Career Paths - Why Your Company Needs Them
Do you work for (or own) a company that has career paths? There are a myriad of reasons why you need/want them.
𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙧𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩.
When you can show a simple diagram to a prospective employee and say, this is the learning path/career path we have identified for the starting position of (whatever you are interviewing for) people think "Wow! a future! I can go places with this company."
𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣.
People really don't want to job hop, what they want is to GROW in their careers and in their skills. But if your organization doesn't have a plan for how people can move up AND within the organization (not every move is up) then they *believe* they have to go elsewhere to grow. That's on you.
𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜.
Let's say you have a person who enters your company in a customer service role. By the end of year two, how qualified are they to be a salesperson (rhetorical question. VERY qualified.)? AND you probably have some salespeople who would be great in marketing or business development.
Focus your career paths on adaptable 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙨.
If Janet knows A, B, and C - isn't she pretty much qualified to do L, M, and N?
⭐BONUS ⭐ When you have people who have moved around the company and understand its various moving parts, you have well-trained future leaders who know how to run a 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, not just do a 𝘫𝘰𝘣.
The biggest misconception we battle when helping companies to develop career paths is that they think linearly. e.g.
𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘰 "𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘳" 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 "𝘸𝘦" 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘫𝘰𝘣𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘰 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. WRONG.
For every starting point, there should be 3 - 5 possible career paths in your company depending on aptitude and interest.
⭐ Open the possibilities.
⭐ Develop career paths.
⭐ Conquer recruitment and retention issues.
If you'd like help developing career paths for your company - give us a call!
Career Paths are AMAZING Recruiting Tools
Last month we completed an analysis of exit interviews, spanning the last five years, for a client of ours. The good news is – their attrition rate isn’t that high. The bad news is – the people choosing to leave the organization have critical skills and nearly 90% of them stated as their reason for leaving, “there’s no where else for me to go in this company.” In fact, a Gallup survey conducted prior to the pandemic found that 93% of people advance their career by taking a position at another company.
What are Career Paths?
Career paths give employees a “map” to ways that they can extend their career with your organization – either by moving vertically (up the ladder) or horizontally to other positions in the company that can utilize their skills. Career paths enable employees to pursue their interests and develop their skills without having to go outside the organization, as, unfortunately, the employees in our client’s organization felt they had to do.
93% of employees advance their career by taking a job at another company
For example, a call center job often begins with a position as a CSR (customer service representative) which is more difficult than you would think. CSRs can quickly burn out and leave organizations – often within the first year. But a career path that shows how their career might progress from CSR to team leader, to supervisor, and eventually to manager or trainer allows employees to envision a career with the organization, not just a job.
A possible CSR career path
Or say I’ve burned out in my CSR job after three years and one promotion to team leader… my customer service skills could also easily translate to a role in sales or procurement (a horizontal move) – so you don’t always need to think of a career path as a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other path. Sometimes it’s a swinging from the vine from tree-to-tree trajectory instead. Be flexible in thinking of career paths and encourage your managers to look at untapped potential that can be captured with the right training, coaching, and support.
How do career paths help in recruitment?
Not only do career paths help with attrition, as the above example illustrates, but they are a secret weapon in recruiting as well. Study after study in recent years have identified that younger generations prioritize professional development; that may mean having access to learning opportunities – going to training, having membership to a professional associations paid for, or tuition reimbursement - or it might mean having a defined process to continue to advance their career in your organization (which, by default, will include learning opportunities).
In today’s ultra-tight job market, you need a way to differentiate yourself and attract employees. Discussing potential career paths (and the purposeful development process that gets people there) and showing a simple diagram (you don’t want to overwhelm people during the interview process… to illustrate that there is room to grow over 3- 5- or 10-years’ time, will enable your company to stand out from the crowd.
Other benefits
Not only do career paths help you to attract employees, but they help you to retain employees as well (helping you to avoid the costs of advertising, interviewing, onboarding and training, not to mention the time it takes for a new hire to become comfortable and capable in their new job), AND often you’ll find they land you on the “Best Places to Work” lists because your employees are so pleased that you value them and are invested in their growth.
