The rediscovery of employer career management – ‘move on up’
In National Careers Week educational institutions aim to make young people aware of the resources they have available to support them on their career journey. But how clear, accessible and supported are the career paths that UK employers are offering, not just to them, but their whole workforce? Duncan Brown reviews the current state-of-play and suggests some improvements.
Young people’s careers
This week is National Careers Week, ‘a one-week celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK’. The aim is ‘to help support young people develop awareness and excitement about their future (career) pathways’.
Naomi Clayton, IES Chief Executive, gave a keynote address at the big Apprenticeships and Training Conference in Liverpool surveying the ‘State of the Nation’ of the current UK skills landscape. She highlighted the continuing skills gaps holding back growth and restricting opportunity across the UK. Former Bank of England Chief Economist and President of the British Chambers of Commerce Andy Haldane assesses even the current government’s plans for education and skills (as) ‘lacking scale, imagination and ambition’.
But do UK employers of all sizes deserve similar criticism for failing to invest in the skills and careers, not just of their young recruits, but their whole workforce, requiring a permanent rather than one-week refocusing for their and their employees future success?
Women’s careers
At the opposite end of the workforce for example, IES DEI expert Meenakshi Krishnan is this week running an employer webinar aligned with this Sunday’s International Women’s Day, Still climbing: Why women aren’t advancing enough, and what organisations can do next.
The latest FTSE Women Leaders’ Review report published last week showed that in the past five years there had been little movement in the number of female CEOs in the FTSE 100, up from eight in 2021 to nine in 2025. ‘Wowee’ as my 25-year-old daughter would say.
Have we made progress? ‘Nope’ said Vivienne Artz, Chief Executive of the review. She cited ‘poor succession planning and shareholder pressures’ as contributing to this faltering growth in representation, and even at this level, continuing gender pay gaps.
Meenakshi similarly summarises the ‘progress’ as ‘stubbornly slow’. Despite that, women now enter the workforce in large numbers and make up strong mid‑career pipelines in many large UK employers. Yet far too few advance into executive roles. The ‘broken rung’, ‘glass ceiling’, ‘leaky pipeline’, and ‘care/er cliff’ persist.
Whatever happened to career management and development?
Career barriers, unclear progression paths and lack of employer support extend well beyond the employee cohort of our aspiring female leaders. A survey of 2,000 workers and employers by Nottingham Trent University found almost half (47%) of workers, of all ages, genders and levels, are considering leaving their jobs, many complaining of a lack of development and employer support. 69% said they would be happy to stay in their current role if their employer invested in their development. Yet ‘three in 10 said they had never received career advice from their employer; one in five felt completely unsupported when it came to progression or retraining.’
The researchers conclude: ‘The data points to a growing disconnect between the desire for career change and the options workers feel are available’. WorldatWork aptly calls this the development disconnect.
‘Without a clear pathway for progression, employees will often seek opportunities elsewhere’ according to PwC. One fifth of UK workers expect to leave their current job in the next 12 months according to their Global Workforce Hopes and Fears survey. The commonest reported cause of ‘early attrition’ is unclear career paths.
The rediscovery and reconnection
At last UK employers seem to be recognising the scale of this problem and re-investing in their internal career development to help to address the issue. According to the CIPD’s latest Talent Planning and Resourcing Survey:
‘Organisations are increasingly turning to internal training and development to meet their talent needs – over half (56%) developed more talent in-house over the last 12 months compared with the previous year.’
Similarly in the US, WorldatWork finds that ‘HR leaders are turning their attention inwards as the need for external hiring slows ‘, quoting DDI research showing that ‘75% of the 2,000 organisations surveyed globally now prioritise internal promotion in filling leadership roles’.
Gartner in explaining why internal mobility is vital in today’s workforce estimates that 15%-20% more job openings are currently being filled by firms’ existing employees rather than through external recruitment.
Employer examples
IES is not just researching the problems of career management in contemporary organisations but working with employers to develop and apply effective and evidence-based solutions in our difficult, uncertain contemporary environment.
We still make great use of the toolkit derived from our Progression in Employment research which profiled the challenges faced by low-paid workers in accessing progression opportunities.
We found common actions in the 16 case study companies included:
- Redesign of jobs to facilitate progression of part-time workers into supervisory roles.
- Structured career pathway mapping and competency-building for all.
- Contracted minimum hours and advanced family-friendly and flexible working policies.
- Regular career conversations for all employees.
- The development of line management capability.
Results of these initiatives included:
- lower staff turnover/recruitment costs;
- a higher quality of work and particularly customer service; and
- enhanced employer recruitment ability and employee engagement levels.
Meenakshi’s workshop similarly focuses on the ‘how-to’s’ of increasing the UK’s female senior leadership population – through inclusive policies, supportive cultures and mentoring, and opportunity-provision – affording a realistic and forward‑looking view of how to accelerate women’s progression.
A report last October by Women In Work, for example, showed companies with flexible working models and a record of providing career breaks for caregiving were 27% more likely to have more gender-balanced or female-led teams.
Move on up
In Move on up, Dan Cave highlights employers who seem to be really effective at internal mobility and development in all its dimensions. In 2023, ‘AstraZeneca could boast that 30% of hires were from internal candidates’ and ‘60% of top-level vacancies were filled by hires from within the business’. At the broader employee level, 88% of their staff reported that they have internal opportunities and pathways to develop, a remarkably high figure.
With a similar broad, culture-focused approach that’s supported by Meenakshi’s work, AstraZeneca emphasise the cultural and behavioural dimensions of what they do, rather than just their HR processes, that a ‘culture of psychological safety and inclusivity allows employees to feel they can seek new challenges’. They have been working to build a ‘continuous-learning culture, where a growth mindset, coaching and regular checks-in are a core part of the process’.
An emphasis on and investment in line management support and skills (reinforced by AstraZeneca’s leaders) also seems key here, and my colleague Zofia’s work very much supports this emphasis. And then successfully supporting and enabling employees at all levels to progress through them, turning as Innecto’s director Justine Woolf puts it, ‘static charts into interactive experiences’, a career path A-Z into Google Maps.
Hopefully enough employers are already making the switch for the young people engaging in this month’s National Careers Week to benefit throughout their careers, and their employers likewise.
Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.