Look back on the past 18 months of global disruption. The examples of businesses seemingly able to shift operations overnight to meet the new environment are endless and inspiring. The importance of adaptation and agility as keys for survival has been amply demonstrated. But businesses do not adapt themselves; it’s employees who are accountable for business success and, in particular, demonstrating agility. Those employees are the ones who can respond to change with the right actions and all due speed. Agile employees are the ones driving business’s successful navigation of changing environments; they are the most valuable assets. And now that same pool of talent is at risk within organizations across the globe.
Many companies are currently facing a talent retention crisis. They are seeing higher turnover rates than at any time in recent history. Add to this an increase in voluntary unemployment. One reason employees cite for this is lack of internal career mobility; internal opportunities are not evolving at the same rate that talent needs are evolving. Historically, a career path (or career ladder) referred to an upward-trending linear sequence of job positions, often within the same organization, leading to time- and experience-increment promotions. However, all that is changing — in fact, it has already changed. Modern career paths are far more circuitous, with people moving unilaterally and bidirectionally across jobs, roles and industries in search of better opportunities. The 21st century career path is anything but a linear line to success.
Think career lattice; think agile
The concept of a career ladder is archaic and no longer represents the best approach for talent or organizational needs. A career ladder represents an inflexible up-down structure only. It also assumes that all employees’ needs and goals are similar and that achievement can happen in the same way for all.
Rather than taking the approach of the traditional career ladder, think career lattice. A lattice is a structure made of interwoven pieces that cross over — up, down, around, across — one another, usually made of pliable wood, to support the growth of plants. The lattice framework enables the plants to grow in multiple directions — up, down, left, right, across, under. The choice is up to the plant, while the lattice is simply the structure that supports the plant and enables it to flourish in the way it needs and wants to.
Supporting talent in a like manner enables them to flourish and grow in multiple directions, and that is exactly what creating agile career paths offers.
Career lattices, or agile career paths, are flexible career plans that support talent development, upskilling and recognition in multiple directions. Such plans provide a proactive approach that gives employees a voice in their career growth and opportunities. Agile career paths acknowledge that ideas, skill development and recognition might flow in different directions, allowing information to flow where it is needed.
Adopt a framework that enables a more fluid type of mobility, such as agile career paths. Up and down should be replaced with a more mobile model. Agile career paths bring value to the organization by:
- Customizing work structures.
- Fostering talent participation in career development through involvement in their own agile pathway.
- Increasing employee engagement.
- Improving productivity.
- Reducing turnover.
Embracing the concept of agile career paths helps employees recognize that they have options for mobility. It makes it clear to them that there are options apart from the old idea of just an up or down move on the corporate ladder.
The right career move is one where an employee takes on new responsibilities within the scope of their capabilities, wherever in the organization those skills might be needed. It doesn’t matter if the employee was initially hired for engineering department work; if their skills are transferable and desperately needed in warehouse operations, propose a transfer to them. Understanding capabilities and/or skills and matching them with gaps in the organization is how the agile path creates success.
Agile career paths support the long-term growth potential for talent while not necessarily guaranteeing the employee long-term employment in the same job function throughout their career. Those days are gone. Instead, make it clear that employees have growth potential across the organization. Employees should be comfortable asserting their skills and value to the organization and should understand the options they have available.
In short, identify how employees might add value to a team and assign them responsibilities accordingly. This often necessitates new investments, such as formalized recruiting and coaching processes. Employees who demonstrate competence can take on the responsibilities that suit them and earn compensation in alignment with those responsibilities.
Agile career paths break outdated perceptions of what it takes to maintain a high-performing organization. Talented individuals are encouraged to pursue interesting roles, projects and assignments that are a good fit for both the employee and the organization — whether that involves an upward, lateral or even downward move.
Following are three strategies to support agile career paths.
1. Start with skills
Having agile career paths provides flexibility to staff and to business operations. First, know fully the skills your staff has brought to the table. Next, know where there are missing skills and competencies anywhere in the organization. Companies can overlay the two to fill skill gaps and only hire new talent if no in-house competency exists.
One valuable approach to narrowing the gap is to identify skill adjacencies. Those are skills that are related (adjacent) to skills or competencies the employee already possesses. Often these skills are not obvious at first glance, nor are they listed in the job description. But thanks to these skills, the employee completes their job responsibilities more effectively. As skills gaps widen, so does the demand for diverse or adjacent skills.
Companies should also start adjusting career strategies and encouraging workers to undertake a flexible progression in their careers — that is, allow a more fluid advancement than the traditional siloing of the past. The career needs to be flexible enough that employees can approach it in sometimes unconventional ways that allow the organization to make better use of the adjacent skills of workers.
Decoupling the concept of employee advancement from titles and positions changes perspective and allows workers to be ready to change course as the organization needs it.
2. Career mapping
Although not a new concept, offering agile career paths provides an opportunity for increased employee engagement in the ownership of their career through career mapping.
In a dynamic partnership with their manager, career mapping with agile career paths facilitates empowerment, responsibility, organizational learning and career growth. The employee’s mental model can shift from “moving up the career ladder” to navigating a multidirectional continuous career journey. In the latter model, the employee is the driver with options and the manager acts as a navigator by providing mentoring, coaching and advocacy. The manager can create stretch assignments to promote growth opportunities and help the employee recognize the transferable/adjacent skills they possess to support proposed career paths.
3. Organizational culture
Within organizations, the concept of agility cannot only reside in the topic of career paths; agility must be part of the organizational culture and talent skill development. After all, organizations should aspire to have agility as a unit. Agility, the willingness to turn on a dime, requires the will to adapt. It requires the business, its leaders and its staff to walk that talk every day — in readiness for change.
Agile talent operates in multiple lanes going several directions — not in single-lane, up-the-ladder careers. Agile employees show an uncanny ability to adapt to setbacks and uncertainty and to find innovative solutions for the thorniest, most urgent problems. Like the synonyms of “agile” suggest, agile employees are buoyant, energetic, limber, lively, quick, rapid and sharp. They respond quickly to change. They anticipate what’s ahead. Agile employees can shift mindsets and approaches to use what works instead of what “is usually done.” They are attentive to trends and embrace moving forward as lifelong learners.
An agile career, much like an agile organization, is constantly in motion.
An agile career is a self-reflective career path guided by responsiveness to change and ever-evolving job roles. Such paths optimize creativity, growth and happiness — all of which promote engaged talent that you will retain with ease.
Therefore, agile career paths are a necessary tool to integrate and promote agility throughout the organization. Employees on an agile career path support leaders by enabling them to make better decisions through on-a-dime responsiveness to change. The agile career path is taking hold as it provides countless benefits to individual employees and allows for better responsiveness by the organization as a whole.
In fighting the war to gain and retain talent, acknowledging and leveraging the multiple layers of skills, talent, experience and competencies of each employee through agile career paths will make your brand a magnet for the best of the best.
