Young Employees Not Getting Career Guidance

Employees are craving career guidance, but they don’t know where to turn. While many workers seek mentoring opportunities and advice from their managers, they say it is often inadequate or nonexistent. New research conducted with HR leaders and U.S. employees finds that Generation Z, in particular, is turning instead to generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT as an alternative.

ChatGPT and similar tools can quickly gather industry data and career path information, but the caveat, as the University of Massachusetts Amherst Career Development Center notes on its website, is that “information provided by AI tools is not guaranteed to be up-to-date or accurate.”

In response to a 2023 survey from Workplace Intelligence, a research agency, and INTOO, a career development and outplacement firm, 39 percent of U.S. employees said they’ve received poor career guidance from their manager. Instead, such guidance comes from multiple other sources, including:

• Friends and family: 62 percent.
• Google: 44 percent.
• Social media: 36 percent.
• AI: 34 percent.

Among Generation Z survey respondents, 47 percent said they have received better career advice from ChatGPT than from their manager. The report, Unlocking Organizational Success by Supporting Employee Growth and Development, is based on a survey of 800 U.S. employees and 800 HR leaders. Two-thirds of the respondents are Millennials and members of Generation X (32 percent and 31 percent, respectively). The remaining respondents are Baby Boomers and Generation Z (19 percent and 18 percent, respectively).

Hungry for Direction

The lack of development opportunities is a long-standing complaint from employees. Overall, 54 percent of the survey respondents said they feel completely on their own regarding their career development.

The thoughtful guidance and career information that people managers can give could go a long way toward developing and retaining those employees. But conversations about career goals, promotion opportunities and similar topics between employees and their managers are scarce. According to the Workplace Intelligence/INTOO report, only about a quarter of employees have formal, monthly career conversations with their manager. Slightly fewer (21 percent) said they have formal quarterly conversations, 18 percent said they have formal annual conversations and 17 percent said they have never had a formal career conversation with their manager.

Three-fourths of workers said learning and development are just as valuable, if not more so, than a promotion or title change. High on their list of development opportunities is learning technical and soft skills, having opportunities to work on new projects outside their normal scope of work and having a mentor or coach. However, 59 percent said their organization rarely or never helps them explore ways to grow outside of their current department.

“We found that the majority of workers expect their organization to offer courses, classes, opportunities to support projects in other areas of the business, tuition reimbursement, and mentorship or career coaching,” says Mira Greenland, chief revenue officer at INTOO. “However, a relatively low number of leaders report that their companies offer these benefits.”

That lack of growth opportunities can lead to the loss of valuable employees. A quarter of respondents—including 44 percent of those from Generation Z—said they’ll likely quit within the next six months because their company doesn’t support their career development.

Conversely, eighty percent of employees said that having access to best-in-class learning and development opportunities would increase their engagement, job satisfaction, work motivation and likelihood of staying at their company. Nearly all Generation Z respondents—97 percent—said these outcomes would increase for them.

Guidance Falls Short

Even when employers do offer career development opportunities, they can be insufficient. Only 22 percent of survey respondents said their company’s learning and development opportunities and benefits are excellent, versus 41 percent of HR leaders.

“Employees expect their manager to help them grow in their roles, and many HR leaders believe that employees are having this experience,” the report states. The survey found that 70 percent of all employees said they have faced at least one obstacle toward making career progress, such as not being aware of promotion opportunities or their manager not supporting a job change.

There are a number of reasons why managers may not be giving the career advice their direct reports want. Nearly half of employees (46 percent) said they believe their managers don’t know how to offer career counseling. A lack of training for managers is another factor, according to the survey. Researchers note that just half of the 800 HR leaders surveyed said managers at their company receive training on how to provide career development guidance when they are hired.

The report also suggests managers may be hoarding talent, calling it “a common phenomenon in which managers discourage internal mobility because they want to keep their top talent for themselves.”

But many managers are just too busy to offer career guidance. Some employees say their manager doesn’t have the time to talk to them about their development.

“The fact is, managers are often stretched too thin to focus on career development for their team members,” says Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence. “Leaders need to prioritize addressing these issues if they want to retain their talent and bolster their efforts around internal mobility.”

That prioritization also includes allowing managers to spend time on their own growth.

“Encourage them to prioritize development and promote this value across your organization,” the researchers write. “When managers are supported, they can more effectively support their employees, and your business will reap the benefits.”