Matthew J. Daniel
April 5th, 2022
Need a framework for career mobility? You're not alone.
In our upside down labor market, what employees want most is career mobility – a path to a brighter economic future for themselves and their families.
And employers have it within their power to offer that to their workers when they take career mobility seriously.
It’s also in their best interest.
Last year alone, 63% of employees who left their jobs cited "lack of career advancement" as a key reason for quitting — and new data reveals that high mobility companies consistently outperform low mobility companies in terms of average employee tenure — 5.4 years to 2.9 years on average.
Employers who consistently foster career mobility bolster:
- Talent attraction
- Retention
- ESG & DEI efforts
At Guild, we're committed to helping employers create career mobility at scale – so here is a career mobility framework to start with (for a deeper dive, visit our full breakdown on how to create an internal mobility strategy for your entire company).
The career mobility framework: 3 foundational steps
Creating a culture of career mobility is an intentional process. It requires deeply evaluating your:
- Current policies
- Skilling programs
- Employee support capabilities
Executing on these three foundational elements will set your organization up for success.
1. Optimize your hiring practices and roles for career mobility.
In order for companies to meet their recruitment goals, it’s time to take a critical look at current hiring processes.
Where do discriminatory practices linger?
For example, many of today’s talent initiatives overwhelmingly target knowledge workers, neglecting to acknowledge the sheer amount of untapped talent that sits in their front line.
Instead, workforce planning teams must take a critical look at how they can create career pathways at all levels of the organization, from entry-level roles to senior management.
Workforce planning teams must take a critical look at how they can create career pathways at all levels of the organization, from entry-level roles to senior management.
In order for frontline talent to move up, career pathways must exist for middle managers to move into. This kicks off the virtuous cycle of mobility.
Real-world examples of practices that lead to career mobility
Here are some examples of progressive hiring practices that promote mobility of internal talent:
- High-demand junior roles: Open new job listings at more junior levels in departments with the highest demand (instead of only hiring senior developers or analysts with five-seven years of experience, reorganize your workforce to build talent from more junior positions)
- Experience over degrees: Consider experience equivalencies instead of mandatory degree requirements
- Allow jumps: Allow employees to skip levels where merited and make the jump from non-exempt to exempt employee easier
- Stay competitive: Pay internal employee transfers as much as you would an external employee, including offering relocation packages (which are usually just external)
- Nix managerial approval: Remove managerial approval for internal job postings
- Boost internal comms: Improve visibility of opportunities to receive upward mobility in your company (keep reading to learn more)
*For a closer look, visit our guide on how to design effective internal mobility programs.
2. Offer fully funded education and skilling programs that mirror your needed talent pipelines — and market them heavily
As the rate of technological development increases, so must the agility of our workforces.
That means learning new skills — and faster than ever before.
Employees need both short and long form learning options that allow them to mobilize into high-demand roles as business needs shift.
Employees need both short and long form learning options that allow them to mobilize into high-demand roles as business needs shift.
While navigating the quantity and quality of skilling programs can feel tricky, employers should focus on a curated catalog of programs that are most likely to serve as a “pathway to promotion” since they’ve been vetted by their workforce planning teams.
*For a deeper dive, check out our guide on how to choose education programs that drive career mobility.
Funding and marketing your education programs is key
When employers fully fund credentialed programs, they make their education programs more equitable and — unsurprisingly — more marketable.
But make no mistake: it’s critical to create intentional marketing strategies around your programs and pathways, especially for low-wage workers who have little or no visibility into opportunities to achieve mobility (a recent survey found that 33% of workers said they saw no opportunity to move up).
Instead, innovative employers like Walmart, Chipotle, and Target have trail-blazed a new path of fully funded and intentionally marketed programs with Guild — and it’s yielding results.
One financial services company saw a 2.7X increase in program adoption when moving to a tuition-free model.
Your marketing should be:
- Convenient: Meet the employees where they are in the flow of their work (should not be passive websites or webpages)
- Transparent: Be transparent about what steps are needed to obtain each role (including intermediary roles and credentials) and what pay increases might look like
- Future-focused: Tie these new roles and associated learning programs with the future of the strategy of the organization
3. Invest in employee support throughout the process
The last part of the framework is implementing an infrastructure of employee support and coaching to help employees see their destination or new role as a part of what they can become.
According to HBR, 70% of employees say they define their purpose through work.
Moving into a new career path is a life-changing decision for many, especially for those in low-income roles who are the primary caretakers of their families.
So how can employers support their employees through this process?
Programmatic coaching improves adoption and persistence (particularly for frontline workers)
Employers can provide programmatic coaching to employees throughout their journey to provide clarity and confidence.
This piece is particularly valuable for frontline employees, who may need assistance:
- Navigating the number of programs available
- Motivating them during challenging times
- Even giving them a risk-free environment to interview prep.
Finally, this last part is crucial:
Your coaches should also have contextual awareness of the talent needs in your organization to be able to steer employees into high-demand career paths.
Your coaches should also have contextual awareness of the talent needs in your organization to be able to steer employees into high-demand career paths.
This will give your employees the best chance of achieving an offer for a new role.
Career mobility on your radar in 2022?
The framework to career mobility is just the beginning – there’s more to this story.
Download A Guide to Getting Started With Career Mobility to learn more about how your organization can start shaping the workforce of tomorrow.
About the author
Matthew J. Daniel
Matthew is Senior Principal, Talent Strategy and Mobility at Guild.
