Promoting Career Growth: Training as a Catalyst for Advancement Opportunities
May 02, 2025
Why is it important to provide career growth opportunities at work?
Complacency is the enemy of progress, and while minor growth comes from the actual doing of standard job tasks at work, it’s easy to fall into complacency, especially when we know what we’re doing. The biggest requirement for growth (personal and professional) is challenge. There is no progress if employees aren’t continually challenged. Career growth opportunities can come in a variety of ways, and offering these opportunities at work has its own set of benefits.
Increased Engagement- Engagement between employees is a fantastic benefit of work-study. Engaged employees do a better job of the same work as others who are less than excited about the work. Engagement can look different depending on the type of growth in mind. For example, in exam review courses, employees have the opportunity to study together, gain new insights into subjects they were limited in before, and gain access to a pool of knowledge and experience they might otherwise not have been given.
Increased Retention- Offering training experiences within the workspace comes with the hope that employees will stay loyal to the company for the foreseeable future, but there is the expectation that sometimes, some will transfer to jobs that better suit them. Training that is job and company-specific while still giving employees the skills necessary to thrive anywhere is actually an excellent method of retaining top employees. With the proper investment in the employee, the employer may see a return on that investment by training and onboarding fewer employees.
Potential for Innovation- Training on top of work is a hefty task. It requires diligence, determination, and an extra seven hours in the day to complete. Alas, there are still only twenty-four, so creativity is necessary when it comes to the balance of both. The creativity necessary to complete both leads to innovation in the workplace that benefits the group as a whole.
Improved Performance- Because we all like a good challenge in our lives, employees who feel motivated by the opportunity for growth will rise to the challenge and do their best. This motivation will bleed into other areas of your organization and boost their performance as well.
Increased Opportunity for Internal Advancement- Employee retention is an often-overlooked benefit of training opportunities. Oftentimes, it can feel like training only serves the trainee and their own career. However, training with the specific intention of retaining top employees offers the company a greater opportunity to maintain their own employee pool over a longer period of time. There will always be that turnover rate, but when the opportunity is offered for internal career advancement, and employees are constantly trained with the company in mind, retention increases, and the budget for onboarding employees can be drastically reduced. Not to mention that the employee is already trained in the company's standard operating procedures, so the training time is also reduced.
Training Tips to Level Up Your Career
Training within the workplace can take your career to new places, and the opportunity to take advantage of career development within the workplace is not something offered to everybody. Nor is it always a formal event. Here are a few tips to use when deciding on training opportunities and if they’re likely to take you where you want to go.
- Define your career goals. Goals are important because they provide directions to follow and create a guide for every decision you make as an employee. It’s like taking a long drive. Without knowing exactly where you’re going (or at least a general idea), you wander the roads, never really making it anywhere.
- Know your career options. Keeping with the map analogy, knowing where you’re going is valuable information, but knowing all the different paths you can take to get there is equally as important. If you want to take the streamlined roads, you’ll know which training opportunities to follow rather than letting them pass you by. Having a good idea of what training options are available to you can give you a better idea of how long it will take to get to your desired goal.
- Consider leadership development programs. No matter your eventual goal, leadership will be an important quality that can make or break your chances for success. There are classes specific to leadership and others where leadership is a nice byproduct. Either way, these leadership opportunities are a good way to develop your integrity as a businessperson.
- Utilize mentorships whenever possible. Mentors are excellent resources for career advancement. A mentor is a trusted and experienced advisor, somebody meant to train a younger colleague in everything they know. This mentor can come from within the organization or outside. They provide invaluable information, such as strategies for speed and precision, technical know-how, and practical career/work guidance. A mentor can help establish a path to success within or outside of the organization.
- Request new responsibilities to challenge yourself. Taking new responsibilities upon yourself is a great way of establishing yourself as a trustworthy and efficient person. These responsibilities also require the creation and development of new skills, such as time management and technical knowledge, within the scope of their new job requirements. It proves your reliability and determination as well.
- Take advantage of offered sponsorships. Sponsorships are similar to mentorships in that a sponsor can also act as a mentor. However, the key difference is that a sponsor involves a person advocating for you directly in order to provide better career opportunities based on your ability and potential. A sponsor can also have a drastic effect on a person’s expected pay. As of 2019, statistics indicated that those with a sponsor were paid 11.6% more than those who did not.
- Don’t discount internal advancement opportunities. While career advancement is often referred to in terms of transferring companies as a form of advancement, it’s important to recognize the viability of advancing internally within a job family. This is where employee retention benefits both the employee and the company. There’s no need to onboard in either scenario.
- Strengthen your networking skills with volunteer opportunities. Volunteer work is oftentimes overlooked as a career advancement tool. It shows your willingness to go beyond your job requirements. It also gives you the opportunity to create connections in a community other than the workplace that can potentially benefit the work you do. Even if the networking itself doesn’t have a direct impact on your job, the connections you’ve made and the work you’ve done are valuable.
- Seek jobs with a defined career path and job family. While it can be fun to figure things out on your own and find your way through the muck, having an already predetermined path to follow eliminates the uncertainty that initially comes with growth and development. Going back to the road trip analogy, it would be like trying to carve your own road when one is already defined and accessible. By going into a field that has a predetermined path toward advancement, you eliminate the questions that arise from creating something new altogether.
- Invest in your strengths. While training is often geared towards new skills, it’s also important to look inward. Discover the strengths and skills that come naturally to you. Generally, when we recognize these skills and are able to develop them, it’s because our minds automatically gravitate towards this type of thinking. The active development of these innate skills can make them much stronger and invaluable to yourself and the company.
Employee training is an important tool for the creation and development of new career opportunities. Whether the new career opportunity is within the original organization or in a new one, the training instances received in their various methods develop employees who are prepared mentally and physically to meet the demands of their new job description.
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