Career Development in Organisations: It’s for Everyone (Honestly)

20/05/2025

Nia Lloyd is an experienced career practitioner at Career Voice. For over 15 years, Nia has worked in Human Resources, Recruitment and Career Counselling, bringing together a wealth of experience from a diverse number of industries to help people with their careers.

When I was studying for my Graduate Certificate in Career Development, most of my classmates were working with students, helping them figure out what’s next after school. Meanwhile, I was thinking about adults - people who were already in jobs but still needed career support.

With a background in recruitment and talent acquisition I knew this was needed and beneficial, but I still struggled to see how career development could fit into the corporate world – for everyone. Not just leaders or future leaders. I remember one assignment: designing an internal career development program. Sounds simple, right? Except I kept coming back to this one question:

Why would a company invest in career development if it might encourage people to leave?

But as I kept digging, going through the theories and having conversations with professional career practitioners and HR Managers, I realised career development isn’t about keeping people from leaving. It’s about giving them a reason to stay. And if organisations do this, it will impact the bottom line of their business.

Fast forward to now and I have developed a framework called SPARK-L which I use to run career development programs inside organisations, and I’ve seen firsthand how they don’t just work—they drive engagement, retention, and performance. I had to learn how to showcase the benefits of career development to organisations and sell career development in a way that made sense to businesses. 

Here’s how I went from questioning it to making it work.

Step 1: Career Development as a Business Strategy

One of the biggest hurdles I faced early on was the retention myth: “If we help employees grow, won’t they just leave?” But the truth is:

  • If someone wants to leave, they will - whether or not you invest in them
  • If someone feels valued, challenged, and supported, they’re far more likely to stay

This is where many organisations get stuck. They think of career development as an employee benefit rather than a business strategy. But when positioned correctly, it’s about:

  • Engagement – People stay where they feel invested in
  • Performance – Growth-oriented employees contribute at a higher level
  • Alignment – Helping employees develop in ways that support company goals

Step 2: Selling It Internally - Getting Organisations on Board

So how do you convince a company that career development is worth the investment?

  • Tie it to business objectives. Show how career development supports retention, productivity, and internal mobility. If leadership sees the impact on the bottom line, they’ll pay attention
  • Start small. A full-scale program can feel overwhelming. Sometimes, a pilot workshop is enough to get buy-in
  • Consider how you can measure success for that organisation so they can see the benefits in a tangible way

Step 3: What Career Development Looks Like in Action

Once I started implementing SPARK-L, I realised that contextualisation is key. It is one framework but adapting it to the organisational culture and embedding it is essential. Here’s what’s actually worked:

  • Career conversations for everyone (not just high performers). Too often, career conversations are reserved for leadership-track employees. But every employee needs career development - whether they want to move up, sideways, or just grow in place
  • Manager training on how to have career conversations and a framework to have those conversations
  • Detailed, tailored action plans to help employees articulate their goals and take ownership
  • Focusing on the fact that career growth includes: skill development, talent mobility and progression
  • Not everyone wants a promotion (and not every company has unlimited spots at the top). Career development isn’t just about climbing the ladder - it’s about building new skills, gaining experiences, and growing in different directions
  • Making career development part of the culture - for career development to stick, it can’t be a one-off workshop, it needs to be ingrained in the business
  • Providing a framework which individuals can come back to as their career evolves
  • Sharing career success stories internally and having a leadership team that are excited to share these stories!

Step 4: Measuring Success - Proving It’s Worth It

Companies want to see results, so tracking impact is key. This was a bit of a hurdle for me as there is not a lot of Australia data on ROI for career development within organisations. How do you measure the benefits of career development skills internally for an organisation?

A few ways we have used to measure success:

  • Employee engagement scores – Are people feeling supported in their career growth?
  • Pulse Surveys – Quick surveys before and after the workshops to see the benefits
  • Internal mobility rates – Are employees moving within the company instead of leaving?
  • Retention data – Is career development linked to lower turnover in key areas?

From “Why?” to “How?”

There is a lot of talk about career development being a most wanted employee benefit, but I have found many people are unsure what this is and how to implement it. Educating others about career development has been key for me. I have had to shift the conversation from “It’s just about career progression?” and “Why should we do this?”  to “This is what career development is and this is how we make it work for all of your team.”