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How to Manage Growth

Leverage Growth to empower your team in creating clear, actionable plans that drive career development and success.

Last Updated: April 21, 2025

In this article: 

Overview

To retain top talent, investing in their growth and development is essential. Setting clear, actionable goals aligned with a well-defined career path not only boosts employee engagement and retention but also strengthens your organization by expanding its collective skills and expertise.

When employees see tangible opportunities for growth, they feel more motivated, engaged, and committed to their work. Providing structured career paths and skill-building resources not only reduces turnover but also helps organizations adapt to rapid industry changes and talent shortages. Growth delivers personalized, structured development plans, empowering organizations to cultivate their people and drive long-term success.

By completing their Career Vision assessment, identifying Growth Areas, setting Plan Actions, and sharing their Growth Plan with their manager, employees gain the clarity and confidence needed to achieve their professional goals.

In this article, you’ll learn how to oversee Growth Plans and collaborate with employees to support their development effectively. 

 

Take a quick tour of Growth's features and benefits in the video below.

 

Access Growth

Start by clicking ‘Growth’, where employees can define their career goals and create actionable plans to achieve them.

 

Navigate Growth

Once in Growth, you’ll see a variety of features which support career planning and development. Each visual is defined below.

 

  • A: Your Plan is the central hub for everything related to an employee’s personal Growth.
  • B: Job Explorer highlights what success looks like in different roles within your company.
  • C: Visible to Admins and Managers, Team Plans gives a a quick and comprehensive view of their team’s growth plans, while allowing access to individual growth plans for collaboration.
    • Also visible to Admins and Managers, Team Insights will provide a clear view of employee growth trends across teams and the organization.
  • E: Take The Tour to familiarize yourself with the basics of Growth.
  • F: The Growth Wayfinder tracks progress on the journey to filling out a Growth Plan.
  • G: Your Growth Plan visualizes a customized strategy for career growth, including Growth Areas and Plan Actions.
  • H: The Career Vision is based on an individual assessment and will be displayed upon completion.

 

Creating A Growth Plan

 

Career Vision

To begin creating an individual Growth Plan, employees take the Career Vision assessment. By breaking it down into a series of easy-to-answer questions, this assessment makes formulating a career vision simple.

We recommend employees set aside 10 minutes of dedicated focus time to complete the assessment, envisioning the impact they’d like to make in 3-5 years. It may be helpful to consider career wins, feedback from others, or inspirational people throughout this process.

 

Note: This career vision is intended to be personalized. If anything in the vision doesn’t fit with their long-term goals, employees can always retake the assessment or make edits along the way.

  • To take the Career Vision assessment, employees may click “Get Started”.
  • The assessment will guide employees through a series of questions to help clarify their aspirations.
  • They’ll reflect on which tasks energize or drain them, capture key accomplishments they’re proud of, highlight the skills that have contributed to their success, and describe a typical day in their role*.
  • If applicable, organizations may also choose to include interest in relocation within the assessment.

*Note: [Coming Soon] This feedback will be summarized to create daily responsibilities of a variety of roles across your company within the Job Explorer feature.

 

By following the prompts throughout the assessment, employees can track their status towards completion in the progress bar at the top right of the screen.

 

Note: All progress will be saved automatically, allowing employees to return later if needed.

 

Once completed, a personalized Career Vision is generated based on responses to the assessment. Including a vision for now, next, and later, your team’s career aspirations have never been clearer.

Employees can edit any stage of their Career Vision to customize it to their goals. Outcomes can also be updated over time. Once ready, they simply click Save Career Vision to add it to their Growth Plan.

Having insight into employee’s career aspirations can be critical for organizational succession planning and promotions and also makes it easier for managers to coach and guide their team members toward success.

 

Growth Areas

Once their career goals are clarified, it’s time to create actionable steps to achieve them by identifying key areas to focus on in development.

  1. To begin, employees click ‘Add Growth Area’.
  2. A curated selection* of competencies relevant to an employee's current role will be displayed, along with the option to explore Growth Areas from other internal roles and filter by theme. 
  3. Clicking "Add Growth Area" seamlessly integrates a selected competency into their Growth Plan.

 

*When implementing Growth, admins have the option either to:

  • import their organization’s custom competency framework to define Growth Areas,
  • or utilize Quantum Workplace’s Competency Library and AI technology to map competencies to roles with ease.

The QW Competency Library

The best practice competency library includes 10 core competencies that define success across a wide range of roles.

Each competency has a general description, as well as bullet points outlining measurable and observable characteristics of success across five levels of proficiency, ranging from Level 1 (Emerging) to Level 5 (Expert).

Organizations with pre-defined competency frameworks also have the option to import their own custom competencies to power Growth Areas. Growth supports custom competencies with anywhere from 0 – 6 levels, and also supports custom competency themes.

When it comes to identifying the right set of competencies (whether QW competencies, or custom competencies) that apply to each role, Admins have options.

