The State of Engagement: Emma Bawden, Remastered Careers
Career development is not a ‘nice to have’.
Emma is the founder of Remastered Careers, a career development consultancy working with growth-stage companies across Europe.
Her work covers organisational talent strategy to individual career growth, with a particular focus on the bit most companies find hardest: making career development real in the flow of work, not just in the framework on the wall.
It was great to talk engagement from an L&D perspective.
What engages employees?
“People are engaged when they feel trusted, when they can see progress, when they’re using their strengths, and when they understand how their work contributes to something they care about”, explains Emma.
“What’s often missed is that all of them depend on career development being present and active.”
Emma believes that trust grows when a manager invests in someone’s growth. She breaks this down further:
“Progress is visible when there’s a path being shaped, not just on measurable performance objectives. Strengths get used when someone’s role matches what they’re good at and stretched toward what they could be. Contribution makes sense when people can see how their development connects to where the organisation is going.
Engagement is an outcome of good career development. When it’s absent, no amount of values work, wellbeing investment, or culture campaigning quite makes up for it.”
What gives businesses the edge in attracting and retaining talent?
Emma reminds us that attraction and retention are different problems – as a lot of organisations conflate them. In her words:
Attraction is usually about brand, role and reward. It’s a moment-in-time decision, and most companies can compete here if they’re thoughtful about it.
Retention is harder, because it plays out over years. The advantage belongs to companies that can answer one question well: “If I stay here, where could I get to, and how?”
Employees answer that based on lived experience, built from consistent career conversations, visible internal moves, managers who notice potential, and frameworks that translate ambition into action.
Getting retention right means they become known for talent development – there for attraction can become easier.
In your experience, what are employees looking for?
“Three things” says Emma, “in roughly this order:
Clarity: what am I good at, what am I building, where could this go. Most professionals I work feel lost because they’re under-informed about their own value and their options.
Honest conversations: with a manager who sees them, with people in roles they’re curious about, with someone who’ll tell them what they’re not yet ready for and why.
Movement: not necessarily promotion, but a sense that they’re not standing still. This is where organisations trip up. They assume movement means an upward promotion. For most people, it means new challenges, new skills, new exposure. That can happen inside a role, scope expansion, or a lateral move.
People stay when those three things are present. When one or more is missing, people start looking to leave. Often secretly, often months before anyone notices.”
Which part of EVP matters most to you personally?
EVP, or Employee Value Proposition, is the balance of what people give and what they get back. I like to break it down into seven pillars:
Brand & Purpose, Culture, Environment, Monetary, Prospects, Relationships, and Wellbeing.
She also argues it matters most for the long term. “You can create strong onboarding, refresh the office, run a wellbeing campaign, adjust pay bands, communicate purpose more clearly, invest in team relationships. Employees can feel those changes within weeks. With prospects, you get the value over months and years”
What do you see are the biggest people challenges businesses are facing right now?
The clients Emma works with are juggling several pressures at once. “Productivity is a concern. Engagement is up and down. Headcount is being frozen or cut. Critical roles can’t be left vacant for long, but they don’t have successors. And the dual demands of running the business while transforming it are competing for the same people, the same skills and the same hours.”
Each of these is a serious challenge on its own. Together, they create an environment where career development can feel like a luxury. But Emma argues, it’s the opposite.
“Intentional career development is one of the highest-leverage solutions to all of these pressures. Engagement rises when people can see a future.”
Progression means that with a combination of internal mobility and developing people, succession is built in, and the future becomes clearer.
What’s a career development belief you’d push back on?
“That careers are ladders”
The career ladder is one of the most persistent metaphors in working life. Emma believes it’s subtly doing a lot of damage.
“It tells people that the only legitimate direction is up, that staying at the same level is failure, and that the org chart is the map of their career.
The most engaged people I’ve seen have moved sideways into adjacent functions, taken stretch projects outside their remit, dropped down a level to pivot, gone deep as a specialist, or built influence without managing anyone.”
This matters for EVP because if your organisation only recognises upward moves, you’ve narrowed your Prospects pillar to a fraction of what it could be.
“You’re telling people that growth equals promotion, and when promotions are scarce (which they usually are) engagement falls.
Great companies are training managers to have conversations that don’t assume ‘up’ is always the goal. And they’re finding that engagement, mobility and retention all start to shift together.”
The ladder isn’t the career; it’s just the easiest bit to draw.
Connect with Emma on Linkedin
Contact CHEER!
Click here for past editions of The State of Engagement