Career management skills

Career management is an important part of the employee experience and personal development. There are a number of essential career management skills and approaches to individual career management that HR teams should be aware of an attempt to foster and encourage in their employees.

What is career management

Career management is both the active management and considered planning of an individual career. This will be achieved by a activities undertaken by the individual and support at the organisational level by employers. It will usually incorporate the development of career objectives as well as the pursuit of those objective through training, proactive exploration of the job market, and continuous appraisal of individual progress towards their objectives.

The basic elements in the process include:

• Alignment – ensuring an individual’s interests, existing skills and personal values are right for a career path.

• Research – investigation of the professional, personal and advancement opportunities available to an individual.

• Personal fit - ensuring that the profession development path an individual wishes to take fits with your personal circumstances.

• Revision – individuals should be able to continuously fine-tune work and learning plans to help manage the changes in both personal life and the workplace.

Featured Resource

The 2026 Employee Engagement Impact Report

Terryberry surveyed 1,000 full-time U.S. employees to understand how engagement programs affect retention, motivation, and performance—and what separates effective programs from those that fall short.

Our employee engagement survey report found:

• 91% of employees agree that their workplace engagement programs would be more effective if they were better connected.
• 70% of employees with well-connected workplace engagement programs say those programs have significantly influenced them to stay at their job.
• Remote employees are nearly 20% less likely than hybrid and in-office employees to say their organization’s engagement programs work well together.
• 59% of employees experience at least one obstacle to participating in workplace engagement programs.

The report breaks down key findings across industries and work environments, with practical takeaways to help HR leaders strengthen program participation and maximize the impact of their engagement initiatives.

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Importance of career management to employees

Empowering employees with a clear view of their own career development and the skills to achieve personal career goals will help an organisation in a number of ways, including:

• Greater engagement – an employee who has more appreciation of their professional path will have a higher engagement with their current role, understanding how it will contribute to their future success.

• Better retention – when an organisation is seen to be actively supporting individual career management employees remain with the organisation for longer.

• Improved wellbeing – having more clarity over where their career is going should decrease the level of stress that they feel over this area of their professional life. Reducing stress will contribute to a better level of wellbeing.

• Increased performance – an employee who is actively managing their career will be more motivated and driven, this should manifest itself as more productivity day -to-day.

HR teams should be making sure that career management is an integral part of organisational culture and a core part of the employee experience.