Lack Of Career Growth May Be The Top Cause For Turnover In 2025

Lack Of Career Growth May Be The Top Cause For Turnover In 2025

Matthew Reeves is the CEO of Together, a mentorship platform that empowers organizations to pair every employee with a relevant mentor.

In September 2024, the United States had 8 million job openings but only 6.8 million unemployed workers. Experts expect this trend to continue, estimating that we could experience “a deficit of more than 6 million workers” by 2030. In other words, organizations are fishing for talent in a smaller pond. This means retention has never been so important.

So what’s the top threat to employee retention as we look toward 2025? According to a report from my company, Together, it’s professional stagnation. The HR and L&D experts who participated in our survey predict a lack of growth opportunities will be the top factor influencing turnover in the next year.

Employees want to learn, contribute and grow both personally and professionally, and they’re willing to seek out those opportunities elsewhere. In fact, a recent Amazon and Workplace Intelligence survey found that nearly three-fourths of Millennials and Gen-Z workers would leave their jobs if there weren’t enough options for skills development.

So as an HR leader, what can you do to mitigate this risk? Let’s explore.

Employees Want Personalized Development Opportunities

When growth and advancement feel out of reach, employees become frustrated and disengaged. These feelings can contribute to the emotional and mental exhaustion that characterizes burnout. Of our survey respondents, 40% predict employee burnout will become more prevalent in 2025, and around 38% feel it will persist at its current levels.

You likely already know the value of professional development when addressing burnout and turnover, but getting these programs off the ground is often easier said than done. Many programs are stuck in early, pre-launch stages, meaning a majority fail to reach a point where the impact on satisfaction, engagement and retention can be measured. Why is this such a common scenario? More often than not, it’s because organizations are choosing expensive, one-size-fits-all skills development programs.

Employees want growth opportunities that are tailored to their unique needs, learning styles and career goals. The companies that win the competition for top talent are those that prioritize personalized professional development programs.

Implementing Personalization At Scale

For enterprise organizations, providing personalized learning for thousands of employees may seem impossible. But with the right strategies and tools, it’s definitely achievable—and worth the effort.

For example, there are software solutions to meet virtually every approach to employee career growth. With the power of AI, many are specifically designed to identify and address skills gaps and create personalized learning paths tailored to individual needs and goals. Moreover, many of these tools have the ability to collect usage and skill data, allowing you to refine and enhance the professional development program over time.

Embracing employee-led growth is another way to personalize at scale. It flips the script on traditional career development by empowering employees to steer their professional journey. This model encourages them to define how they want to grow and equips them to pursue the experience and skills to get there. Instead of handing them a one-size-fits-all program, you provide employees with a variety of resources to choose from, such as online courses, workshops or mentorship.

Ways To Fuel Professional Growth

If your employees are craving more growth and learning opportunities, consider implementing these initiatives.

Mentorship Programs: Matching employees with experienced colleagues through a mentorship program can open up endless possibilities for both personal and professional development. By sharing their wisdom and guidance, mentors can help their mentees plot a course for achieving goals and hold them accountable to it.

Peer Learning: Peer-to-peer learning allows employees to share their expertise in different skills with each other. This approach deepens understanding, strengthens team bonds and gets employees thinking about new perspectives and approaches to their work. Peer learning can take the form of more structured mentoring relationships or simply a conversation over coffee.

Job Shadowing: A shadowing program brings people together cross-departmentally, helping employees expand their professional horizons and potentially gain interest in a high-demand career path or skill set.

Workshops And Seminars: Hosting workshops and seminars is a great way for employees to stay current on industry trends, learn new skills or further develop existing ones.

Educational Assistance Programs: By offering education allowances so employees can pursue coursework, certifications or degrees relevant to their roles, you demonstrate your company’s commitment to their growth and longevity.

Remember, these approaches to career development won’t happen overnight. You need to develop a gradual, sustainable plan for new initiatives. Then strategically work them into your organization’s day-to-day operations.

Professional Development Goes Beyond Upskilling

Growth and learning opportunities breathe purpose into employees’ work, which improves job satisfaction and decreases turnover. But a one-size-fits-all approach to career development fails to meet that need. Personalization and employee-led development are winning strategies for bridging skill gaps and keeping employees engaged and committed to their roles. By developing career growth programs with intention, you can build a culture of learning and ongoing development that supports retention and long-term organizational success.


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