People are always growing, and businesses are always evolving. Young professionals, especially, feel a need to constantly grow their skill set at the risk of feeling stagnation set in. Forward propulsion is part of all of our lives, and we always feel best when we are developing new aspects of ourselves that will enhance our toolkit for the future.
Top talent is drawn to companies that champion employee growth, and employee engagement is consistently boosted by the best practices of fostering growth among employees. Here are 10 companies that prioritize growth for the members of their workforce, and the inventive ways that they make it happen.
Why is it important for Adobe to encourage employee growth?
According to our new hire survey, the number one reason candidates join Adobe is for the opportunity to develop their skills. That’s also a key reason why they stay and continue to be engaged and it is our responsibility to give them those opportunities to drive both personal and business growth. With this in mind, we provide ample resources for our employees to grow their careers, explore development opportunities, and pursue their ambitions. We invest in a range of development resources, offer financial assistance, and provide stretch opportunities to help employees accelerate their growth.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
We offer development programs for all employee levels—university graduates, individual contributors, managers, directors and senior leaders. Through our tailored learning offerings, we provide a variety of live virtual learning sessions, self-paced on-demand resources, and peer/team sessions. Our courses include career management, building inclusion, leadership development, executive masterclasses, and more. Adobe’s Learning Fund program also provides employees with $10,000 USD per year to pursue higher education and certification programs. For short-term learning opportunities, such as attending a conference or purchasing books, we give employees $1,000 USD a year. For employees looking to stretch their skill sets and network, we provide opportunities to do pro bono work or take a leadership role in an Employee Network. And when it’s time for employees to move onto their next role, we provide them resources to look internally for positions, including posting jobs on our internal career site for two weeks before we post them externally.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
We firmly believe that our people are our greatest asset at Adobe. Engaged and enabled talent drives strong business results and investing in their growth allows us to continue innovating and delivering great solutions for our customers. Today, we have a 90% average customer satisfaction (CSAT) score across our development programs, employee engagement is at an all-time high and in FY20 another 15% YoY growth and record financial results. We can only do that with the efforts of our amazing employees.
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Why is it important for Chipotle to encourage employee growth?
Living our mission to Cultivate a Better World means hiring passionate people and investing in their future. Providing paths for building operational and leadership skills, whether employees grow their career, chase their passion, or just pick up a few skills along the way, growing our talent sets us up to continue to grow as an organization and provide an amazing guest experience.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
We have excellent restaurant training with clear paths for growth, leadership development for everyone from Crew members to senior leaders, and all employees have access to platforms where they can build a variety of skills. Our Employee Resource Groups offer opportunities to learn and network with peers and mentors. Our benefits include debt-free degrees, tuition reimbursement, and programs that extend to our employees’ families.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
Attracting and growing great talent allows Chipotle to open new restaurants and be a leader in the digital space. With the investment Chipotle continues to make in developing our employees, we ensure that we have a pipeline of diverse talent to meet the demands of our future growth. Providing many avenues to grow their careers and continuously build knowledge, skills, and abilities results in retention and loyalty. It’s the people that make Cultivating a Better World possible.
Why is it important for GoDaddy to encourage employee growth?
The obvious answer here is retention, but it’s more than that. By encouraging employees to grow and providing the right support and programs, we empower all employees to level up within the company. The result is a more inclusive workplace with equal opportunity for all.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
In 2019, our employees told us via our annual engagement survey that they were not confident navigating their career here at GoDaddy. The result was an internal program called MyCareer, which features an intranet portal that is a hub for all things career-related. Employees can research leveling guides from across the company to better understand what’s expected of them in their role or opportunities they are targeting. The program also includes training, workshops, conversation guides, and more.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
Investing in employee growth has not only improved employee engagement, the My Career program has helped us expand our diverse bench of talent ready to take the next step in their career. We’ve also been recognized as a top workplace across many of our locations, which makes it easier to attract great talent to GoDaddy.
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Why is it important for Concentrix to encourage employee growth?
Our staff want and need to feel like they contribute to the larger picture of company success while balancing their own career aspirations. It’s not just about having a job; it’s about providing truly incredible customer experiences and growing as a person while doing it. By placing such a focus on culture, passion, growth, and development, staff are able to dedicate more time to their short and long-term goals and take confidence in the fact that we’re here to help them every step of the way. That spirit of mutual trust and hard work is what leads so many of our staff to personal success at Concentrix.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
We make regular and heavy investments in performance management, educational opportunities, and learning platforms for our staff. From career development sessions, webinars, and stretch-assignments, to mentoring relationships, internal networking groups, and more; our staff have countless opportunities for personal and professional growth at their fingertips. We’re happy to report to that most of our staff use these resources to great effect; over 80% of our promotions are internally filled! This speaks volumes to the value our people place on knowledge, and we are so proud they choose to grow their careers here.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
We’ve earned the respect and business of our clients thanks to our staffs’ unwavering dedication to high performance, tenacious and never-ending pursuit of excellence, and fanatical focus on caring for other people. Recognizing their growth and development efforts has not only paid off for Concentrix—we were fortunate enough to go public in December and are coming off the heels of a fourth-quarter that exceeded expectations—but our clients as well. Our internal platform allows for direct feedback on our clients’ critical operational processes and the work of our front-line staff. This connection provides an ongoing culture of learning, development, innovation, and passion our people work so hard to promote each day, and it has greatly contributed to not only our success but that of our clients and staff as well.
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Investing in employees pays off for everyone in the long term. People stay places they feel like there are opportunities to continue learning and that their growth is prioritized. Fostering professional development leads to less turnover in the long run.
Our transparency is fundamental to employee growth. Most meetings are open so anyone can attend and our data is free for people to dive into. If you give people the tools to grow, the ones who are interested will take them.
