Q&A with Beverly Kaye

In this Q&A podcast, I speak with Beverly Kaye, the founder of Career Systems International. She is recognized around the world as one of the most knowledgeable professionals in the areas of career development, employee engagement, and retention. She has developed a powerful suite of talent solutions that help organizations reduce costs associated with talent loss. 

Beverly has authored a number of books, including Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay as well as Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go. Her latest book, Hello Stay Interviews, Goodbye Talent Loss will be released in May 2015.  

At the 2015 ATD International Conference & Exposition, Bev Kaye will facilitate two sessions:

• M106 - Stay Interviews Prevent Exit Interviews: Help Managers Re-Engage Talent

• TU221 - Cracking the Code on Career Development: Curiosity, Conversation, and Creativity.

I spoke with Bev about how to use career development in your organization to improve employee engagement and retention. For starters, I asked her to discuss some of the typical barriers to implementing career development as an employee engagement strategy. 
Bev explains the primary barrier is that many organizations simply don’t recognize that career development is, in fact, a retention and engagement strategy. She goes on to say that without career development, employees won’t see a place for themselves in the future of the organization—and therefore, they won’t engage with the organization.

I also asked Bev to discuss how we can help managers have more comfortable and productive career conversations with their employees. The key here, she says, is helping them learn how to recognize those “coachable” moments that happen all the time. In other words, rather than make career conversations another task in already busy schedules, we need to help managers learn how to work them into the “every day flow of work.”

For advice on how to do this, listen to the entire podcast.