Welcome to your Passport2Progress toolkit

An important part of taking control of your development is taking ownership of the direction your career takes, within your current role, and beyond.

• To map out how you might like to develop in your role.
• The career and development options you might like to pursue in the future, and
• How you can make the most of the opportunities that your current organisation offers.

Research shows that we will live longer, therefore we will work longer and that if we enjoy our work we are likely to be healthier for longer too. (Graton. L & Scott. A, ‘The 100 Year Life, 2016) We think that is worth preparing for, so we invite you to step through this toolkit and discover your path to greater fulfilment.

This toolkit guides you through a series of activities to help you identify and clarify your personal and professional career ambitions, consider your development needs and prepare for performance and career discussions with your manager that are meaningful and constructive.

The toolkit aims to help you to:

• Capture the knowledge, skills and experience you have gained throughout your career, and preparing to share that insight so that your organisation knows what you are capable of.
• Explore your development needs and identify what will help you to continue perform in your current role at your best, keep up to date with professional and industry trends and developments, and strive to continuously improve.
• Describe your medium to long term career aspirations and your ideas on the steps you can take to achieve them.
• Lead a fulfilling working life that matches your values, strengths and capabilities, and enables you to bring your best self to work every day.

‘I just want to do a good job’ – Engaging with the Process

You might not consider yourself as “ambitious”, or having or wanting a “career”. Perhaps you just want to do a good job and enjoy doing it?

If this is you, It may be hard to see how career or development-oriented conversations can be useful. This toolkit will help you gain even greater satisfaction in your current role, even if you are quite happy staying put.

A “career” is the  sum total of your work experiences to date. This might have started with part-time work as a teenager, and progress through to retirement. So, a career is your work history (and the skills, experiences and capabilities you gather throughout) and your future work aspirations.

Our choices about where we work and what we do are all too often overly influenced by others. Our first career decision might be shaped by teachers, parents, or friends. After that, we may be influenced by our current manager, a recruitment agency, or family commitments.

Without pausing for thought, it is hard to separate out the:

• Gravity issues (the things we can’t change).
• The influences of others (which we listen to or ignore).
• Your own desires and preferences.

This toolkit puts you in the driving seat, to help you make conscious choices about what YOU really want to do, be confident in the plans that can enable it, and be assertive in your discussions about it.

The value of your portfolio

If you are happy with your job, and your position in an organisation, you may feel less motivated to talk about personal growth, learning and development opportunities.

But if you are going to keep doing your job well, you need to keep up to date, embrace new trends, and new ways of doing things.

Building up your portfolio of transferable knowledge, skills, and behaviours can help you to continue to make a positive contribution to your work. And you will be ready if and when you either need or want to move jobs.

By investing a little time in thinking about your career you will be able to enjoy what you do a little bit more, do more of what you like and are good at, and make sure you are supported by opportunities to learn and grow.