Let’s be honest: telling your team it’s time to talk about career plans is a bit like announcing a fire drill – everyone knows it’s important, but it’s not exactly high on people’s minds. Most will nod politely, then quietly hope it’s one of those ‘HR things’ that goes away if ignored long enough.
And that’s fair enough. For the most part, your team isn’t actively asking for this stuff. Most people in growing teams are too busy reacting to today’s fires to think about tomorrow’s path. Career planning? Bit corporate. Bit HR. Bit… meh.
Take note however, that disinterest is often temporary. And misleading. Because while most people won’t shout about wanting a plan for their future, that doesn’t mean they don’t care. Give it time — a year in the job, a colleague getting promoted, a badly handled conversation with their manager or review — and suddenly that question shows up:
“What’s next for me here?”
“What makes a senior project manager versus what I’m doing?”
“How do I become a ‘Head of’?
And if your business can’t answer it clearly, don’t be surprised if the next line is something along the lines of, “Because X company really focuses on career development.”
Silent signals and missed moments
The absence of a visible path forward doesn’t always feel like a crisis. At first. But over time, it wears people down. Those who were once enthusiastic start to drift. Some stay and switch to autopilot. Others polish up their CVs. Not because they’re desperate to leave, but because they can’t see what staying leads to.
In scaling businesses — where everything moves fast and the focus is on survival as much as success — it’s easy to deprioritise career development. It can feel like a luxury. A ‘big company’ thing. Something you’ll sort out once the next client signs or the product ships.
But people don’t wait for your strategic roadmap to align. They look around, compare notes with friends in other companies, and wonder why their own career feels a bit… flat.
The day I was handed a PDP
Way back in the ‘day, I was handed my first Personal Development Plan (PDP) by my manager and asked to complete it. It was my first ‘proper’ job and he was well-meaning, thoughtful, and clearly thought he was doing a good thing. I nodded enthusiastically and then sat back at my desk with the dawning horror of someone who wasn’t sure what she wanted for dinner, let alone in five years.
So I did what any clueless 20-something would do. I looked around, picked out the people I liked and respected, and decided to aim vaguely for whatever they were doing. I felt that it was expected to be looking at ‘climbing the ladder’ and ‘becoming a manager’ seemed pretty within reach, so I wrote down that I wanted to ‘be a Director by the time I’m 30’ plus a few more qualifications. It wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t exactly original. But it was a start — and more importantly, it was the first moment I realised that someone was actually interested in my growth.
I say that, but looking back, it could have been a more guided process (I honestly can’t remember what kind of conversation went alongside it!) . But the intent was there. And it taught me something that’s stuck ever since: people don’t always know how to talk about their development. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to. It just means they need someone to start the conversation.
Ambition isn’t always loud or obvious
Not everyone wants a promotion of course and I’m a real advocate for the portfolio career which has emerged as being a much more realistic type of plan for many. Some people want depth, not height. They want to specialise, lead a project, mentor someone, or finally tackle that one skill they’ve always put off. Others are quietly ambitious but don’t know how to say it without sounding pushy.
That’s why structure matters. Not rigid policies or generic frameworks, but simple, meaningful ways of showing people what’s possible and how to move forward. A conversation that’s more than just “where do you see yourself in five years?”, but one that helps them figure out what lights them up, where their strengths lie, and what direction they might want to explore.
And yes — that takes time. But it takes far less time than replacing a brilliant team member who leaves because they felt overlooked or stuck.
“We don’t have time for this”
Totally get it. You’re busy. You’re scaling. You’re fighting the good fight every day. And the idea of building bespoke career paths or frameworks for every employee probably makes your eyelid twitch.
But here’s the good news: you don’t have to. This isn’t about building a corporate career ladder with 17 steps and a thousand competencies. It’s about putting the idea of growth on the table. Making it okay — encouraged, even — to talk about where someone might want to head next. Being honest about what’s possible now and what could be possible later.
It’s also about giving your managers a nudge. Many of them want to support their teams but don’t know how to have these conversations. A little guidance here goes a long way. Not training them to be life coaches, just helping them ask better questions and actually listen to the answers.
Without growth you simply stagnate
Eventually, people drift. Some will leave. Others will stay and check out quietly. And that vague sense of disconnection — of working hard but going nowhere — becomes contagious.
But when you do make space for career conversations, something shifts. People engage. They stretch. They stick around. They feel seen.
You don’t need a perfectly polished development framework to get there. You just need to start talking about it.
As an aside, I found the physical copy of my very first PDP when I was moving house in the last couple of years and was interested to see that – by the skin of my teeth ins ome cases – a lot of what I’d written down I’d actually ended up achieving and I remain grateful to my manager for getting me to focus on not just the present, but the future.
Like the idea but haven’t got time?
We’re experts at creating and implementing career frameworks that work for you, so do get in touch via hello@thehrhub.co.uk or call on 0203 951 1208 to find out more about how our Fractional HR services can help look after this for you.
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