Nearly 1 in 5 employees say their current job lacks any opportunity to advance at all, according to data from ADP Research’s Today at Work 2025 Issue 1.
Guadalupe Garcia shares her tips for how workers can make opportunities for themselves to drive their careers forward.
For more insights from Today at Work, visit ADPResearch.com/today-at-work
Transcript:
You need to understand where you stand today in terms of the skills that you have, how you show up, what are the others perceptions and be willing to act on that feedback.
As an associate the first thing you need to do to make yourself available for career growth opportunities is really take control. What do you see happening in your current role, and where do you see yourself in the future? And really taking control of making sure you're voicing that not just your leader, by the way, you can you can have those conversations with other people in the organization as well. But when you take control, you really take the time to reflect on what is it that you want to do more? What is it that you would do less and then start observing? What are the roles that you feel attracted to?
The second is be curious about the other roles, and the reality is that many, many times our associates will be attracted to what they think a role might imply, and you have to actually know what the role implies. That comes with being open to step out of your comfort zone. This is today the job that I have, the tasks that I know I have my day to day organized. Doing something like this will definitely throw your agenda, maybe a little bit off, and you have to allocate the time to make sure that you are learning and being curious about other roles that can, you know, can put you in the trajectory of even doing shadowing or stretch assignments that are outside of what you need to deliver, and you still need to deliver your current job. So it's that part of making sure that you're stepping out of that comfort zone and and being curious and taking the time.
And the other part I would say the third thing is really, really, really set yourself to have a successful career because you need to understand what are the gaps you have, and for that you need to seek out for feedback. As a leader, when you think of potential mentors for your associates. Two things I would suggest you consider are number one, who has an opportunity, in their teams and the kind of roles and tasks that your associates actually want to be involved for the future. And that can actually be willing and open to share what it is like to be in that department or in that team. You can also think not from a team perspective and exposure perspective. You can also think from skills perspective. If your team member or your associate needs to develop certain skills, who are the other leaders or other people in your network that you know are good at it and will be willing? And hopefully you can talk to them and make sure that they're really sharing their knowledge.
There's a lot of value in having great expertise, but if you can have someone who is open to make that expertise available to your team, that's a gem. That's a great mentor.
