Beyond the Next Promotion: Building Compelling Career Paths in China

Don’t meet unrealistic promotion expectations in China with premature promotions.  Build career satisfaction with better career path communication and targeted development.

Employees in China have potentially unrealistic promotion expectations.  When their expectations are not met, their career satisfaction and engagement fall and they are likely to leave their employer for a "better" opportunity.  Premature promotions or accelerated pay increases are not the answer – simple steps to provide a broader and more compelling set of career opportunities are more effective and less costly.

Young employees in the early stages of their careers in China expect to be promoted every 1.8 years.  Such aggressive promotion expectations are hard for multi-national corporations (MNCs) to meet.  As a result, one in five employees is dissatisfied with their promotion opportunity – and this dissatisfaction leads to a 40 percent reduction in their overall satisfaction with their careers.  Even when MNC managers attempt to promote employees faster they are not likely to improve career satisfaction a great deal.  Not only are Chinese employees’ expectations aggressive, they are fairly unforgiving – if a promotion does not happen within two months of an employee's “expectation,” they believe they are in a career stall, their satisfaction drops, and their intent to leave increases dramatically.

Attempting to meet advancement expectations with premature promotions is very risky.  Stretching employees into roles they are unqualified for promotes pay inflation, minimizes the signal-value of job titles, and increases the already high number of young, inexperienced managers in senior roles.  The rapid rise of inexperienced, under-qualified managers plays a large part in explaining why 3 out of 4 employees are dissatisfied with their manager and only 1 in 6 are highly engaged at work.

Research by the China HR Executive Board has identified an alternative approach to improving career satisfaction in China, one that doesn’t resort to premature promotions or accelerated pay increases.  An employee’s desire for immediate advancement can be satisfied with better communication about the breadth of career options available, a defined role for the employee in managing their career, proactive involvement by their manager in stewarding career options, and strong development plans linked to career opportunities.  

As the chart above shows, when an employee is newly promoted their career satisfaction is at its highest point.  However, as time passes, their satisfaction drops rapidly (dark solid line), especially after they have been in role more than a year.  The good news is that MNCs in China can maintain higher career satisfaction across time—without accelerating promotions—by doing the following:

• Provide a Wide Breadth of Career Paths–Employees in China are motivated by cross-functional and cross-business development.  Providing employees—even in very early career stages—with a broad set of career options dramatically improves career satisfaction.
• Enlist Your Managers as "Career Stewards"–Engaged managers are essential to employee career satisfaction.  When a manager is able to help “steward” an employee’s career rather than simply manage their day-to-day performance, satisfaction increases substantially.
• Empower the Employee in their Career Planning–While manager support is vital, employees want to partner with their manager and the firm in planning their career.  Steps to provide employees with a “voice” and “choice” in setting their career have a dramatic effect on career satisfaction.
• Link Development Activities to the Career Path–Chinese employees crave development, but the development plans that have the biggest effect on their career satisfaction (and their productivity) are those that are linked to longer-term career objectives, not just immediate work requirements.

Progressive MNCs in China, such as Dow Chemical, Shell, and General Electric, are taking concrete steps to improve their career path planning and management to good effect.  Additional information is available from Board staff or on our website www.chreb.executiveboard.com.