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!

Three Predictions for Workplace Training - Post Corona Virus

Across the world, the universe of the “workplace” has suffered a stunning blow in the last few months and many industries and companies will come back as a contracted version of their former selves. One department that is likely to take a hit is training and professional development. Here are my predictions for what T+D will look like in the coming few years.

Note: This article was originally published by Training Industry Magazine.

Prediction #1 virtual training will really take off – for 2 reasons 

As a consultant who specialized in designing and delivering virtual training for about 15 years, it always amazed me when I encountered a client to whom it was all new; but I had one or two clients such as this each year.  There are two important reasons why I predict virtual training will become more in demand than ever going forward. (Note: Virtual training is conducted live, with other participants and a facilitator, as opposed to distance learning or e-learning, which is really self-study,)

First, now that many companies have made the switch to work-from-home (WFH) they realize it’s not as impossible as they feared. One of our clients is a call center who finally started work-from-home options due to the virus. A call center customer service rep is definitely not a role that requires sitting with others in a central location – but the client was simply resistant to the idea of WFH. Now that they realize people can work from home, it’s not such a hard sell to get them to accept people learning from home as well.

The second reason virtual training will take off is because it is so affordable. Post-corona virus, those companies that are still in business are going to have to use their resources wisely. During the Great Recession I managed a new-hire on-boarding process for a client for five years. We onboarded approximately 300 people, in 10-12 groups, throughout the year, all virtually.  Virtual training is convenient, affordable, and logistically a lot simpler.

There are also a number of reasons why virtual learning is a preferable methodology for adult learners, such as spaced learning and built-in time for reflection – but that is fodder for another article.

Prediction #2 companies will realize the value and necessity of cross-training

When I first became a consultant in the early 1990’s, one of the first projects I worked on was a cross-training project for a manufacturing firm in which everyone on the manufacturing floor was “upskilled” (to upskill means to teach a current employee additional skills) to be able to backfill at least two other positions.

The curriculum was designed to require them to learn five new topics in total, but the remaining three topics were allowed to be knowledge-based (such as understanding more about procurement or finance) as opposed to skill-based. The objective of the training was to have each employee paying the company back in multiple ways.  For example, a machinist who had additional training in finance was more likely to complete routine maintenance knowing that the cost of maintenance vs. repair was enormous. 

I thought the “multiple skills” idea was quite brilliant and have been amazed, over the course of my career, by how few companies do it.  What is more prevalent in training – especially in the last twenty years – is training for depth, not breadth. If someone enters a company in a finance role, more than likely all their company sponsored training will be focused solely on finance. They will never be exposed to marketing or HR or operations. Through training, companies have kept employees in silos and by doing so they have hobbled their agility. Companies will be forced to lay off their over-abundance of marketers (for example) while simultaneously hiring salespeople because not one of those marketers was cross trained in sales.

This shuffling of people like pieces on a chess board has all sorts of negative ramifications, such as recruiting costs and a loss of company history / knowledge; but again, that is fodder for a different article.

Prediction #3 – subject-matter-experts will be more in demand as trainers than ever before

Having been a consultant for nearly thirty years, I have seen this pendulum swing back and forth a few times. First there are fully staffed, centralized training departments who run training like its own business with marketing and sales, delivery of a product / service, and requests for feedback. Then an economic shakeup swings the pendulum to focus on what is truly needed for individuals to learn and that is the transfer of business-critical knowledge from those who have it to those who do not. This often means direct contact between subject matter experts (SMEs) and newbies, eliminating the “middle-man” of the training department.

Training and development has always been seen as a cost-center (which it is not) and is always one of the last functions to be brought back online after an economic downturn.  But a lack of a training department doesn’t stop the need for training such as new-hire onboarding or skill-specific training. In the coming years, companies will redeploy resources and the training will more than likely be done by individuals who are subject matter experts.

While using SMEs as trainers is a great cost-saving tactic, it doesn’t result in the best training outcomes. SMEs aren’t knowledgeable about the best ways to transmit content to learners (hint: lectures are not the way), and they tend to start at a much higher-level of capability than their audience because they forget what it was like to be new and unskilled. They have the “curse of knowledge,” as this 2017 TICE article explains. The best way to utilize SMEs as trainers could be an article - or a book - all its own.

As business returns to “normal,” companies will be altered in many ways. Underlying those changes will be the need for cost-savings and efficiencies which can be achieved, in the realm of training and development, through virtual training, cross-training, and using subject-matter-experts as the deliverers of training. The next decade will see a “bold new future” for training and professional development; will your organization be ready to adapt?