Career development has become a strategic priority for organizations, but progress is stalling where it matters most: at the manager level. While leadership teams increasingly recognize the importance of upskilling and internal mobility, many organizations are struggling to translate that intent into meaningful action.
LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report shows that 50% of organizations say managers lack proper support to facilitate career development, making them the single biggest barrier. According to Philip Huthwaithe, CEO of learning technology company 5app, this comes at a time when managers are expected to guide performance, support well-being, and now actively drive skills development within their teams, often without the tools or time to do so effectively.
What’s causing the manager support gap?
Huthwaite points to a set of structural and operational challenges that are holding managers back:
- Lack of time to prioritize development: Managers are balancing performance, delivery, and people responsibilities, leaving little room for structured career conversations or proactive skills planning.
- No clear framework for career development: Many managers are expected to support growth without defined pathways, making conversations inconsistent and often dependent on individual experience rather than organizational strategy.
- Limited visibility into skills and progression: Without access to reliable data on employee skills, managers struggle to identify gaps or recommend relevant development opportunities.
- Disconnected learning and work environments: Learning often sits outside the flow of work, making it harder for managers to reinforce development in real time or link it to day-to-day performance.
- Insufficient training for managers themselves: Managers are rarely trained on how to coach, mentor, or facilitate career development, despite being expected to lead these conversations effectively.
The cost of leaving managers unsupported
The gap at the manager level is more than an operational challenge. It directly impacts employee experience, retention, and long-term organizational performance.
- Without structured support, career progression depends heavily on individual managers rather than a scalable system, leading to inconsistent employee development.
- Employees lack clear pathways, resulting in stalled internal mobility and missed opportunities for growth within the organization.
- Additional expectations without support increase pressure on already stretched managers, contributing to burnout.
- Even well-designed programs fail to gain traction without manager buy-in and enablement, leaving learning and development investment underutilized.
“The data shows that career development isn’t being blocked by a lack of intent from leadership. In fact, very few organizations say leadership doesn’t value it. The issue is that managers, employees, and talent teams are all stretched too thin to prioritize it properly. Managers in particular are expected to have meaningful development conversations, identify skills gaps, and guide progression, often on top of already demanding workloads,” Huthwaithe says.
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“When that support isn’t there, career development becomes inconsistent and reactive,” he adds. “Some employees get great guidance while others are left to figure things out on their own. Over time, that creates frustration, slows down internal mobility, and makes it harder for organizations to retain and grow talent.”
According to Huthwaithe, the most effective organizations treat managers as a critical enablement layer rather than an afterthought. When managers are given clear visibility into skills, supported with the right tools, and able to integrate development into everyday work, career conversations become more consistent, more meaningful, and far easier to act on,” he says.
5 strategies to help managers succeed as career coaches
1. Select and prepare managers with intention: Not every high performer is equipped to lead. Introduce structured assessments to identify individuals with strong coaching potential, and provide onboarding programs that set clear expectations around career development responsibilities from day one.
2. Build cohort-based leadership development: Move away from one-off training sessions and create ongoing, cohort-based programs where managers can learn together, share challenges, and develop coaching skills over time. This helps reinforce learning and creates accountability.
3. Equip managers with simple, practical tools: Provide ready-to-use frameworks for career conversations, skills mapping, and development planning. When managers have clear templates and guidance, they are far more likely to take action rather than delay or avoid these discussions.
4. Create visibility into skills and opportunities: Give managers access to data on employee skills, potential career paths, and internal opportunities. This allows them to guide employees more effectively and connect them to relevant experiences, projects, or people who can support their growth.
5. Recognize and reward career development behaviors: Highlight and incentivise managers who actively support employee growth. Whether through performance reviews, internal recognition, or progression criteria, organizations should make it clear that developing people is a core part of the manager’s role, not an optional extra.
Photo credit: MicroStockHub/iStock
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