Why use a career development survey template?
When you’re busy dealing with lots of HR or employee issues, it can be challenging to find enough time to devote to staff career development, let alone come up with suitable questions for a survey to get their feedback in this area.
That’s why we have created employee survey templates to help you. Similar to the rest of the templates that we have available for our customers, this one can be used as it is or easily customised to suit your needs.
What can a career development survey measure?
When it comes to staff surveys many organisations tend to focus on higher level areas such as employee engagement, staff motivation and job satisfaction. These are all valuable, but it’s important not to forgot other areas if you’re to take a more holistic approach to developing your staff, which will ultimately strengthen your employees’ commitment to your organisation and your overall success. This is where the career development survey comes in.
From assessing their attitude and level of ambition towards career development, to measuring their levels of satisfaction with the development training and mentoring they’ve received. A career development survey is one that is focused on trying to understand more about how employees feel with regards to the development and progression opportunities you’ve provided, so you can make any necessary improvements you need to enhance their long-term commitment to your organisation.
Career development and progression is closely linked to employee engagement. So, it’s worth bearing this in mind, as organisations that fail to communicate and deliver on career development opportunities and progression are more likely to experience an exodus of their top talent to competitors. In contrast, organisations that actively encourage employees to learn and develop themselves professionally, are more likely to benefit from a higher skilled workforce that delivers greater results.
Benefits of assessing career development
While we’ve already outlined one of the top-level benefits of running a career development survey, namely enhancing how favourably your employees view your organisation and their level of commitment to it, there are many further gains to be made. Here are some key ones
Cost savings with increased internal over external recruitment
When organisations can gain a better idea about what different individuals have most enjoyed about any development they’ve received, what they would like to do next and assess this against their knowledge and skills, it’s easier to identify individuals who could be promoted internally to a higher role, rather than go down the more expensive route of recruiting someone from outside the business.
Improved job retention
With more opportunities for personal development, as well more openings to progress, organisations are more likely to experience a happier, more motivated and engaged workforce, where individuals are far less likely to think about leaving.
Increased profitability and growth
Improving the development of existing talent is also good for the profitability and growth of a business. Moving an existing employee into a new role is a far more efficient than taking on a new person, that in addition to their job role, has to get up to speed with the company, its customers and its culture before they can become productive for the business.
How to use career development surveys
When it comes to the career development survey, you need to think about it in the context of an employee’s journey within your organisation and the many assessments and surveys you’re likely to be running to gain a better understanding of them and how they can perform effectively for your business.
When to survey career development
From onboarding surveys, self-assessment, performance reviews and 360 feedback surveys, to skills assessment, training and development surveys, employee NPS and exit surveys. There’s a wide mix of surveys and assessments you could be potentially using already to measure staff satisfaction, engagement and commitment levels within your business. So, it’s good to think about this first before deciding on when to employ a career development survey.
However, more generally career development surveys are often the most effective when conducted as part of a comprehensive engagement survey, with a wider approach helping to ensure all areas of employee engagement are covered and analysed. This can then be followed up with more niche assessments depending on each individual’s requirements.
How to use the insights gained
Besides the many benefits that assessing career development can bring, which we outlined earlier, the insights that can be gained from running this kind of survey, both good and bad, can be used to help move your organisation forward in a number of ways.
Improve any gaps in your career development programme for staff
The good thing about a career development survey, is that even if it reveals frustration among some employees about the level of opportunity they’ve personally received, this feedback gives you the chance to analyse the data in more detail and identify which groups of people might need more support.
Once addressed this can help fill any gaps that may have existed in your career development programme for the wider good of your business.
Enhance management support for career development within your organisation
While your survey may reveal that your staff are reasonably happy with the career development opportunities they’ve received, they may be less enthused about the lack of encouragement given by their boss.
Such insight can be hugely valuable, as it gives you the chance to talk to managers and ensure they are providing sufficient encouragement in addition to the opportunities you are trying to provide.
This is really important, if you’re to maximise the success of any career development programme that you’re rolling out across your organisation.
Improve any deep-seated company culture issues that could be holding staff back
Depending on the mix of questions you’ve used in your career development survey, the answers can reveal if there’s any inherent issues within your company culture that might be detrimental to your employees’ development.
This could be anything from too much of a hierarchical company structure blocking opportunities for progression, to an overly aggressive and long hours working culture that might be dampening your employees’ enthusiasm to learn more and try to progress.
Being able to identify this through a survey can enable you to make changes that will work more harmoniously with your wider career development programme.
