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Personal Progress and Prospect: Early Career Support • 155

employees’ long-term loyalty. Because career development is so important
to new hires, and so few firms currently make the most of it as a part of
onboarding, doing so can provide you with a point of distinction in the
recruiting community. Firms should be aggressive and entrepreneurial
about making career development part of their brands.
We recommend going so far as to put resources available on the intranet
titled “If You’re Thinking of Leaving” and also to support a frank conver-
sation of relevant issues. Senior leadership could help by taking an inter-
est in new hire career development and talking about career opportunities
in a welcome video. Senior executives should offer discussion of their
careers, the key milestones, and secrets of their success. Firms might con-
sider offering access to a specialist within the organization who can help
new hires transition between roles and organizations. Finally, companies
can distinguish their employment brands simply by offering far more
extensive access to executive coaching than is currently the norm.
As for loyalty, one 2002 study published in the Harvard Business Review
found that job security did not contribute most directly to employee
commitment to the firm. Rather, “the executives who intended to stay with
their companies the longest, and who voiced the greatest commitment,
were those whose companies offered them ample opportunities to enhance
their employability and to advance their careers.” The authors put the basic
principle succinctly: “Groom your executives to leave, and they’ll stay.”
They caution that firms cannot just talk about employability—they have
to deliver, or else loyalty will quickly evaporate. These findings bring
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us right back to 1994, and the argument that was made then to create a
“career resilient workforce” benefiting both organizations and employees.
If offering career development could foster loyalty, it seems obvious that
beginning the process early—within the first year of employment—would
only help to achieve superior results.

Structural Requirements to Stimulate Progress
and Achieve One’s Prospect

When a new hire joins an enterprise, how they are placed in the organi-
zation matters. We identified four structural requirements that affect indi-
viduals’ experience around progress and affect their ability to reach their