How to Build a Career Progression Plan: Example and Template

What is a career progression plan for employees?

Skill progression and salary hikes usually coincide, and strong companies provide clear paths for skilled and ambitious employees to get there

A career progression plan is an employee’s roadmap toward professional growth. Many businesses help employees create plans that align with their goals and potential.

In many companies, ‘career progression’ is a fancy term for ‘promotion.’ But a pay raise and changing your job title aren't the only indicators of progression. Skill progression and salary hikes usually coincide, and strong companies provide clear paths for skilled and ambitious employees to get there.

Organizations often have their teams write their own transparent career progression plans or ‘growth’ plans. This task is often partially or fully delegated to external consultants or trainers. In either case, a well-defined plan offers many benefits, making it essential in many organizations.

Why is it essential to offer a career progression framework?

A career progression framework helps employers boost morale while avoiding potential workplace dissatisfaction. Everyone wants a clear understanding of their mission and what it takes to take the next step.

The reasons why any business that doesn’t already have a career progression plan should start building one include:

• Promoting transparency and trust in the organization.

• Fostering a sense of fairness and reducing unconscious bias.

• Giving ambitious and skilled individuals the ability to thrive in the organization.

• Reducing the turnover that results from insecurity and a feeling of stagnation.

• Attracting top talent to the organization.

As you can imagine, many employees' potential efforts and energy can fall through the cracks without a progression framework. One 2023 report revealed that at least 20.5% of employee turnover results from a lack of development, growth, and advancement opportunities. Some studies place the figure almost twice as high.

It’s normal for employees to be too shy to ask directly about career progression. In many cases, dissatisfaction can build up inside them until they feel they have no meaningful option other than leaving.

You can avoid most of this confusion and dissatisfaction with a transparent career progression plan.

Step-by-step guide: how to plan and write a career progression plan

Creating a career progression plan doesn’t need to be especially difficult. However, it should adequately answer most questions about progression requirements.

Let’s review a framework for creating a career progression plan for employees.

Chart a path

Remember, most employees won’t want to or be able to advance vertically to the top. It’s important to leave room for lateral movement in your organization

If you want to embark on a journey, you need a destination and a route to get there. Ambitious employees also need a clear destination and a well-explained path to get there.

First, draft an organizational chart that lists each career path’s hierarchy. Employees should see each step on their progression ladder. For each step, list a:

• Job title.

• Connections with positions higher or lower on the hierarchy.

• The number of positions available.

• General requirements for consideration.

Your charts must include all the viable progression paths. The purpose is to streamline progression for the best talent so everyone knows who is who and how they got there.

Remember, most employees won’t want to or be able to advance vertically to the top. It’s important to leave room for lateral movement in your organization. Instead of becoming department managers, some employees may move horizontally to a similar role in another area. These employees should also have a viable path they can see.

Clearly defined roles

Every role needs well-defined duties. Even if there is some overlap in responsibility, all entry-level and senior roles need to be clearly defined in a career progression plan.

Understanding how your role is expected to evolve over time grounds your expectations and attaches you to your organization. With roles formally defined, employees gain clarity and can choose their best paths. Clear definitions help fight turnover from employees who feel too uncertain of their future to stay in an organization.

Each role on the career progression plan should come with:

• A title

• A list of tasks they are expected to perform

• Professional expectations

• Evaluation standards

Evaluation standards

Establish the standards for each progression path to keep the progression plan fair and transparent. These are the goals of evaluation standards:

• Employees should understand how they are being evaluated and how evaluations affect progression.

• Letting everyone know where they stand now.

• Enabling employees to set plans that are suitable for them personally.

• Enabling employees to assess their strengths and weaknesses, potentially guiding their training.

Evaluation standards may vary enormously, even between different roles in an organization. But there are some other evaluation questions that HR should be asking about prospective promotees:

• How well are they performing in their current role?

• What is their final career goal?

• What will make it possible for them to achieve their goals?

• Do they have the aptitude to advance to their desired level?

Training and advancement programs

A career progression plan isn’t complete without the means to make development feasible. At this point, all employees understand their roles and their role in the organization. This next step is about implementing systems and training to:

• Give ambitious and skilled employees the chance to prepare for more demanding roles.

• Identify strengths, weaknesses, and skill gaps.

• Offer training programs to improve employee skills and knowledge.

• Provide mentorship opportunities. 

Ongoing maintenance

Career progression plans are subject to change. Sometimes, an organization’s structure changes. Other times, career progression plans become outdated due to other factors. In any case, a periodic review of your career progression plan should be scheduled.

When the time comes to question aspects of the plan, it’s important to have information to work with:

• How many people have taken advantage of training and mentorship resources?

• Have turnover rates reduced?

If the results have remained the same, then the career progression plan probably needs some major changes. 

Example of a career progression plan

Fortunately, big corporations use career progression plans that anyone can examine. These examples may not be as helpful to smaller businesses, but they can be picked apart and simplified or used just for inspiration.

One particularly straightforward example is Berkshire Hathaway Automotive. On their main page, they outline a clear path from every position. Apart from specialty positions with unique needs, every job title is connected with the next promotion above it. That way, everyone immediately knows where their role is located in the hierarchy and what paths managers take to get to their positions.

Each role within a progression map also needs a list of requirements

Each role within a progression map also needs a list of requirements. For example, imagine a customer service role. An employee there wants to get a promotion but doesn’t know exactly how. So, they go to the career progression plan and check the requirements for the job title directly above theirs on the map.

Notice that this position has:

1. Clear and concise lists of actions that must be taken to gain eligibility for promotion.

2. Identification of support given.

3. The way in which the employee would be evaluated for their performance.

The specifics of what to do, and even the titles at the top of the column, can change based on their potential career path specifics.

Which tool to use for creating and managing career progression plans?

Learners can quickly and easily study the career progression information and opt to learn more or engage in training facilitated over Easy LMS

You can lay out career progression plans on any software. Even an Excel spreadsheet can contain a map for any employee to understand where their career can progress. However, a career progression plan is more than a roadmap because it includes clearly defined roles and the ability to train and evaluate individuals for key skills.

Easy LMS is a learning management system that offers complete control over all of your training needs. It can be your standard training and course creation tool.

Every job title can be assigned the relevant explanation, introduction, and training content for employees trying to move into that position. What you get is a fully scalable organization and communication tool. Learners can quickly and easily study the career progression information and opt to learn more or engage in training facilitated over Easy LMS.

Book a 30-minute demo now to learn more.