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Rasika Rajagopalan leads the People and Talent team at Pacaso, a fast-growing startup making second home ownership accessible to more people. She is also the host of the Engage and Empower podcast where she interviews founders and HR leaders. On Reimagining Company Culture, she joined us to talk about intentional people development at scale.
Her argument is that people development at fast-growing companies usually fails for one of two reasons. Either it is treated as a luxury that gets cut when the company is busy, or it is run as a checkbox program disconnected from the actual work. The third path, intentional development woven into daily operations, is rarer and far more durable.
Why People Development Is the First Casualty of Growth
Fast-growing companies almost always under-invest in development. The reason is simple. Growth produces urgent hiring, urgent product work, and urgent customer demands, and development feels less urgent than any of those. SHRM research on career development gaps found that the absence of clear development paths is one of the top drivers of voluntary turnover.
Rasika described the pattern. Leaders intend to invest in development. Then a quarter passes, then a year, and the development conversation has not happened. Eventually the strongest employees notice and start interviewing elsewhere. The cost of that turnover usually dwarfs what the development investment would have been.
Her framing is that career path clarity is the highest-impact development investment a fast-growing company can make. Even imperfect career paths beat no paths, because they give employees something to work toward and something to negotiate around in growth conversations.
What also matters is treating development as part of the work, not adjacent to it. Stretch assignments, cross-functional projects, and explicit feedback during normal one-on-ones all count as development if the company is intentional about framing them that way.
How Do You Make Development Stick at a Growing Company?
What is the first move for a company that has under-invested in development?
Rasika's answer is to start with conversations, not programs. Every employee should have a documented development conversation at least quarterly with their manager. The conversation does not need to be long. It needs to be real. From there, the company can build infrastructure that supports the conversations, not the other way around.
How do you handle development for managers who do not have time for it?
By making development a manager performance criterion. Coaching is a learned skill, not an innate one. Managers who are evaluated on whether their direct reports are growing tend to make time for development conversations. Managers who are evaluated only on output do not.
What Actually Works in Intentional People Development
Anchor every development conversation to the business
Development that feels disconnected from the actual work tends to drift. Strong programs tie individual development goals to team outcomes and business priorities. That alignment makes development feel relevant rather than extracurricular.
Use stretch assignments as the primary development tool
Most development happens on the job, not in training rooms. Rasika emphasized that giving employees real stretch work, with support and feedback, builds capability faster than any course. Mentoring from senior teammates is the secondary support that makes stretch work productive.
Make development visible at the leadership level
When the executive team talks publicly about development, managers prioritize it. When development is invisible at the top, it stays invisible everywhere. Leadership visibility is the cheapest, highest-impact investment a company can make in development culture.
Where Employee Relations Fits
ER systems support development by surfacing the friction that development conversations are supposed to address. AllVoices' HR solution and our employee helpline product give HR a single place to track concerns about manager capability, fairness in promotion, or perceived favoritism that affect development outcomes.
How does ER data improve development programs?
It surfaces the manager populations where development is breaking down. A pattern of complaints about a manager often correlates with poor development outcomes for their team. ER data that connects to development metrics helps HR work with the manager population that needs the most support.
Frequently Asked Questions About Intentional People Development
What is intentional people development?
It is the deliberate, structured investment in employee growth, including career path clarity, stretch assignments, manager coaching, and explicit development conversations on a regular cadence.
Why do fast-growing companies struggle with development?
Because growth produces urgency that crowds out development work. The fix is not more programs but a different posture about what counts as development, including stretch assignments and feedback in normal one-on-ones.
How often should development conversations happen?
At least quarterly. Monthly check-ins on shorter horizons paired with quarterly conversations on longer-term growth produce the strongest outcomes.
What is the manager role in development?
Managers are the primary translation layer between company growth opportunities and individual employees. Strong development cultures invest heavily in manager coaching capability.
How do you measure development program success?
Track internal mobility rates, retention by manager, promotion velocity, and engagement scores related to growth opportunities. Together these signals show whether the program is working.
How do you handle development for high performers vs. average performers?
Both populations need development, but the conversations differ. High performers need stretch and sponsorship. Average performers need clarity and skill-building support. Strong programs serve both intentionally.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Rasika's framing is a useful corrective for any fast-growing company that has been told development can wait until things slow down. They never slow down. The companies that invest in development during growth, not after it, end up with the workforce that can sustain the growth.
The leaders who get this right share a few habits. They start with conversations, not programs. They tie development to manager evaluation. They use stretch assignments as the primary development tool. And they make development visible at the leadership level so it stays a priority through busy quarters.
Companies that hold this discipline also benefit from a quieter advantage. Their employees stay longer, refer better candidates, and bring more capability to each new role. That compound effect is what makes intentional development one of the highest-return people investments a growing company can make.
Across the conversation, the throughline was that development is not a benefit. It is a working agreement between the company and its employees about whether the relationship is meant to last. The companies that honor that agreement attract and keep the people who shape what the company becomes.
Industry research keeps reinforcing this view. McKinsey research on skills-based talent strategy makes the case that 53 percent of leaders see building skills as the best way to close capability gaps, more than twice as often as they prefer hiring. Intentional development is the operational expression of that strategy.
Across the conversation, the throughline was that intentional development is mostly a matter of cadence. Quarterly conversations, regular feedback, and explicit support for stretch work add up over years to create the kind of internal capability that fast-growing companies need to stay fast.
Companies that struggle with development tend to struggle with retention of high performers specifically. The strongest people in any company are usually the ones who notice first when development stops. Investing intentionally in development is one of the most direct ways to keep that population engaged through growth.
See how AllVoices supports intentional people development across the lifecycle.
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