Person interviewing for job
Career paths and the public recognition of them (such as during performance reviews and in announcements of recently promoted employees) are also important for having a “supply” of mission critical employees. For example, if your organization only has one procurement officer and that person leaves for whatever reason… it could take months to fill that job. But having pre-planned (and executed) career paths means that you won’t panic because you’ll have someone waiting in the wings to step into the role. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of creating career paths for all roles in your company – then focus on the roles that are essential for the business to continue its work uninterrupted.
The existence of career paths doesn’t mean that every employee will take advantage of them or will follow them to “the conclusion,” but it DOES show that you’re a professional organization that has applied critical thought to not only how your company will grow, but how you’ll grow your people with it.
The Future is Here
Our 2017 book - Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills has just been updated and re-released. Read the new introductory chapter, below!
As I write this update, it is July 2021. A LOT of things have changed since this book first came out in 2017. Most of these changes have occurred in only the last 18 months, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Interestingly, as I re-read the book in preparation for writing this update, I realized that while the content is still 100% spot-on and needed little updating, what HAS changed is the urgency behind our need to improve the skills and capabilities of employees if our organizations want to survive the 21st century. What was predicted to take until 2030 to materialize was compressed into a single year – 2020.
Here is a look at why things have become more urgent.
Mass changes in labor statistics happen very rarely. This is one of those times.
The above quote is from an October 2020 blog piece from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The article goes on to say, “We are moving from a ‘one manager, one office, 9-5’ world to a ‘fluid, team-based, work-from-anywhere, always-on’ world,” which, in my interpretation, means we need to be confident that our employees are capable of working independently, making intelligent decisions and working with others that they cannot see and perhaps will never meet.
Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, many companies laid off large swaths of their workforces. As the economy recovers, companies will be hiring experienced individuals with unknown thinking skills or younger workers who lack the kind of work experience that enables critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving. Not only will learning and professional development become more critical than it has been in the last twenty years, but companies will need to develop career paths that show new employees “the future” of working with that organization.
Generational Shift
One of the premises discussed in the this book (circa 2017) is that the US Census prediction that all of the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) would be out of the workplace by 2030 leaving a large leadership void in most organizations given that Gen X (born 1964 and 1980) generally have not been given leadership roles or appropriate leadership development. The Boomer population is so large that most leadership roles in organizations are claimed by Boomers (as they got there first), and many of those Boomers have stayed on past what is considered a “traditional” retirement age, sometimes working well into their 70s - leaving few leadership vacancies or opportunities for Gen X.
The pandemic changed that dynamic nearly immediately. Boomers quickly reassessed their priorities and accelerated their retirement plans. According to Pew Research Center analysis published in November 2020, the number of Boomer-age retirements between September of 2019 and September of 2020 was 3.2 million, up significantly from the 2 million per year that had been holding steady since 2011.
This leaves an immediate and massive void in leadership. The people who had held leadership roles the longest and have the most years of institutional knowledge, wisdom, and experience are gone.
Increase in Technology Use (in Professional Roles)
Another extraordinary development that arose from the pandemic was the widespread and nearly immediate adoption of technology to keep people connected remotely. Platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and more, suddenly came to the fore, although the technology has been around for decades. Personally, I’ve been using WebEx since 2002.
While the adoption of synchronous technology means people can continue to work while isolated in their homes, it also means that critical thought and creativity may suffer when there is no one there to bounce ideas off of or debate with. Humans are collaborative. We learn faster and make better decisions when we are doing it with others. Lapses in ethics, which one would never dream of when peers are in proximity, become less black-and-white when working in isolation.
And again, how will we teach Gen Z about business protocol if their interactions with peers occur solely online during meetings with tiny boxes that frame people’s faces? How will we coach them to do better work if we cannot see how they are doing their work?
