Growth and Development: Why Progress Is a Critical Job Resource

This article explores growth and development as essential job resources rather than future rewards. It shows how visible learning, capability building, and developmental conversations sustain motivation and reduce strain over time. Drawing on organisational psychology, it explains why progress matters for both wellbeing and performance.

An image of a coaching conversation, reflecting how development is supported through guidance, reflection, and shared sense-making at work.

Growth and development are often treated as aspirational extras. Something organisations offer once performance is stable, budgets allow, or annual reviews are completed. In practice, growth functions very differently. It is not a reward layered on top of work. It is a resource that helps people stay engaged, capable, and resilient while doing the work.

From an organisational psychology perspective, growth matters because it changes how people experience effort. When employees can see movement, learning, or progression ahead of them, demands feel more tolerable. When work feels static, the same demands quickly become draining, even if they are objectively manageable.

In the Job Demands–Resources model, development operates as a motivational resource. It fuels engagement and buffers strain by giving meaning to effort. The Organisational Human Factor Benchmark reflects this by showing how limited development opportunities often coexist with disengagement, withdrawal, and reduced commitment, even in otherwise well-supported environments.

What is often misunderstood is that growth does not require formal promotion or constant upskilling initiatives. It begins with clarity about direction. People need to know how they are expected to develop, what competence looks like in their role, and where learning is encouraged. Without this, development becomes vague and effort starts to feel repetitive rather than progressive.

When growth is absent, people adapt in predictable ways. Some disengage quietly. Others overwork in an attempt to prove value. Many stay outwardly committed while internally questioning whether their effort is leading anywhere. Over time, this uncertainty erodes motivation, not because people lack ambition, but because the system offers no visible path forward.

Growth and development are also relational. Coaching, mentoring, and developmental conversations play a crucial role in helping people interpret their experiences and translate work into learning. Where these conversations are missing, employees are left to self-direct development in isolation, which often benefits only the most confident or well-positioned individuals.

Importantly, development must be supported by the broader work environment. When workloads are overwhelming, priorities unclear, or support inconsistent, growth opportunities are the first thing to disappear. In these conditions, learning becomes a personal burden rather than an organisational investment.

When growth is designed intentionally, it restores energy. People are more willing to invest effort when they believe it contributes to capability, progression, or mastery. Development shifts work from something to endure into something that builds over time.

Growth and development are therefore not future-focused luxuries.
They are present-day resources that sustain motivation, protect wellbeing, and support long-term performance.

In environments where support systems are stabilised, growth is what allows people to move forward rather than simply cope.