Kumar is a superb reporter specialising in the oil and gas sector. Other journalists look up to him and he's trusted by sources. He is also very ambitious: Kumar is keen to learn new things and to have an adventurous, interesting career. Unfortunately, his former employer, a large American news wire service, wasn't satisfying this need. Kumar's requests for travel and training fell on deaf ears. His manager would shrug and say no budget was available, and even if it were, the manager saw little value in training - one was supposed to learn through one's work. And why on earth train somebody when he or she might leave one day?

"There was absolutely no opportunity there," says Kumar. "I asked them about it again and again but they completely ignored me."

Kumar eventually left to join his company's main rival, an aggressive, growing real-time news service. Not only did it provide a three-week introductory training course overseas right from day one, but also frequent training opportunities about areas other than his specialty. "I can't believe I stayed with my old firm for so long," he says.

Irrespective of employees' ambitions and hopes, companies ignore career development at their peril. The term "career development" typically conjures up the image of starting at the ground level and climbing the ladder until retiring as a senior manager. This, however, is an antiquated view of corporate life. And while some employees may be happy to sit in their cubicles, quietly collecting paychecks year in and year out, many desire growth and a change from routine. According to the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) in the US, career development is defined as an employer's effort to match individual employee goals with the needs of the organisation.

As people are increasingly driven by goals other than corporate ambition, such as more time with the family, career development programs shouldn't be tailored purely to grow talent for the executive suite. Companies who ignore this key issue will suffer in the long run as good employees that feel ignored will leave for greener pastures.      

"Career development in today's world could mean lateral moves, and employees need to understand what they can do and what they like to do because it's going to be a long term process," says Tan Lee Choo, human resources director of IBM Singapore. "It could mean staying here or moving to another country. It could even mean no learning at all, but just doing the job at hand."

Building loyalty

"If a company has a career development programme (CDP) it engenders loyalty," says Graham Hollebon, managing director of Michael Page International. "A CDP marks you as an employer of choice and improves the quality of your human capital."

Hollebon points to Proctor & Gamble and Unilever's management development programmes. They are good at bringing people in, rotating them around the business, and thus create very good commercial people.  "As a graduate, you'll be attracted to that type of infrastructure."

Janet Chen, a human resources consultant at Robert Walters, agrees that a CDP helps attract talent and is something potential employees look at very carefully. "For new hires that are less experienced, they want more technical training and more hand holding." She says that the training program at a consulting company she once recruited for was the major selling point for new candidates.

Aside from letting a firm bring in the best new graduates, a career development programme allows a firm to address skills gaps among employees, says Chen. "This means that companies need to evaluate the skills of employees, identify skill gaps, and then address them in terms of a training program." It also helps with succession planning: "Once you know what kind of skills your staff have, then you can help them develop a long term perspective; helping the company know where employees are going with their careers. Further, if a company has a good program that gives employees a long term perspective and shows them how they can grow in the company, this makes them happy, and happy employees are less likely to leave."

"We are in a candidate-short market where companies are after top talent and specific skill sets," says Hollebon. "You need to retain people. Not just your best 10 percent, but your best 30-40 percent. Candidate retention by companies is very important, so to have a formalised career development program gives people a sense of loyalty and makes them feel they're getting something out of it. You will always have an attrition rate. This is healthy to a certain degree provided you are not losing the top 30% all the time and retaining only the bottom 50 percent."

IBM's Tan says a career development programme benefits other constituencies aside from the obvious beneficiary, the employee. "When employees are developed, it helps the company as well. After developing people, the company has people with the right marketing skills who can respond to market opportunities much faster because they are constantly learning and developing themselves. All this comes together and helps our clients. When a company has a career development program, employees will in time bring value to clients, reducing client risk and increasing the quality of deliverables to clients."

All for naught?

There is, of course, the concern that a company will train an employee only to have him leave. "If you train an employee you'll always have this fear," says Tan, "but this is a very negative outlook. Employees who see that the company is committed to their growth are happier and more likely to stay with the company."

As with Robert Walters's Chen, she says retention is another important aspect of having a CDP. "(Our CDP) is how we attract, retain, and motivate employees." Rosie Hollis, Hilton International's vice president of human resources for the Middle East and Asia Pacific, is a big proponent of career development. She says a CDP helps create a strong bench for current and future business needs, helps retain top talent as they continue to grow in the company and helps increase the engagement and productivity of team members.

Hollis' views were support by a study conducted by the SHRM, which showed that the most common retention processes were either monetary or involved career charting. (See chart on page XXX)

A good CDP can contain a number of elements. Taking a big picture view, Chen says companies must have a good strategic plan before setting up a CDP. The company must know what it wants to do and how it wants to grow. "With a strategic plan, you will know what kinds of people you want." Once the plan is in place, the company can determine what sorts of training, workshops, coaching and mentoring programs are necessary. 

Training can be delivered in many ways, both traditional and more modern, taking advantage of the Internet and computers. IBM, with its far flung network of executives, many of whom work away from the office, has invested in its own propriety Global Campus system, a web-based training program that employees can use anywhere there is Internet connectivity.  

"IBM Global Campus is an extensive library of classroom and e-learning courses that help IBMers build up our critical competencies and keep our skills up to date," says the company. There, IBMers may find courses, view schedules and enrol for, or download, education that can increase personal productivity. The site also allows IBMers access to search and view technical, professional and business presentations and articles and download videos or CDs among other things.

