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5 secrets to building career pathways to retain your employees

If career development hasn’t been a focus of your Learning & Development strategy, it’s time to pivot.
Caroline Maier

Caroline Maier

September 28th, 2022

Offering career opportunity at scale

1. Building talent is no longer a “nice to have” option – it’s necessary to fill open roles

“We’re planning to come out of this and not have to compete in the talent war like in years past, but to have our talent pipeline ready and eager to jump into the positions of tomorrow. … When we invest in your associates like this, we see two, almost three times the retention rate, and then the promotability that follows after that is high as well, and so it’s a win - win for our associates and for the business.”

Beth Williams-Moore, Director of Live Better U at Walmart

2. To attract talent, offer education – to keep talent, offer career pathways


“Organizations today need to orchestrate the shift from a culture of learning to a culture of growth because employees want to grow. Learning can help them develop the capabilities…but if you don’t create the opportunities for them to grow, people find them elsewhere outside your organization.”

Nehal Nangia, Learning and Leadership Research Leader, at The Josh Bersin Company

3. Tuition assistance drives better ROI than tuition reimbursement

4. Align career pathways to high-demand, hard-to-fill roles, ensuring placement for employees

“The business is reaping the benefits because we’ve created this organic talent pipeline right from associates who know Walmart, who know our markets. And we’re just skilling them in a different way, utilizing those same individuals … and placing them in hard-to-fill or expensive-to-fill positions.”

Beth Williams-Moore, Director of Live Better U at Walmart

5. Create holistic support of employee career growth beyond the coursework

“Guild has been a huge help with that with their coaches that help support our associates throughout their journey… And we’re constantly looking at academic providers through Guild that are also providing the services to help nontraditional learners — I know that that’s a standard with Guild is that they partner with folks who can provide that type of support, and so a lot of mechanisms to help our associates get to that completion and then move into mobility into a different role.”

Beth Williams-Moore, Director of Live Better U at Walmart
  1. Career Pathways: Building Tomorrow’s Workforce Today – The Josh Bersin Group © 2022
  2. Bersin and Glassdoor Research, 2019
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