Written by Aoife Hynes, Associate Director of Procurement at Morgan McKinley
Our new 2026 Workplace Trends Report highlights a clear warning sign for employers: a lack of growth prospects has surfaced as one of three primary factors motivating nearly half (49%) of the workforce to consider a career move within the coming six months.
For employers competing for talent, professional development can be a powerful tool for both attracting and retaining employees, but it doesn’t necessarily require bigger salaries or more generous benefits packages. There are a number of relatively low-cost ways to make development opportunities more visible, accessible and meaningful to employees.
Here are seven practical ways to showcase development opportunities and make them a genuine differentiator in a competitive talent market.
1. Understand Where You May Be Going Wrong
Although employees’ expectations around learning and development have increased, many employers face competing business priorities and tighter budgets. As a result, they may expect employees to develop naturally rather than having structured professional development plans in place. Overstretched managers also need to be given the time and support to understand the value and return on investment of developing their employees.
Professional development also needs to be considered at all levels. People do enjoy being challenged and supported and we often achieve that in the early stage of someone’s career. But further on in their career, we need to identify opportunities for development and provide constructive feedback and offer opportunities to work on stretch projects. It may not always be about moving up but getting new exposure and creating a culture of internal mobility.
2. Give Managers Time to Prioritise Coaching
Employers must actively free up or support middle managers so they have the time to mentor and coach their teams. Overstretched managers who are forced to focus solely on “getting the job done” can create a disconnect around professional development.
There’s a practical challenge for managers who are often under pressure themselves and find it difficult to dedicate time to coaching, mentoring and meaningful development conversations. Even where opportunities exist, they may not be communicated clearly or align to employees’ career aspirations.
3. Build Psychological Safety to Enable Stretch Goals
Employers need to create a culture where employees are encouraged to take on stretch assignments and try new things, with the explicit understanding that mistakes are treated as learning opportunities rather than failures. This is where a lot of organisations struggle as they want someone to go into a new project and succeed from the get-go, but it’s vital for high performers in particular.
High performers look for more than just a training budget. They look for clear career pathways, opportunities to learn new skills and exposure to different parts of the business and managers who will coach and challenge them. They also look for an environment where they can step outside their comfort zone in a psychologically safe way, take on stretch assignments and continue to grow without fear of being penalised.
4. Avoid the Trap of Creating “Accidental Managers”
It’s also important to recognise that development looks different across the workforce and not everybody needs to be a high performer – in fact consistent performers are the backbone of most organisations. But don’t fall into the common trap of automatically promoting this cohort to middle managers before they’re ready:
Strong individual contributors are often promoted to people managers before they’re ready or they’ve received the necessary leadership training or support and it can have a massive negative impact on the individual, the wider team and sometimes the business. It’s essential to first develop someone’s emotional intelligence, their communication style and their ability to provide feedback.
5. Match Your Recruitment Promises With Reality
As valuable as it can be to showcase your development during hiring, it’s vital not to oversell it. Ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time is harder to get right than a lot of people think. I’ve seen organisations oversell their development opportunities, only for someone to join the organisation and discover that the opportunity isn’t there. This can actually turn someone off even more than if it hadn’t been positioned that way in the first place.
Not everyone can fast-track talent, so having structured career pathways is essential to manage expectations and support progression in a realistic, sustainable way. And don’t focus too heavily on formal training and budgets alone – building day-to-day mentorship and coaching is just as important.
6. Showcase Real Career Journeys From Staff
Employers also need to move beyond simply saying “we offer professional development” and show what this looks like in practice. Share real examples of career progression within the organisation – perhaps someone who started as an intern and progressed into a director role, or someone who joined with no industry experience and has since developed their career within the business.
These stories can help attract similar talent and demonstrate that development opportunities are genuine rather than simply something promised during the recruitment process. Employers should also bring this to life in their job adverts by sharing details about internal mobility and the opportunities available to employees as they progress.
7. Look Beyond Formal Training
If you can’t compete on expensive external training programmes, leverage internal knowledge-sharing, cross-functional project groups and peer coaching. Demonstrate you’re investing in and care about your people. Opportunities to work on cross-functional projects can be very attractive, allowing people to use skills they have outside their day job.
Another trend in the market is the growing importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) groups and employee resource groups (ERGs), particularly for younger employees and those attracted to multinational organisations. These types of groups can be very attractive because people feel like they’re giving back in certain ways, and they don’t cost anything so you can run these programmes internally too.
