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What next? How to help employees reach their career plan milestones
In this article, we look at how you can help each employee put their career plan into action at your organization.
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Performance Management
Retention
What next? How to help employees reach their career plan milestones
Time and again, it has been revealed that one of the leading reasons people leave their jobs is because they lack a career plan. In other words, they don’t see the opportunity for advancement at their company. And, this seems to be particularly true among Millennials – who are now the largest generation in the US workforce.
Gallup shared that 59% of Millennials say that learning and growth opportunities are extremely important considerations when applying for a job (whereas, 44% of Gen X-ers and 41% of Baby Boomers say the same). Further, 87% of Millennials rate professional or career growth and development opportunities as important in a job (69% of non-Millennials agree).
Mapping out the opportunity for growth
Perhaps – knowing that career growth is an important aspect of retaining today’s professionals – you’ve already helped your employees develop career maps. Not too long ago, we had a look at how to do that. You can find out more here.
To recap on some pertinent points briefly, we recommended talking to employees about their ‘dream career’ and using their SWOT analysis along with your team KPIs to help individuals develop a career plan that works for them and the company.
You could start with a five-year plan, and work backwards to three-year and one-year goals. Once you’ve clarified a few short-term goals, you can help your employees to think about the projects, tasks, and learning opportunities they would need to complete in order to reach them.
Putting a career plan into action
So, the first step is the easy part, but let’s look at how you can implement this growth strategy at your organization, helping an employee put their career plan into effect.
Remember, as we mentioned before, it’s important for employees to understand that the responsibility is ultimately theirs to take the steps towards achieving their aims. But, there are ways that you can support your employees in doing this, simultaneously helping you prevent attrition. Let’s explore these.
Encourage employees to schedule ‘building blocks’ into their calendars
Defining a timeline forms part of the career planning phase, but introducing supporting tasks to that timeline spills over into the implementation phase. Aside from long-term and short-term goals being pinpointed, it’s important to identify what practical steps need to be taken on a monthly (or perhaps, in some cases, weekly) basis to ensure that employees reach their goals.
For example, if an employee hopes to step into a mid-weight copywriting role in your company in the near term, in alignment with your organizational strategy, are there tasks – like writing two or three blogs a week – that the employee could take ownership of and add to their schedule over the next quarter or six months?
Allowing that employee the opportunity to work towards their career plan not only shows that you value their contribution and have confidence in their potential, but it also helps you to understand their competencies and assess their potential for the new role with greater insight. A tool like our workload forecasting and scheduling system can help you manage this process effectively.
You may also want to encourage employees to look out for ‘enrichment’ opportunities that can be put into their calendars. Are there any internal gigs that they can get involved with, for example? Creating an internal gig economy is a great way to foster intrapreneurship and retain top performers by allowing them to take on stimulating work gigs in other departments or teams. Or, are there any significant meetings taking place in upcoming months, or perhaps an important conference within the next year, that promising individuals could be involved with?
It’s important for employees to know that they can approach you to pitch ideas or opportunities like these to you for your consideration. Making room for these tasks or events in employees’ calendars gives them the opportunity to learn and, once again, it shows a level of investment in them from the company.
Present employees with training and development opportunities
As we mentioned in our earlier blog, every career plan should include plans for learning. To ensure that these aspirations don’t get put on the back burner, it’s important to know what your training budget will allow for, to begin with. From that point, you’ll be able to effectively plan out and commit to opportunities where employees can participate in short courses, attend conferences, or the like.
Microlearning is becoming increasingly popular among organizations as a way of upskilling employees. Unlike the long-form, ‘heavy’ learning most of us are familiar with, microlearning – normally presented in an engaging and interactive way via technology – allows employees to digest smaller chunks of information. Click here for tips on how to make this type of learning most effective.
With technology like ours you can set up your ideal learning management process and create structured learning paths or allow learners to select courses in a more ad hoc fashion.
6 Essential Milestones to Achieve in Your Business Roadmap
Get on the path to success with these 6 essential milestones for your business roadmap. From ideation to execution, learn how to achieve your goals and grow your business with our expert tips
6 Essential Milestones to Achieve in Your Business Roadmap
Written by Ayush Jalan
March 13, 2023
Free SMART Goal Template
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Entrepreneurs start their businesses envisioning the success they wish to see. But just having a great idea is not enough. What’s needed is a long-term roadmap with appropriate business milestones. This helps break down long-term goals into bite-sized objectives.
→ Download Now: The SMART Goal Template
Through these milestones, you get a birds-eye view of where your business is and where you want to be in a given timeline. Think of it as a guiding principle for your business. It gives you direction, clarity, and the means to track, measure, and compare your progress.
20% of startups are likely to fail in the first year. This statistic rises to 50% by the 5th year.
In this article, we will see what are business milestones, why they matter, and how you can set them for your business. We will also share with you six of the most essential business plan milestones you need to create your own roadmap.
Business Milestones and Needs
How to Create Business Plan Milestones
Create Your Roadmap to Success
What Are Business Milestones and Why Do You Need Them?
Milestones are the indicators in your business journey that help you identify how far you’ve come and what you need to do to reach your targets. They help simplify your actions into manageable and perceivable day-to-day activities.
Writing SMART goals and setting milestones are essential for your business to succeed. Milestones help you:
Map out your goals with relevant metrics to track progress
Adjust trajectory in case of any deviations
Predict when you will reach your set goals
Goals without milestones lack direction. And to be able to follow the right direction, you need the right strategies that follow the right timeline.
A business roadmap, much like a business plan, is an overview of your business landscape. It consists of the milestones that you need to achieve to get to your destination. However, it does not include specific everyday tasks.
