Invest in Growth, Retain Top Talent: The Career & Skills Imperative

Our take on LinkedIn's 2025 report highlights a crucial link: investing in employee career growth and skill development isn't just a nice-to-have, it's the key to building a future-ready workforce and significantly reducing employee turnover.

The report reveals a concerning gap. While career development is clearly vital, only about a third of companies are truly excelling at it. Another third have limited programs, and the remaining third are either doing nothing or just starting out.

The good news? Companies that champion career development are seeing real business benefits. They're much more proactive in using various career development strategies compared to those lagging behind. Plus, the vast majority of these top performers plan to keep or even increase their investment in this area throughout 2025.

According to LinkedIn's Olivier Sabella, the driving force behind employees wanting to learn at work is career progression. If they don't see opportunities to grow within a company, they'll likely seek them elsewhere. He emphasises that in today's rapidly changing work environment, businesses can't afford disengaged teams and high attrition rates. Prioritising career development fuels motivation, loyalty, and innovation – all essential for navigating the future of work.

Our interpretation of LinkedIn's research underscores that employee retention is a major worry for most organisations, and offering learning opportunities is seen as the best way to keep people. Sabella points out that while having the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time sounds simple, it's a significant challenge for HR and talent leaders. He suggests that AI can play a role in delivering personalised learning at scale, and involving managers can guide employees towards relevant development.

LinkedIn's analysis of companies with significant hiring and departure activity revealed the top skills being lost to attrition are highly valuable and difficult to replace. These include strategic thinking (business strategy and strategic planning), leadership and sales skills (sales management, project planning, operations management, marketing strategy, management, business development, negotiation, and team leadership). This further emphasizes the need for career development to prevent this critical skills drain.

Sabella also reminds us that career growth isn't just about promotions. Providing opportunities to learn new skills, receive coaching, or take on different roles within the company can make employees feel valued and engaged, ultimately increasing their likelihood of staying and retaining those crucial skills.

Interestingly, the report found that while leadership generally recognises the importance of career development, significant systemic obstacles exist. These include a lack of adequate support for managers, employees, and even talent teams. Despite these challenges, very few respondents felt that leadership didn't value career development at all, suggesting a disconnect between good intentions and effective implementation.

Sabella suggests that AI-powered learning platforms can help overcome these systemic issues by delivering personalised learning efficiently at scale. He also stresses the importance of measuring the business impact of learning to secure more resources and investment.

In conclusion, our understanding of LinkedIn's findings is that organisations are at a critical juncture. While there's an awareness of the importance of career development at the leadership level, significant action is needed to address systemic issues and truly empower employees to grow. Failing to prioritise career and skills development isn't just a missed opportunity – it's a direct path to losing valuable talent and hindering future success.

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