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If you’ve had success growing your parking portfolio you are very likely experiencing some or all of the following: current clients are approaching you with additional opportunities, you’re winning deals through RFP responses, and calls are coming in from complete strangers who want to do business with your company. This is all good news, right? If you’re losing sleep in spite of this success, it might be because you know you need strong managers to maintain your brand and service delivery and you are already stretching your management team thin, due to your recent success. Cloning all of your top managers isn’t a viable solution to this challenging opportunity, but implementing a career development program certainly is.

An effective career development program can ensure you have a consistent pipeline of high performing talent available to take on new responsibilities as the company grows. This type of program supports identified high performing individuals to prepare for their respective next role through training, coaching and “stretch” assignments.

Career development can be a bottom up program, allowing key talent at any level to develop their skills, knowledge and abilities systematically as they prepare for their next level of responsibility. The program should consist of experiences and opportunities for growth that align with required expertise and leadership areas of responsibility.

When putting the program together, organize the plan sequentially, based on the participant’s individual needs. Typically, subject matter education is partnered with leadership development so the objectives learned are applied across the entire scope of responsibility in real time.

Include in the program the methodology to deliver each education segment: training, coaching and/or stretch assignments so the participant experiences the development program from a variety of approaches to better support retention. This will also help you identify resources within the organization that will be tapped to develop and carry out the program delivery. Be sure to include in the program an evaluation component for senior leaders to monitor quantitative and qualitative measurements and provide feedback to participants.

Are you interested in more information about career development? uDrive subscribers have access to tools and templates that can help. These can be found in the Resources for the Parking Manager, HR Tools and Organizational Performance sections of the site.