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You are here: Home / Worked for Her / Worked for Her: Our ‘jungle-gym’ approach retained top talent

Worked for Her: Our ‘jungle-gym’ approach retained top talent

July 30, 2018 By Jennifer Azara

Imagine if you had a network of women leaders all across the country that you could tap anytime you wanted to find out what’s working for them. With our exclusive feature, Worked for Her, you can. In our most recent installment, Annette Alexander, VP of HR in Austin, TX, shares how her company shifted its approach to employee retention. 

There weren’t a lot of management positions opening up at our company. As a result, some employees felt like there wasn’t any room to grow.

This wasn’t good for employee morale or retention.

So we needed to find a way to show employees that even if they couldn’t immediately move into management, they could still grow.

Our solution: Rather than find avenues for vertical growth, we created a system that fostered horizontal growth.

Ditched the ‘ladder’

We changed the philosophy of “career ladders” and adopted the philosophy of “career jungle gyms.”

It says growth isn’t just about moving up, but also out – by adding skills within the organization.

We set up a system in which employees could come to their supervisors and talk about where they wanted to go with their careers.

From there, the supervisors and employees work with HR and other managers to find roles or assignments that help
employees gain new skills and advance their career goals.

Example: If a person wanted to move into HR, we may arrange for him or her to take on a few basic HR tasks.

Now people see there’s a lot of internal support to develop their skills and grow within the company, which has improved morale and retention.

(Annette Alexander, VP of HR, Austin, TX)

Filed Under: Worked for Her, Featured Home Tagged With: growth, HR, jungle gym, managers, morale, retention

About Jennifer Azara

“I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.” -- Amy Poehler, Actress
 
I’m thrilled to have recently joined Progressive Women’s Leadership in the role of Managing Editor. I’ve worked as a writer and editor for more than 18 years, covering a variety of “beats” from CFOs to warehouse workers. But this is the one I’m most excited about. The key to editorial success is to be in constant contact with your audience – find out what info they need, what keeps them up at night. Then work tirelessly to give them that with every story. I want our site to be the first resource you go to when you have a challenge at work. This bossy woman is ready to get down to business!

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