In house career change

"One reason IBM is an employer of choice is that we provide constant training," says Tan. "Employees want to continue learning and growing as they progress. At IBM you don't need to move to another company to change jobs." Tan herself only moved into human resources last April. "I didn't need to change companies to change careers." 

IBM also encourages people to move around and experience new things. "Many organisations say they embrace training and career development, but employees are not really encouraged to change jobs. There's no point training people and then not giving them the opportunity to move," adds Tan.

The creation of a career development plan in Hilton focuses on both the short and the long term, says Hollis. There is a discussion about the immediate next roles possible for a team member, which helps the organisation plan for the short term, as well as charting of possible growth options for the long term, which helps the organisation's succession planning. "Depending on the individual's development needs, a development plan will help improve performance in current roles and develop skills for potential roles."

Hilton's development plan also tries to provide a balance between learning management and technical skills and providing opportunities for experiential learning. A development plan may include formal training programmes (including e-learning and classroom work), job assignments or projects, exposure to another function or role, as well as coaching and mentoring.

Maimon Salleh, Hilton Singapore's executive housekeeper, is delighted with the range of online courses Hilton has put at her fingertips. She has completed over 30 courses and has chosen subjects outside her work scope including a sales communications course. "In school, I didn't have such a range of choices. Now I've got literally dozens. Most courses I do to make me a better manager, others I choose simply to enrich my life and help me understand the business in which we operate," she says. "I have never worked in sales, but now I can imagine what they do. In the future, if I want to change the direction of my career, I now have the knowledge of what inspires me."

Assigning people mentors is probably among the easiest (and cheapest) parts of a CDP, but having it work property is a different matter. "People need to trust their mentor," says Hollebon. "There has to be absolute confidentiality where the mentoree can talk to his mentor in an open fashion, but in absolute confidence. This takes a long time to build ...(and helps employees) feel as if they are not just numbers."

At Kumar's old company, a mentor was assigned to him on his first day on the job. He met the mentor once for a beer, but the mentor wasn't bothered about developing the relationship, or about Kumar's career, for that matter. After this first meeting, they hardly ever spoke. The dismal quality of this mentoring program stemmed from the firm's overall culture, which placed no importance on career development.

Development culture

"The company must have a culture where people are constantly upgrading themselves and making career development a key focus," says IBM's Tan. "The commitment of both the employee and employer is critical. There needs to be joint ownership. The employee needs to see that it contributes to his development, performance, and eventually to rewards. The company needs to view it as a business imperative. The commitment and culture needs to be at the forefront before you can start talking about coaching, training, mentoring and learning programmes, and all the other tools that drive career development."

Robert Walters's Chen says that a career development programme needs to be driven from the top down. "You need buy in from senior management and the board. The actual practitioners will be line managers and the HR department. The employees also need to see value in order to buy into it."

Aside from creating the right culture, another challenge to creating a good career development programme is cost. Workshops, e-learning, and international travel all cost money. There's also an opportunity cost: every hour an employees spends in a classroom is an hour he's not adding dollars to the bottom line. For a CDP, you need coaches, mentors, trainers, and HR people, says Chen. "You need persistence and you need commitment from the company. It's a long term process and it needs to be implemented continually and persistently."

Another challenge Chen sees is finding the appropriate training. "It helps if you have specific goals. You need to know what kind of people you want in five years and what level of commitment you want from employees." 

Mark Ellwood, director of Robert Walters, says that often companies are tempted to cut training in difficult times, much as they do IT projects and advertising. "In the long term, is cutting back on training really a benefit? A lot of companies who cut back on their training programs are finding that they're short staffed or that they haven't got the right skill sets, and that they then need to get people skilled up again. A commitment to patience by the organisation is very important."

Different strokes

Hilton's Hollis says another challenge is creating differentiated career plans based on individual potential. "One size does not fit all, and in fact a few sizes are no longer enough." Traditionally, companies provided some alternate career paths as indicators of how people can grow in the company. Hollis says this approach would not do justice to the varying levels of skills and capacities available at Hilton, and that it's important to build a plan for each team member that allows them to maximise their potential. "This approach requires that we have managers with the right skills throughout the company. Each manager has to be ‘licensed to review' so we can ensure high quality feedback and career planning for each team member. We have also invested senior leaders' time in developing coaching and mentoring skills so that they are able to provide the right leadership support for their teams."

Another challenge, says Hollis, is being creative in making development plans and avoiding an over reliance on structured training. Managers' "license to review" also captures the range of options that should be considered in a development plan. Each team member has a plan that is reviewed by at least the next level of management for a quality check and human resources in each hotel is trained to support managers as well.

Hilton's efforts appear to be paying off. Hilton's last team member survey suggests that over 80 percent of the employees in the Middle East and Asia Pacific believe that Hilton is truly committed to training and developing its staff. "We will continue trying to understand the needs of the team to ensure that this number is constantly going up," says Hollis.

The statement that "people are our best asset" is a tired cliché, but nonetheless true. Companies that fail to recognise the driving need of employees to grow professionally are likely to keep lumbering along, as a stream of top performers march off to join firms that are committed to developing their people. Kumar, after all, has encouraged many of his top-performing friends from his old firm to join him - and never once has somebody left his new company to join his old one.