How to Create Business Plan Milestones
Creating clear, accurate, and distinct milestones is essential to reaching your goals. An effective milestone has four key elements:
Description (What):
List down the details of your milestone. For instance, instead of writing ‘increase sales, you can write ‘increase sales by 30% percent. Add as many details as necessary to understand your objectives.
Date (When):
Mention a deadline for the task. Without one, it can be difficult to achieve goals on time. Set up a timeline for each task. This helps you manage and complete tasks as per your business requirements.
Budget (How much):
Before you start any task or project, plan your budget and how much of it you want to allocate to each task. This helps you stay within your budget, avoid wastage, and save time.
Delegation (Who):
Assign the responsibility to the relevant talents. Make sure to keep adequate supervision of the progress made to ensure a consistent outcome.
Conduct team meetings at the end of each month to review the progress made so far in reaching your next milestone. This helps you stay on the right track and make necessary adjustments in case of any deviations.
6 Must-have Business Milestones to Achieve
Inspired by a brilliant business idea, you decided to set up your company. You also took it upon yourself to create a custom business plan, acquire capital, secure all permits and licenses, and do other paperwork. Good job!
The next step is to set yourself apart from your competitors to establish authority. A well-made roadmap can help you get there and make sure that your business stands the test of time.
Keeping that in mind, here are 6 milestones to include in your business roadmap:
Create a Tailored Business Model
A business model explains how a company makes money; it describes how your business operates to generate sales and revenue. An effective business model is simple to understand and flexible to changes in the business environment.
→ Download Now: Business Model Canvas Template
Before you put up the “Yes, we’re open” sign, make sure to conduct a customer analysis. This will help you identify your target audience, and their pain points, and sell them profitable solutions. The more complex of a problem you’re solving, the higher you can price your solutions.
Once you’ve gathered enough data from your analysis, you can customize your business model based on the promising trends. After achieving this milestone, start selling your offerings to your target customers.
How To Set and Achieve Project Milestones [2023] • Asana
Project milestones help your team know what they’re working towards, what work is most important, and stay on project schedule. Learn more about how project milestones can help your team align on priorities.
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HOW TO SET AND ACHIEVE PROJECT MILESTON ...
How to set and achieve project milestones in 2022
Jenny ThaiNovember 9th, 2022•6 min read
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If you’re a fan of project management (and we hope you are), you know that organized plans save time and resources. In fact, the Project Management Institute found that “organizations that invest in project management waste 13 times less money because their strategic initiatives are completed more successfully.”
Not all project plans are created equal, however. Let’s say you’re working on your latest plan. It has goals, tasks, task owners, and deadlines. It has dependencies and deliverables. You’re confident that it’s a work of project planning art that will carry your team to success. But did you remember to include project milestones?
If your project doesn’t have milestones, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. Project milestones simplify your role as project leader because they give your team marks to aim for while also showing stakeholders your progress at a level they’re interested in. The good news is that project milestones are easy to add to any project (even those already in progress), and they provide multiple benefits.
Let’s look at what project milestones are and what they can do for you.
What is a project milestone?
Project milestones mark specific points along a project’s timeline. They are checkpoints that identify when activities or groups of activities have been completed or when a new phase or activity is launched. You can differentiate milestones from other elements of a timeline because they take no time to complete; think of them as signposts that keep things on track.
Create a milestone chart template
Are project milestones important?
Milestones are powerful because they demonstrate forward progress in your project plan. They help motivate and align your team by enabling everyone to view progress and judge priorities. And they help you monitor deadlines, identify important dates, and recognize potential bottlenecks within the project. If you were to strip the tasks from your project timeline, the milestones would still give an outline of the key steps or phases of the project.
Read: Create a better project plan in just 7 steps
It can be easy to confuse project milestones with other aspects of project management, so let’s review the differences.
Milestones vs. goals
Goals are what you wish to achieve looking forward; milestones take a look back at what you’ve already done. Think of milestones as rungs on the ladder to achieving a goal.
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Example: A marketing team working on company-wide rebranding initiative—a big project with many moving parts—might set a goal to complete the project by the end of the third quarter. They could then use milestones along the way to mark key decisions or activities as complete, such as colors selected, design templates created, launch plan approved, etc.
Milestones vs. project phases
Milestones often coincide with the start or completion of project phases (such as initiation, planning, execution, and closure). A project phase may take weeks or months to complete, involving multiple tasks and team members; a milestone is a zero-time “checkmark” of major progress that is important to acknowledge and report on.
Example: For a rebranding project, the initiation phase will cover many tasks, such as focus groups to gather ideas on the new branding and creative brainstorming sessions. A milestone at the end of the initiation phase would mark the team’s readiness to move to the planning phase.
Milestones vs. project deliverables
A project deliverable is a product or result, whereas a milestone is a moment in time. Deliverables are sometimes evidence of the completion of a milestone.
Example: Deliverables for the rebranding project could include the updated style guide PDF and associated logo files. The completion of these projects is worth noting (and even celebrating!), so the marketing manager could add a milestone denoting that achievement.
Milestones vs. tasks
Tasks are the building blocks of your project, and they take time to achieve. Milestones have no duration and are more like lines in the sand that mark a group of tasks as complete.
Example: A rebranding project will have many smaller and larger tasks, such as creating logos, setting up social media accounts, and writing press releases. A milestone might mark the completion of a group of related tasks.
Read: What is a milestone chart and why is it beneficial
Connecting project milestones to your project plans
Project milestones can be added to any type of project plan to help it run smoothly. They can be particularly helpful when it comes to scheduling because milestones will need to be placed alongside the relevant tasks or phases; setting up milestones helps you concentrate on target dates and adjust the project plan as needed.
You can also have fun with milestones! For example, plan celebrations for when major project milestones are checked off. This type of acknowledgment boosts morale and improves engagement.
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