more relevant in today’s workplace as the employee demographics now are a mix of three to four generations – ranging from Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials to Generation Z. As such, it is imperative to realize that “growth” for employees, no longer refers only to a vertical elevation from one position to the next, but can be better defined as an enhancement in the work situation for an employee that positively impacts their levers of motivation.
We at People Prudent Consulting help clients manage the employee growth expectations within their organizations by implementing unique HR interventions that are built on a deep understanding of the subject, diagnostics of client human capital, and in ways that make a great positive impact on employee engagement at the client organization.
