An employee's performance goes up when they have:
1) Purpose - a mission for the work that they do, the WHY behind why they wake up and go to work everyday.
2) Autonomy - a company where the culture encourages teams to make their own decisions and not be told what to do from their managers.
3) Mastery - you have to be a master at your profession, at the skills you bring to your team. This means continuous learning, failing fast and learning from those mistakes.
If a company can facilitate an employee with the above, their performance improves dramatically and thereby will improve their careers.