What is Career Pathing?
A successful relationship between an organization and its employees is a symbiotic one. The company needs loyal, engaged, motivated, and knowledgeable people in order to stay competitive. Employees need to feel secure in their careers and to see a favorable future for themselves. Career pathing can help organizations and their employees meet these needs.
What is Career Pathing?
A career path is an employee's growth within an organization. It is the sequence of positions that an employee aims to fill during their time at one company. A career path is essentially a map of the potential roles an employee may hold as they move up the corporate ladder.
From an organization’s perspective career pathing is a strategy of comprehensive talent management. As employees navigate along their career path, they will need to acquire the knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience required for each of the roles that they seek to hold. A solid career pathing plan can lead to significant gains in achieving organizational goals.
Why Career Pathing Matters for Businesses
Career pathing has the potential to increase employee retention thereby reducing hiring costs. The longer a productive employee remains with an employee, the greater the return on hiring that person. Having clear career paths available to employees works to retain talent because it allows people to see the options available and helps them to imagine their growth as part of that company.
If employees don’t see growth potential within the organization they may look for opportunities elsewhere. Starting a job with a different company can be stressful. Clear career paths help employees envision a long term symbiotic relationship with the company they already work for making it far less likely that they will leave.
Career pathing can help keep employees engaged. People that are prepared for a long term relationship with one company are far more likely to be interested in helping the organization reach its goals. Defined career paths give employees a better understanding of the options available to grow their careers. They know what they need to do in order to reach the next step and they are more likely to be motivated and work hard to move up within the company.
Organizations can leverage the time, effort, and money that they invest in employees and present it as part of a comprehensive compensation package. Career pathing allows employees to develop their careers and reach higher pay scales. The skills, knowledge, and experience they gain prepares them for a lifetime of employability.
Established career paths can help organizations with succession planning. A company can invest in the career journey of employees and develop the skills and knowledge they need to fill senior positions. These specifically groomed employees can then gradually settle into their new role for a seamless transition.
Lattice v.s. Ladder Career Paths
Traditional career paths begin with entry level jobs and progress vertically all the way up to C-suite roles within one department like a ladder. Career growth doesn’t have to be vertical and, increasingly, it isn’t. With flexible, “lattice-shaped” career paths, employees can move laterally or vertically within a department or cross-functionally, allowing for a genuinely dynamic work experience free of traditional restrictions.
The opportunity to explore both lateral and vertical growth allows employees to develop new skills and a more broad perspective on the organization they work for. By taking on different roles within a department or across other departments, an employee can get a better idea of how an organization works. Lattice career paths can put them in a unique position to identify ways of improving how teams work and communicate with one another.
Lateral career changes allow employees to try something new and avoid burnout. If a person begins to feel stagnant and starts to lose motivation, but isn’t necessarily ready to move up to a more demanding position, they can move horizontally and try something different without taking on additional responsibilities beyond their abilities. Lattice career paths allow employees to grow in a different direction and develop their skill sets without being limited by rigid growth structures.
Sometimes people miss their calling and instead fall into roles they may not be fully suited for or entirely happy with. When employees are allowed to grow and explore themselves, they may find career paths that are more enjoyable and satisfying to them. Flexible career paths allow people to find their own routes while becoming more valuable employees with a diverse skill set. Indeed, the lattice is the future of career pathing as it is innately flexible and can easily accommodate the freedom to learn that employees crave and even innovations in HR such as project-based work.
What Role Does Career Pathing Technology Like Paddle Have to Play in Enabling Career Pathing?
Intelligent career pathing technology can serve as a bridge between employees and the organization they work for. The right tools can enable an ongoing conversation about career development between a company and its people. Platforms like Paddle can help organizations identify resourcing gaps and show employees how they can fill these needs as they grow their professional competencies.
Paddle assists organizations with identifying all the unique roles within it and mapping the roads that lead to each role. With an intuitive interface, Paddle allows employees to discover the various paths that their careers can take. Intelligent career pathing technology allows people to see the options available to them at their current place of employment.
A key aspect of Paddle is its internal hiring platform. It allows employees to explore available roles and shows them the best next steps that they can take for their careers to grow in that direction. People can browse and explore the opportunities available as often as they wish.
Paddle also shows employees the specific knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies they need to develop in order to advance in their careers. Each role compares skills required with the skills that an employee has and identifies gaps. Paddle can also help employees develop the required skills by identifying opportunities such as open projects and other short-term gigs.
How Can Career Pathing Help Increase Access to Opportunity for Underrepresented Groups?
Career pathing can help organizations identify talent and provide opportunities to nurture and develop competencies for career growth. Intelligent career pathing technology isn’t capable of bias and gives equal opportunities to all employees. Once employees know the direction they want their careers to go, organizations can utilize coaching and mentoring to help underrepresented groups reach their potential.
When organizations make a commitment to career pathing they are investing in their talent and creating an environment that is supportive to growth and development. Employees feel more empowered and challenged while seeing themselves as long term partners of the company they work for. Career pathing is an investment in the potential of employees and the long term success of the organization.
Check out how Paddle can make career pathing simple for your organization today.
SEE ALSO: Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: How to Create More Inclusive Careers