With 40% of current skills expected to become obsolete within five years, career development has transitioned from a peripheral HR function to a core business imperative. New research from Right Management, a global leader in talent and career management solutions, reveals that most organizations are failing to provide the necessary support, creating a dangerous gap between employee ambition and organizational capability. Their latest report, "The Career Imperative," provides a data-driven roadmap for businesses to reimagine career development as a fundamental driver of workforce agility and long-term resilience.
Right Management's new report highlights a critical gap in organizational career support.
40% of employees have no career plan, and only 4% have a clearly documented path.
Only one in five employees say their manager helps them map a career path.
39% of today's skills will be outdated within five years due to AI and other disruptions.
The report urges a shift from rigid career ladders to flexible, skills-based pathways.
Key recommendations include empowering managers as coaches and embedding learning into daily work.
The research uncovers a systemic failure in how organizations approach career development. A staggering four in ten employees have no career plan at all, and a mere 4% have a clearly documented path. Managers are not equipped to guide growth, with only one in five employees stating their manager helps map a career path. Furthermore, awareness of existing development opportunities is low, with over a third of employees globally unaware of what is available to them. This is occurring against a backdrop of rapid skills obsolescence, where 39% of current skills will be outdated in five years, accelerating the need for effective career navigation.
"The Career Imperative" serves as a urgent call to action for business leaders. It introduces a forward-looking framework designed to build future-ready organizations by making career development a continuous, integrated process. The report urges companies to replace rigid career ladders with flexible, skills-based pathways that facilitate internal mobility. It positions AI as a strategic teammate rather than a threat and emphasizes the critical need to empower managers to become effective career navigators. The framework also champions career experiments and embedding learning directly into the flow of work to foster a culture of continuous agility and growth. By closing the gap between employee ambition and organizational support, companies can unlock higher engagement, improve retention, and build genuine business resilience.
Talent Solutions combines our leading global offerings—RPO, TAPFIN-MSP and Right Management—to help organizations address their complex workforce needs. Talent Solutions leverages our deep industry expertise and understanding of what talent wants to provide end-to-end, data-driven capabilities across the talent lifecycle. From talent attraction and acquisition to upskilling, development and retention, we provide seamless delivery, leveraging best-in-class technology and extensive workforce insights across multiple countries at scale. Right Management, part of the ManpowerGroup® family of companies—including Manpower and Experis—is our global talent management offering for outplacement, career management and leader development solutions.
ManpowerGroup® (NYSE: MAN), the leading global workforce solutions company, helps organizations transform in a fast-changing world of work by sourcing, assessing, developing, and managing the talent that enables them to win. We develop innovative solutions for hundreds of thousands of organizations every year, providing them with skilled talent while finding meaningful, sustainable employment for millions of people across a wide range of industries and skills. Our expert family of brands – Manpower, Experis, and Talent Solutions – creates substantially more value for candidates and clients across more than 70 countries and territories and has done so for more than 75 years. We are recognized consistently as a best place to work for Women, Inclusion, Equality, and Disability, and in 2025 ManpowerGroup was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the 16th time; all confirming our position as the brand of choice for in-demand talent.
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