I have been lucky to have held 4 different roles and been promoted twice in my three years of working at Dulux. I have also had the opportunity to work in our commercialization and innovation teams and believe if I wanted to make a jump out of R&D and into marketing or sales this kind of move would also have been supported. There are a lot of opportunities to move up or across in this business, you just have to take advantage of opportunities and show interest in them. It does require initiative to seek them out and drive your career development yourself, because they will not just be given to you based on time served.
Promotion is entirely driven by the individual and sometimes it takes a lot for a manager to promote a chemist to senior scientist (sometimes the threat of moving to a different business or applying for a role in a different SBU)
As a graduate we are presented many opportunities to develop ourselves as leaders and move up the ranks in future years.
In the IC the only way to move up is by a position available. Once when becomes available your basically competing against the entire office. Other ways of getting raise or promotions are non-excitant
To move from a grad to a leadership position within 2 years was a great achievement