I agree with Julie that Career Ladder Development is pretty much dead, and has been for 10 years or more.  Also, that employees are clamoring for career development, and that on the job learning (OJT) is probably one of the best ways to grow because most people learn best from experience.

Based on our experience, here are some other important elements of career development today:

1.	Supervisors (and employees) struggle with being creative and identifying OJT approaches to develop. We recommend identifying the competencies that employees most commonly want to develop; sometimes these are the company core competencies. Then, identify competency subject matter experts (some of the people in the company who are best at a competency), and use a structured interview to find out how they learned the competency and what activities in the organization would be good opportunities for others to learn the competency.
2.	Generic career development programs have some value, but simply learning to identify one’s strengths and values can lead to disappointment when an individual tries to make a match with company opportunities. Instead, corporate career development programs should be built around the needs and opportunities within the organization, so that individuals can easily see how they match up.
3.	It’s great to mandate development plans for everyone as well as regular coaching and career discussions, but when the workload gets heavy (pretty much all the time these days), managers resist. I really think that technology needs to be part of the solution such that motivated individuals can drive the process themselves. Having a supportive supervisor is critical or development activities won’t occur, but having overly busy supervisors manage a process that in the end can place their star performers in new jobs is probably not the answer.