Career pathing is something we have struggled with as well. Even in the lower ranks, if you set out a path for a teller to become a CSR and then they take the classes and get the cross training and already to move up -- of course there are no openings, so they wait a while and then go to another bank so we have trained a great employee - but for someone else! On the loan officer/branch manager side, the bank I used to work at differentiated those positions by experience and size of loan portfolio. So a more junior lender would simply by definition have a smaller portfolio of customers so would be in a Loan Officer I category for example, for branch managers, the grades were based on the asset size of their branch - that might be a place to start.
Opinions are mine and mine alone.
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The paradox of planning is nothing happens....