Another concern brought about by technology is that artificial intelligence (AI) is barreling towards us and far from the fear of it eliminating jobs, it’s more likely that we will be able to attain higher-order outcomes through the use of AI. Higher-order outcomes are things such as strategizing, creating, and evaluating… things that AI cannot do. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Margie Meacham’s book: AI in Talent Development which gives great insight into the shifts that will occur in the workplace thanks to AI. At the heart of allowing the humans to do higher-order work, however, is that they must be capable of thinking at more critical and expansive levels than what we have expected from the vast majority of workers in the last 50 years.
Our need to teach thinking skills is urgent.
Career Paths
Prior to the pandemic, unemployment was very low for quite a long time, giving employees the upper hand in the labor market. Companies were so desperate to fill open positions that people were able to easily move from job to job. One reason that Millennials are known to “job hop” is because they value professional development* over other “perks” like pay and flexible schedules. Since few employers have viewed or offered professional development as a business strategy, it has forced Millennials to move to a new employer simply to learn something new.
This is a luxury that neither the employer nor the worker can enjoy any longer.
Not only will the companies who want to retain workers need to implement professional development strategies, but the wisest ones will integrate professional development with career paths, so that when a recruit interviews with your company they not only know the job they will be accepting, but the ones that are possible 3 and 5 and 10 years down the road should they stay with your organization. This will require companies to create career paths that show how professional development leads to increased responsibility and leadership roles.
According to Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education, professional development attracts 25% higher qualified applicants and contributes measurably to retention. “Companies that build careers will be the defining companies for Millennials and Gen Z. For the future.”
* This is something that Gen Z reports is important to them as well, but they haven’t been in the workforce long enough for us to see if this is true.
People Skills are the Domain of… People
Look at the diagram in Chapter 8. It depicts the five learning domains needed for a well-rounded businessperson to develop the thinking skills necessary to be an effective and respected leader in your organization. None of the five can be performed by robots or AI technology.
In October of 2020, the World Economic Forum published their “Future of Jobs Report,” a biennial fiver-year projection of the skills and capabilities that will be needed by employees in order for their organizations to remain viable. (In other words, your folks better have these skills by 2025). 12 of the 15 top skills described in the 2020 report were personal or interpersonal skills. People skills.
As I mentioned above, when rote tasks are accomplished via technology, it is only higher order skills and interpersonal skills that remain the domain of the employee. Unfortunately, after a decade-plus of technology usage – both personally and in our workplaces – we, as a society, have diminished our interpersonal skills. Many of our employees lack the ability to make eye contact, engage in small talk, or constructively deal with conflict. So, in addition to teaching thinking skills and business acumen (see below), organizations will need to redouble their efforts to teach people skills such as communicating verbally and in written form, dealing with conflict, giving and receiving feedback and many, many more.
Check out Chapter 6 for my take on the importance of utilizing mentors and coaches in this regard.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, Oct. 2020 - Employee Skills Needed for 2025
Business Acumen
One of the things I didn’t spend too much time on in the first edition of the book was the importance of developing business acumen, although you’ll find it has equal weight in the diagram in Chapter 8.
Too many people know how to do their job, but not how their job impacts the organization or how their organization fits within their industry as a whole. If we want to build a pipeline of capable businesspeople, they need to understand how the business works. This is business acumen.
This lack of knowledge and sense of being and integral part of a whole is going to be exacerbated by the WFH (work from home) culture, especially as it pertains to young Gen Z workers. A junior accountant is never going to see the trucks coming to the loading dock, or the lab-coated R+D scientists developing the next iteration of your product, if they are sitting at home working on spreadsheets. If their focus is solely on their job, it become interchangeable with any other junior accountant job at any other company. I predict this will lead to high levels of turnover at the entry level and will detrimentally impact critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and risk taking (which are all informed by business acumen) as well as greatly impact your leadership pipeline.
I’ll conclude this chapter by reiterating a line you’ll find in Chapter 8: Businesses have spent years parsing employee development down to the bare minimum and now must change the mindset to one of providing maximum capability for growth and success in the long term. This was a critical need in 2017 when the book was first published and now it is both critical and urgent.
