Research foundations
Where the Standard comes from
The Employee Growth Standard is not an opinion about good management. Each pillar translates an established field of research into conditions that can be observed inside a workplace.
Fields and questions
Adult learning
Under what conditions do adults actually acquire durable skills?
Workplace learning
What proportion of skill acquisition happens through work itself rather than training?
Employability
What makes a person stronger on the labour market, not only inside one employer?
Internal mobility
What structurally blocks or enables movement inside an organization?
Psychological safety
What conditions allow people to attempt, fail and learn?
Managerial coaching
How much of an individual's growth is explained by their direct manager?
Skill development
How is skill acquisition observed rather than declared?
Organizational learning
How does knowledge move between people and survive their departure?
Career development
What makes a career path real rather than published?
Job autonomy
How does decision latitude relate to responsibility growth over time?
Employee voice
What happens to growth when people can, or cannot, challenge?
Sustainable work
When does development start consuming the person it is meant to develop?
On citations
This page lists the fields the Standard draws on and the questions it takes from them. A referenced bibliography will be published with the Methodology Handbook. We do not list citations we have not used, and we do not attribute the Standard to researchers who have not reviewed it.