Employee growth is evident by the number of people in the “5-year club.” Our company is still less than a decade old, but we can easily name 10 people whose tenure passes 5 years. These employees and many others’ growth is chartable with the company’s because one supported the other and vice-versa.
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Why is it important for CSAA to encourage employee growth?
From a business perspective, we need our employees to gain the skills critical to thriving in the rapidly-changing insurance industry. Our aim is to conceptualize the “workforce of the future” and help our employees along that path. On a personal level, we care deeply about our employees individually and want each of them to thrive and reach their potential.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
All employees have access to a tremendous amount of formal and informal learning resources, as well as access to company mentors and sponsors. We regularly post internal development opportunities such as rotational and short-term assignments to supplement on-the-job growth. Recently, we introduced “Enrichment Time”, whereby every employee is provided with 40 paid hours a year to invest in themselves, both personally and professionally.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
In the past year, 84% of our executive roles were filled with internal talent – saving the company in costs related to recruiting, training, and ramp-up. Our commitment to employee growth has also resulted in great employee engagement scores and a strong retention rate.
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Why is it important for Imprivata to encourage employee growth?
Employee development is a continuous focus for Imprivata. Our employees are happiest when they are learning, growing, and exposed to new challenges and opportunities. If an employee feels as though we are investing in them and they are able to grow within Imprivata, it increases their engagement and their commitment to the company as a whole.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
Imprivata encourages promotion from within and also supports transfers and career growth across teams. As a company, we have a wide variety of Learning and Development programs that support employee growth including Manager Development programs, a Leadership Development program, Professional Development opportunities, and our Tuition Assistance Program.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
Not only does employee growth make for a happy, knowledgeable organization, it also helps with lower turnover rates and overall employee engagement. We’re proud of the fact that last year 18% (67 promotions and 14 transfers) of our employees received a new opportunity within the company in the form of a promotion or transfer.
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Why is it important for Noblis to encourage employee growth?
Noblis values the collaboration and professional development of our employees. We hire for a career, and not a contract, and are fully invested in growing our employees’ skills and expertise to deliver cutting-edge solutions to our clients.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
Noblis fosters employee growth in a number of ways, including through our company-wide Mentorship Program which is open to all employees; our Learning & Development Center, which offers over 4,000 online courses for employees to grow their expertise; and through our Education Assistance Program which offers every employee up to $10,000 per year. Noblis also supports our employees’ growth through a number of professional development programs, including various technical cohorts, our technology speaker series, and our award-winning leadership program.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
As a nonprofit organization, Noblis reinvests in its employees through our professional development programs. As we grow our programs, we see increased engagement scores among our employees. Noblis has also been awarded a Top Workplace Award by the Washington Post for the past seven years and was recognized as having a Top 100 Internship Program by WayUp in 2020.
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Why is it important for your company to encourage employee growth?
At Textron Systems, our strategy stems from the understanding that our people are our greatest asset. Encouraging employee growth allows our teams to succeed and is the driving force behind the incredible products that we build.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
Our First-Year Experience Program was created to give our entry-level employees an opportunity to network with leadership and their peers while offering training programs to assist them as they transition to the workplace. Textron University is another resource that showcases all of our in-person, virtual, or online trainings that are available to all employees. Topics range in the categories of soft skills, wellness, technical skills and more. Lastly, we have a Talent Development team dedicated to ensuring that employees are given opportunities that are challenging and exciting.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
Due to the nature of our business, our work is exciting and impactful to the world. Investing in employee growth helps us develop strong leaders and teams to accomplish great things and support our customers when they need it most.
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Why is it important for Beacon Hill Staffing to encourage employee growth?
We believe that the growth of our company is inextricably linked to our employees’ growth. More often than not, we enter a new market not necessarily because it’s a great business decision but because an existing member of our team has a desire and drive to lay down roots in a new market. We support such desire for growth by investing in that individual and in turn, our business grows.
What are some examples of the ways your company fosters employee growth?
Proactive feedback sought from all employees plus targeted surveys to new hires and their managers. Mentor program for new hires that pairs new employees with another team member outside of their office who has a demonstrated track record of success in core competencies that align with the employee’s career path. Transparent, firmly defined success metrics are embedded in our promotion criteria and awards programs. Internally publish cross-promotional opportunities for advancement, and offer a straightforward option to indicate interest in relocation.
How has investing in employee growth benefitted your company?
We’ve been honored over the years to see not only massive company growth but to maintain exceptional employee retention at all levels of the organization. As a private company, our clients, the individuals we represent, and our employees are our
priorities. Our objective is to create a diverse, fully integrated staffing organization that grows for, and around, its constituents. In this spirit, we continue to invest in the business, enhance our service offerings and expand into new locations.
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Why is it important for Whisps to encourage employee growth?
As a start-up, we often hire people whose jobs and roles change quickly, and we are passionate about our team growing with us. Investing in employee growth is a natural application of our values and one that pays off right away. It’s important to remember that our employees are building their careers and want to expand their areas of expertise and exposure, so as our team strengthens their individual skillsets, our company becomes stronger as a whole.
Professional development is a key component of employee goal-setting and annual performance reviews at Whisps. We encourage employees to look for opportunities within the company to learn and grow, such as getting involved with a project of interest, shadowing a co-worker in another department, or working on a “stretch” project that will take their skillset to the next level. We also have some new employee benefits offered this year including funding our employees’ continued education classes and certification programs, as well as providing opportunities for internal and external mentorship.
As our employees grow their individual skillsets, it’s helped our business run more efficiently and effectively as a result. It’s also helped keep employee retention and satisfaction high as employees appreciate working for a company that invests its resources in them.