Careers tend to be treated as a development issue by organisations, yet the way they work can directly drive business performance.
This idea surfaced repeatedly during our recent Virtual Roundtable “Humanising business: a view from outside HR”.
As participants reflected on the challenges inside their organisations, such as operational pressure and capability shortages, the conversation returned to a common underlying question: how does the way careers function inside a business shape its ability to perform, adapt and grow?
The reflections shared by guest provocateur Tobias Haug from his time at SAP, helped bring that connection into sharper focus. The initiatives he described were focused on enabling teams to shape how work actually happens: involving employees in defining leadership expectations, creating clearer pathways into job roles and helping people build capability more quickly once they join.
Over time, these changes produced measurable results. Teams became more productive faster, internal pipelines strengthened and employees were more likely to stay. Importantly, Tobias also described how these outcomes could be linked directly to commercial performance through metrics such as time, productivity and retention.
In our view, what made the discussion really interesting was how strongly participants recognised similar dynamics in their own organisations.
There was the challenge of demonstrating the value of people initiatives through data, noting how difficult it can be to connect HR activity clearly to business outcomes. And how to empower employees to shape their own roles and opportunities in ways that match their personal ambition with organisational needs.
These reflections reinforced a broader theme in the discussion: careers are part of how organisations build capability and sustain performance, rather than an HR process.
Our CEO at The Career Innovation Company, Jon Matthews, has highlighted this connection. When career pathways are visible, he says, organisations find it easier to attract and recruit the right people. When employees understand how development and mobility work, they can better access the skills, experiences and networks that help them contribute sooner. And when individuals have agency over their career development, engagement and performance often increase.
Most importantly, when people see a credible future with their organisation, they are more likely to stay.
Taken together, these outcomes have a clear direct impact on the commercial health of the business.
Careers, in this sense, are a mechanism through which organisations become more able to grow, respond to disruption and sustain performance over time.
In this way, they are part of how organisations succeed.
