How to keep a workplace star from bolting

Managers are increasingly stuck with a painful problem: top performers who’ve earned a promotion that simply doesn’t exist. A new Harvard Business Review piece lays out how leaders can hold onto these rising stars when there’s no seat to offer them.

The backdrop, the journal reports, is what Workplace Intelligence managing partner Dan Schawbel calls a “job-hugging job market”: employees clinging to their roles amid low mobility and few openings. That’s left ambitious directors stalled, with promotions increasingly treated as the main scoreboard for career success.

Harvard Business Review‘s prescription starts with candor. Leaders should tell the employee plainly that no promotion is coming, then back it up with data showing senior-level turnover has slowed. The goal, per organizational psychologist Anthony Klotz of University College London, is to move the conversation from “that’s unfair” to “that makes sense” by framing the freeze as an external constraint, not a performance judgment.

Next, the publication reports, listen before pitching solutions—let the person vent, then ask what challenges energize them. From there, leaders should decouple career growth from the org chart, offering stretch assignments that broaden scope, raise visibility with executives, and widen influence through added responsibility.

The publication also presses managers to open the pocketbook, lobbying HR to broaden mid-tier pay bands and fighting for raises or title tweaks to reward the extra load.

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