What are career pathways? An evolved career ladder that is built on the idea that there are varied ways to get to a given role.
Think staircase, not ladder: Career pathways define the skills and the mastery level of each skill that team members will need to succeed in different roles. This enables people to drive their own development and plan upward or lateral moves.
What happens without career pathways:
- Teams stop performing at their best, but leaders don’t know why ― most likely, the problem is that at least one team member doesn’t know what their priorities are or they’ve lost motivation because they don’t see a path forward.
- Team members ask for big promotions, even though they don’t have the skills needed to move up to more senior roles ― because they don’t have clarity on the skills or level of mastery they need to excel in those senior roles.
Everything is interconnected: A career pathways tool can be leveraged with a performance management system to help people see where they are strong and where they need to grow.
To Consider — Why are career pathways important?
Win-win: When a team member understands their role’s focus areas and required skills, they feel comfortable, confident, and can do their best work.
And with such clear expectations, performance conversations become much easier.
Long-term play: Retention improves too because team members understand exactly what they need to be able to do to excel in their current role and future ones.
- It’s motivating for people to see all the potential paths they could take across or up in the organization and understand exactly where they need to grow to move along each path.
And when your team members stay, of course, your organization gets stronger and can fulfill its mission!
To Apply — Start by bucketing and defining
What’s the best way to start creating career pathways for your organization? Here’s what we recommend:
First, bucket your organization’s current job titles. For example, your organization might have:
- junior-level staff (who complete tasks as part of projects)
- mid-level managers (who manage people and lead projects)
- executives (who focus on strategy, people, and projects)
Starting with the group that includes the most people, determine 5 to 8 competencies that everyone in that group must master to do their jobs well.
- For example, the competencies for mid-level managers might include project management, mission alignment, and communication.
Then, map those competencies to the other groups. Competencies in the different groups should line up so that people gain additional skills as they advance to more senior roles.
- For example, executives would also need project management, mission alignment, and communication with the addition of strategic leadership. Junior-level staff would need mission alignment and communication but perhaps only basic project management skills for now.
- There might be 1 to 2 competencies that are subject-matter specific and vary across teams depending on the functional area. For example, members of finance and marketing teams need different skills.
- It’s better to start small with fewer competencies and add more over time.
Pressure-test the career pathways as you build them. A great way to do so is by convening a small cross-functional working group that includes diverse team members who can ensure that the competency language is accurate, clear, and fair.
Finally, roll out the career pathways tool ― and leverage it in performance management conversations.
Continuously monitor the career pathways tool after roll-out. Gather feedback in different ways (e.g., surveys, 1:1 conversations). This should be a living, breathing document that evolves over time.
Need more help? You can absolutely build out your organization’s career pathways on your own! But if you’d like support and/or coaching in doing so, book a free, no-obligation, 30-minute call with TalentED Advisors.
- Let’s design and implement career pathways together to ensure that your people and your organization thrive.
Hope you found these leadership ideas helpful! If you’d like more support, TalentED Advisors offers a full suite of talent services, including:
- Hiring for executives and more junior roles
- Coaching for leaders and teams
- Organizational redesign
- Organizational health and culture
- Compensation frameworks
- Retention, recognition, and reward
- Career pathways
- Performance management
- Employee relations
Learn more at talentedadvisors.com/organizations. If you want to get a sense of what it would look like to work together, click the Get Started button to book a free, no-obligation call.
