Professionals are no longer staying at one company for 10, 20 years now. In recent years, job hopping has been normalized. It’s clear with this trend that young professionals are prioritizing career progression now more than ever before. While job hopping may have solved eager professionals’ dreams, on the other hand, it’s made it more complicated for employers to retain their top talent. Employers were faced with high turnover rates, recruiting and training frequently, and disorganized team dynamics. That’s why it’s more important than ever to implement a career framework at your company.
Organizations that implement career development programs receive a 100% positive impact. Investing in a career progression framework for your team will enhance employee satisfaction, reduce the workload for recruitment efforts, and save your business money. By aligning overall business goals to their employees’ skills and interests, it sends signals to your current team and future hires that you care about their development.
In this article, we will outline the career progression, benefits of implementing a career framework, and how to create the perfect career progression framework. Establishing career frameworks for your company might feel overwhelming at first, but the benefits are substantial, and with today’s technology, implementation is more straightforward than ever.
What is a Career Framework?
A career framework outlines how employees can grow within an organization. It defines the different levels of seniority, which include entry-level positions, mid-senior levels, and senior leadership roles. Additionally, it details the different career stages and progression an employee can advance to throughout their career.
Career progression frameworks provide your team with clarity on how to achieve their career aspirations. It gives them insight into what new skills they may need to learn to advance professionally. This structure also helps your HR teams design their learning and development programs which can be used to close any skill gaps your company may be missing.
In 2022, one study found that 96% of professionals say it is important to continuously improve their skills. Employees understand the importance of keeping their skills up to date to advance in their careers. They feel motivated when their employers actively provide development opportunities.
9 Benefits of a Career Framework
Businesses that are proactive in preventing skills shortages and creating a better working environment are able to retain their top talent and see a decrease in their turnover rates. By creating a career progression framework, you’re providing a path for your team to experience professional growth and explore their diverse career paths. Here are 9 additional benefits to implementing a career framework at your company.
You provide your team with clarity
A great career progression framework provides a clear career path for your team. It helps them understand the different expectations that are placed on them throughout the stages of their career. Additionally, it tells them what the required skills are to advance to their next job title.
A boost in employee engagement
A career structure gives your employees a sense of direction. It keeps them motivated as they know what they’re working towards and how to get there to make any career advancements. A more engaged workforce also impacts business success in a positive way and mitigates job hopping.
Succession planning
This framework helps significantly with planning for the future. You’ll be able to identify which team members have the potential to be leaders and begin their career development plan. Ultimately, making your succession planning easier and more aligned with your business goals.
Improved employee productivity
By implementing training and development opportunities for your team, you’re investing in the well-being of your employees – and your company’s growth. Giving your team growth opportunities makes them work harder, gain new skills to be more efficient, and sets them up to achieve their career goals.
Organizational transparency
Building trust with your team takes time. By being transparent about your company’s structure and the path to career progression, you show your team that you’re invested in their success. This level of openness helps prevent bias from managers and employers and fosters a stronger sense of trust within the team.
Fosters positive company culture
A career progression plan lets your team know you care not only about their professional development, but personal growth. And current job market trends state that in 2025, leaders and HR professionals are showing more empathy at the workplace. A positive company culture attracts top talent, retains employees, and leads to a more engaged workforce.
Learning and development programs
Similar to succession planning, this framework often requires companies to invest in their learning and development programs. These training courses help employees gain new technical skills and improve their soft skills. Employee development helps your team advance in both their personal and professional lives.
Reduces costs
As we know, implementing a career framework increases employee retention. Therefore, recruitment efforts and costs will be cut by offering a clear career progression for your employees. Your company spends less time and money attracting top talent by focusing on keeping your team happy.
Aligns your workforce with your business strategy
Ensure your workforce development efforts are tightly aligned with your organization’s strategic goals and priorities. By aligning your team’s career goals with your business strategy, you build a solid foundation for growth. Well-defined roles, accountabilities, skills, and job titles will equip your talent to successfully deliver and achieve your strategy.
5 Steps to Creating a Career Framework
When it comes to developing a career progression framework, it’s important to be strategic about it. HR professionals and senior leaders should collaborate to design the structure that works best with your company’s values.
1. Prep the foundation of your framework
This first step is all about preparation. Outline your company’s roles, where each role could progress, and your company’s skill needs (current and future needs). Centralize this information so it’s available for every team member to view. An org chart is helpful in this situation, it can provide your company’s structure in a visual way. This way, it allows your team to get a sense of their career trajectory and understand what behaviors and skills they need to experience career growth at your company. The more specific you are, the easier it is to outline career structures for your business.
2. Define clear job levels, positions, and salary
Be transparent about the hierarchy of roles within your organization and what the expectations are that come with each title and level. Main consistency across departments to ensure fairness and clarity about the stages of their career. During this time, it’s important that you come up with a competitive salary range for each position. Having this transparency ensures employee growth is aligned with expectations from both the employer and employee alike.
