Published routes through the organisation, with the criteria for each move written down. Built so an employee can see what the next role requires, and a manager can answer the question without improvising.
One of the most common reasons a capable person starts looking elsewhere is not pay or workload, it is the absence of a visible next step. Where progression criteria live in a manager’s head, the answer to what would it take to get there changes depending on who is asked and when. That inconsistency gets read as unfairness, and more often than not the reading is accurate.
Establish the roles and levels that actually exist, including the ones that have grown up informally. Most organisations have more levels in practice than on the structure chart, and a few that exist only for one person.
Write what each level requires in terms of capability, evidence and scope, in language employees recognise. Criteria that only make sense to HR are criteria managers will quietly ignore.
Map the realistic moves between roles, lateral and specialist as well as vertical. The value of a path is in showing the steps, not only the destination.
Equip managers to hold progression conversations against the published criteria, so the answer an employee gets is the same regardless of who they report to.
Career progression touches four components of the Chrysalis Talent Management Maturity Framework: Talent Development, Learning and Development, Performance Management, and Diversity Equity and Inclusion. Paths published without matching development provision create an expectation the organisation cannot meet. Paths published without consistent performance standards become contested the first time two managers reach different decisions. The Maturity Assessment shows which components are ready to support progression and which need work first.
Visual routes between roles, showing lateral and specialist moves alongside the vertical ones.
What each level requires, expressed as capability and evidence rather than years in post.
How readiness is assessed and what counts as evidence, so a decision can be explained and defended afterwards.
A structured approach to progression discussions, including how to tell someone they are not ready yet without losing them.
Book a free discovery call with Verity today
A published set of routes between roles, with the criteria for each level written down. It defines what capability and evidence a move requires, and it applies the same way regardless of who an employee reports to.
A competency framework describes what good looks like in a role. A progression path describes how someone moves from one role to the next, including lateral and specialist routes. The two work together, with the competency framework supplying the language and the progression path supplying the route. Where a competency framework already exists, progression paths are usually built on top of it rather than starting again. See Strategy and Design for framework build.
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: is Compensation and Reward in scope here, or deliberately held separate? Progression paths and pay banding are often expected together, and the page should say plainly which applies.]
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: delivery format, and whether manager enablement is included as standard or priced separately.]
[TO CONFIRM WITH VERITY: typical elapsed time, and whether it varies by organisation size or number of role families.]
Small organisations often have limited vertical headroom, and pretending otherwise damages credibility quickly. The useful work is usually in defining growth through scope, specialism and responsibility rather than title, and in being straight about where the ceiling sits. People tolerate a ceiling they can see considerably better than one they discover.
Verity is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with more than twenty five years in HR, across Tesco, Nissan, TUI, Camelot, BRE, Lundbeck and the IET, spanning organisations with deep hierarchies and others with almost none.
A short conversation establishes whether progression is genuinely unclear, or whether the routes already exist and are simply not published. The remedy is different in each case.
