DS Cohen & Associates
Career Pathways are roadmaps, created by a company, to demonstrate to the employees, the company recognizes the desire of employees for individual growth. By creating Career Pathways, the firm partners with the employee, for all employees, to reach individual career goals while fulfilling the company’s future workforce planning needs. A Pathway provides employees with an ongoing toolkit of resources to enhance their skills, knowledge, and behaviours that lead to mastery of their current jobs, promotions and transfers to new or different roles. Implementing Pathways also have a direct impact on the employee experience as it is a message the company cares about their employee’s future.
The Career Pathways Toolkit Contains: Career Pathways help employees think strategically about their career and how to meet their own ambitions within the organization, rather than leave it to move ahead. Career mapping involves three steps: Self-assessment. A manager engages with the employee to explore his or her knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as past experiences, accomplishments and interests. We build a unique tool, completed independently by the employee and manager. The tool measures where the employee perceives they are today and the gap to attain their goal. Building an Individualized Career Pathway. Creating an individualized career pathway involves identifying other positions within the organization that meet the employee’s interests. The position may be a lateral move into a different job family or a promotion. In either case, the position should capitalize on the employee’s past experiences, interests and motivation while at the same time requiring the employee to give him or her something to work toward and stay engaged. Exploring other opportunities. The final step in Career Pathway is to explore other job opportunities within the organization as they become available. For managers and employees to successfully build Career Pathways, HR must develop the necessary resources to facilitate the process Afterwards, make the program available to all employees at all levels.
Creating Pathways for Success
Over the years, one of the most common questions we’ve been asked regarding talent management has been: what is the difference between succession and career planning? The short answer is this – the career planning process is the responsibility of the individual employee, and succession planning is the responsibility of the CEO and the company. Succession planning ensures business and company continuity. Career planning helps individuals find their own path.
The two, in conjunction, potentiate the success of both the individual and the company. One of the most common reasons given by employees leaving organizations is that they feel a lack of opportunity for development; they feel stuck. To help enhance retention, a company needs to provide the tools, resources, and time to support those employees who wish to learn, grow and seek new roles and opportunities. Employees will make their own decisions if they want to explore development and learning. Still, it is the responsibility of the organization to partner with the individual by building proper and accessible opportunities and providing time and resources for people to enable appropriate employee development. When the company creates the Pathways by providing them to all employees, they send a message to all members of the organization that the individual has ultimate control over their professional development.
When you implement effective career planning for your employees, you are sending a clear message that your organization is willing to invest in your people for the long term.
To provide a series of Pathways for a variety of job families, you will need to build resource toolkits. With the toolkit, both the employee and the manager are given the resources to guide career development. Creating Career Pathways also serves as a way for the company to ensure that the future workforce planning needed for fulfilling future roles will be filled by people who have a genuine interest and commitment to the company To create meaningful career pathways, the company first needs to understand the business and people strategies.
There needs to be an alignment between workforce planning, succession management, high potential management, and recruiting teams to build Career Pathways critical for future needs. When there is an integrated effort, the focus puts your current employees first.
Once all the talent teams have been aligned, you are then able to create the foundation for building Career Pathways that help the employees move beyond their current roles and, at the same time, help the company ensure there is a pool of people ready when needed. Each career pathway is like a map that takes an employee, step by step, on a defined journey to help advance their future desired goals within the organization.
The Pathway identifies the core skills, behavioural competencies, and possible experiences required to reach their personal and specific goal. Having different career pathways available allows employees to make critical career decisions for themselves. It also provides managers with a wealth of information for conversations about career planning and development with their employees.
By taking the time to develop and create well fleshed-out career development opportunities and pathways, you will be able to sincerely and effectively enhance the overall employee experience. For your employees, the process of building career pathways for development becomes a foundational element of having a holistic and supportive human resource management process.
It is the piece of the puzzle that allows your organization to build an integrated talent management process. Having these career pathways dramatically adds to your employee value proposition and to your ability to attract and retain talent for the long-term. Opportunities for Development are Always Among the Most Important Factors for Retention We have observed that, regardless of demographics, people like to develop and learn new things.
By providing internal avenues for personal and professional growth, you will be helping to meet the actualization needs of your people. A focus on the employee and their goals will improve their employee experience tremendously. Having supportive resources to enable employees to build a career vision will helpfully engage employees, thereby leading to more discretionary effort and longer tenure with the organization. Career planning will help employees develop their current performance while concurrently learning for future roles.
Opportunities for Development are Always Among the Most Important Factors for Retention
We have observed that, regardless of demographics, people like to develop and learn new things. By providing internal avenues for personal and professional growth, you will be helping to meet the actualization needs of your people. A focus on the employee and their goals will improve their employee experience tremendously. Having supportive resources to enable employees to build a career vision will helpfully engage employees, thereby leading to more discretionary effort and longer tenure with the organization. Career planning will help employees develop their current performance while concurrently learning for future roles.
The Positive Impact
Providing the foundation for an employee to build a career vision will help engage employees. An engaged employee will benefit your organization in a variety of ways:
- Knowing that good and attainable opportunities exist motivates employees to give considerably more discretionary effort
- Longer tenure within your organization, leading to developing more exceptional talent and lowering the cost of new acquisition
- Helps employees improve their current performance concurrently while learning about possible future roles
- Helps your organization discover which employees want to develop in different roles and for what reasons, and which employees’ talents should be leveraged and rewarded as role experts
- Provides resources for managers to have focused and practical discussions about career planning and role development
- Ensures you have the expertise in place for future business needs
- Differentiates itself from labour market competitors
- By retaining employees, you are able to save considerable money in the recruitment of new people
- Decreases turnover after an economic downturn
- Provides a vital tool for retention of key staff
- Acts as a true compliment to the high potential pool
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