3. Map career paths
Your career progression framework should clearly define the competencies, behaviors, knowledge, and experience required for each role. To help employees advance, outline the additional criteria, new skills, and performance standards needed to reach the next level in their careers. In addition, providing both qualitative and quantitative feedback during performance reviews will benefit your team and ensure they are on the right path in their progression plan.
4. Support your team
Establish policies that support career growth, such as training programs, offering flexibility for career changes, and giving your team the tools they need for employee growth. A positive work environment thrives on fair and unbiased regulations. Ensure you are providing valuable feedback, and everyone is well aware of their career progression plan. As your company evolves and grows, your career progress framework will need to be modified. So ensure you are taking the time to review your structure every so often and communicating clearly any changes.
5. Bring everyone up to speed
Of course, setting up an awesome career progression framework from day 1 would be ideal; however, that’s not the reality. Most companies introduce this new structure after their business takes off. So, take into consideration which employees have discrepancies in their current job. This also gives you the opportunity to adjust any salaries that may have been previously overlooked. Once you’ve completed the updates, announce them to your team and support their continued career growth.
Career Progression Framework Examples
A career progression framework looks different, particularly depending on your industry. Career trajectory can be vastly different between blue-collar vs. white-collar jobs. Here are two examples that highlight the different career path options available.
Human Resources
- HR assistant
- HR specialist, people & culture specialist, etc.
- HR manager, people manager
- Chief People Officer
Construction
- Apprentice
- Carpenter, electrician, operator
- Crew leader, electrical foreman
- Site supervisor
- Project manager
Additionally, a here is a real-life example from Spotify. Their career progression framework outlines 3 main key parts:
- Discipline – this is dependent on their employee’s expertise
- Role – what their daily tasks are and who they interact with
- Step – their behaviors and expectations that contribute to the company’s success
This career progression plan ensures they are committed to their employees’ growth and providing them with the information they need to achieve their career aspirations. Within their organization, their career progression follows:
- Individual step
- Squad/chapter step
- Tibe/guild step
- Technology/company step
Implementing a Career Progression Framework
Once you’ve finalized the details of your career progression framework, it’s time to inform your team. Inform your senior leaders about this new policy and share the details with them to review it with their team. The first part about implementing this new structure is educating your company. Career progression plans should be easy to find, whether that’s on an employee portal or in your employee handbook.
You’ll want to come up with a communication plan to share relevant information to help your team understand the importance and benefits of implementing a career progression framework. This could include:
- 1-to-1 meetings
- Email blast or utilizing internal communication tools such as Slack or Factorial
- Documentation including a powerpoint or one-pager
- Dedicated team to answer questions, most likely a role for your HR professionals
Implementing a career progression framework can be streamlined with Factorial’s all-in-one software. You’ll be able to benchmark salaries across teams and departments, create an org chart, and send your career growth policies out to the whole company. Factorial ensures your career progression framework rollout is as smooth as possible.
Common Challenges in Career Progression
It’s nature that there will be some hiccups as you launch this new framework. Here are some common challenges and how to overcome them:
Adhering to everyone’s career goals
It will be hard to please everyone, although you will want to. However, you need to stay on track and ensure all training and development courses are related to the company’s growth. Although some employees will want to develop skills that are useful in their personal lives, ultimately, these skills won’t positively impact the company.
Encourage your team to review their performance evaluations and select skills that align with the company’s career development framework. As employees grow their skills using company resources, they contribute those new capabilities directly back to the business—creating a win-win outcome.
Being fair and transparent
Having a strong foundation to your career progression framework helps prevents any future miscommunication. However, it is not foolproof. There will be challenges and times where employees will feel demotivated or unfairly denied a promotion.
It’s important to provide clear criteria that are needed to advance and move to the next stage of your career. One way to ensure this is clear by utilizing a performance management tool to centralize your team’s progress, feedback, and achievements.
Reviewing and evolving your framework
As your company grows, be flexible enough to accommodate your team and the skills needed to continue growing. If certain job levels and titles no longer make sense, ensure you create a new career progression plan for those individuals. Avoid stagnation of your company’s growth by continuously reviewing and clarifying different roles and ways to experience professional growth.
Career Progression Framework with Factorial
This organizational redesign is a challenging but necessary step for businesses to take. It ensures your company’s jobs and skills are relevant and conducive to your company’s growth. However, organizing it all can messy – from note taking every role in the company to salary benchmarking. Factorial centralizes all of this information for you so you only have to use one platform to get started on your career progression framework. With Factorial, you’ll be able to:
- Create an org chart
- Securely store your company’s policy
- Inform your team about new training courses, career progression plans, etc.
- Conduct performance reviews
- Monitor your employee’s training progress
Save yourself time and effort by utilizing Factorial to grow not only your business, but your team.Get your free trial today!