Admins can either:

  • manually map competencies to individual job titles
  • or utilize Quantum Workplace’s AI Competency mapping tool

At a minimum, the competency mapper uses job-specific information to map the 5 competencies most critical for success in a role at the proper proficiency level. While not required, the competency mapper can also refer to job descriptions when provided.

To identify their own development opportunities, employees can also add custom Growth Areas by scrolling past the pre-populated options.

4.   Once added, Growth Areas appear in the employee’s personal Growth Plan. To remove a Growth Area, click the hamburger menu on a focus area and select Remove.

 

Plan Actions

Now that Growth Areas have been identified, it’s time for employees to develop an action plan to achieve these goals.

  1. By navigating to Plan Actions just below Growth Areas, employees can get started.
  2. To add action items to their Growth Plan, employees can create custom actions or use the Generate Ideas feature with our Career Coach (coming soon!).
  3. Upon clicking Add Custom Action, prompts will appear to help define specific action items. Once these steps are completed, employees click Save to add them to their Growth Plan.
    Coming soon! Our Generate Ideas feature will suggest potential action items tailored to an employee’s Growth Areas and Career Vision.
  4. Action items will now appear under Plan Actions, including the date they were added, along with options to edit or remove each item.
  5. When an action item is completed, employees can check the corresponding box. The options to edit or remove the action item will be replaced with an archive option. Archiving action items will move them from their Growth Plan to an archived folder, accessible below Plan Actions.
  6. Employees can use the comments section below Plan Actions to communicate with their manager, share progress on goals, and document important updates.

Sharing A Growth Plan

Now that each stage of creating their Growth Plan has been completed, employees can share their progress with their manager by clicking ‘Share Plan’ at the bottom of the Growth Plan. This allows for alignment on career goals and supports employees in achieving success.

A confirmation pop-up will appear, prompting the employee to share their Growth Plan.

Clicking Yes, Share Plan instantly grants their manager visibility. Once shared, managers can review the plan, provide feedback, and collaborate on adding Growth Areas and action items.

Note: Employees will still be able to add additional growth areas, edit their Career Vision, and create new action items after sharing their plan.

 

Job Explorer

Located in the second tab of Growth, Job Explorer enables employees to explore roles across the organization, understand key responsibilities, and identify Growth Areas that align with their career development.

On the Job Explorer page, you'll find two key sections:

  • Functions: Groups of jobs that share similar expertise.
  • Jobs: Specific roles within each function, detailing responsibilities, duties, and expectations.

Manage Growth

 

Team Plans

Team Plans offers a visual overview of each direct report’s progress on their Growth Plan, including their future aspirations, current career goals, and the steps they’re taking to achieve them.

 

Access Team Plans

  • To view your team’s Growth Plans, go to the Growth dashboard and select the Team Plans tab.
  • Under Team Plans, you’ll see a visual of each direct report’s progress toward their Growth Plan. To dive deeper into individual Growth Plans, select View Plan under Action.

Manage Team Plans

Managers can view their direct report’s Growth Plan to support them in career development and collaborate on setting goals and action items.

Once in a team member’s plan, you can:

  • A: View the owner of the Growth Plan.
  • B: View and add Growth Areas, which are clearly defined competencies selected by an individual to help achieve their career aspirations.
  • C: View and add Plan Actions, which are specific action items designed to help develop skills within selected Growth Areas.
  • D: Coming soon! Use Generate Ideas to create custom actions with our Career Coach feature.
  • E: Add Custom Actions, which allows you define your own action items by following a series of prompts.
  • F: View the Career Vision, which provides an overview of an employee’s career aspirations based on an individualized assessment.

Collaborating on Growth Plans

While Growth Plans are designed to empower employees to take ownership of their career development, the role of a manager in guiding and supporting that growth is essential.

Managers help shape a culture that prioritizes development by fostering meaningful conversations, providing strategic input, and ensuring alignment between individual aspirations and organizational goals.

Once an employee completes and shares their Growth Plan, managers can actively contribute in the following ways:

  • Reviewing the employee’s Career Vision to understand their long-term aspirations. Managers should coach and guide team members, either to help them achieve their vision, or offer honest feedback if their goals are not feasible or well aligned with organizational needs. The Career Vision creates transparency into your team members’ aspirations, so you can follow-up with the necessary coaching and guidance.
  • Adding, editing, or removing Growth Areas to ensure alignment with skills development and career progression.
  • Adding, editing, or removing Plan Actions to create clear, actionable steps toward growth that are well aligned with team priorities as well as the individual’s growth and development.
  • Sharing affirmation, feedback, or other updates directly within the Growth Plan’s Updates area to provide guidance and encouragement.
  • Keeping growth and development top of mind by continuously returning to and engaging with your team member’s Growth Plans.

Through direct engagement and collaboration, managers play a crucial role in ensuring employees have the resources and support they need to achieve long-term success.