Matthew J. Daniel
April 26th, 2023
I recently posted an article on LinkedIn about the concept of “owning your own career development,” and why it’s based on faulty assumptions.
It was a personal post for me, and based on the comments, it struck a nerve with my network as well.
The article and post in summary:
Not all of your workforce has access to the social capital, cultural understanding, mentorship and networking connections, or family experiences that form the foundation of many people’s career trajectory and advancement options.
They don’t all have a concept of “occupational identity,” meaning a sense of what an individual is good at, what he or she likes, and how that translates into career options.
Not everyone has a map that shows where they can go in their careers.
Supporting all workers (particularly the front line) in their learning and career journeys isn’t just the right and equitable thing to do — it’s how you supercharge your workforce development strategy.
In helping talented individuals from all backgrounds reach their full potential, your company can then better fill talent pipelines for high-demand roles, retain more workers, and build the workforce of the future.
Here’s what that could look like, and how to start investing in career development for all of your workforce.
Employees who understand their career options are more likely to move into new roles
Imagine if everyone you need for the jobs of the future works for you today.
Your next operations manager could be stocking shelves right now. The next medical assistant you hire currently works in the cafeteria. And your next recruiting coordinator? Currently fielding customer inquiries in a call center.
But if employees can’t see or access those pathways, how can we expect them to ‘own their own development’?
Creating occupational identity in every single employee to enable career growth for all is the only way the future of work can work. As we discussed on a webinar with Josh Bersin earlier this year, you can’t just hire externally for all the roles you’ll need for the future (or even today!).
Career growth is also something we know employees want — and it’s something many organizations already do for certain populations, namely white collar workers.
As a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article outlines, most companies have allocated significantly more resources “when it comes to such basics as hiring, skill building, on-the-job feedback, career development, and mentorship—to salaried workers than to hourly workers, even though the latter constitute more than 40% of the U.S. labor force.”
40% of the U.S. labor force are hourly workers.
When you work to build occupational identity and equip each employee with the tools and support needed to accelerate their careers, then your talent pool becomes an ocean.
Disney successfully enrolls 14,000+ hourly members in education and skilling programs
The Walt Disney Company shows how it’s possible. In 2018, they partnered with Guild to launch Disney Aspire — a tuition-free education and skilling program built to power the careers of both full- and part-time workers.
The program was highlighted in that same HBR article as an example of a company on the leading edge of education and career development for their frontline workforce.
By focusing on access, skills, and support, Aspire has created career pathways for individuals to move into entirely new roles and fields. (For example, an hourly attraction operator became an associate electrical engineer, and a merchandiser moved into a global corporate role on the HR team.)
And the media behemoth did it all at scale.
Today, more than 14,000 hourly employees are enrolled in the program.
Since program launch, 3,500 employees have graduated, and more than 2,800 students and graduates have been promoted internally. More than 50% of workers currently enrolled are persons of color, and more than 60% are women.
The ROI of fostering occupational identity and owning talent development for all workers
At Disney, they didn’t only see hourly workers moving into entirely new roles: ~25% of all the people who apply for hourly positions at Disney cited access to education, training, and career pathways as a motivation for seeking employment at the company in the first place.
It’s a virtuous cycle: If you offer career advancement opportunities that meet people where they are in their education and career journeys, they’re more likely to want to work for your organization, stay, and grow into the roles you need in the future.
HBR’s survey came to the same conclusion: “if low-wage workers are managed well and given the appropriate career guidance and mentorship to develop, they usually want to stay and grow with the organizations that employ them. And when they do that, not only do most of them thrive personally and professionally, but the companies they work for benefit substantially.”
“If low-wage workers are managed well and given the appropriate career guidance and mentorship to develop, they usually want to stay and grow with the organizations that employ them. And when they do that, not only do most of them thrive personally and professionally, but the companies they work for benefit substantially.”
"The High Cost of Neglecting Low-Wage Workers" By Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman on Harvard Business Review
And we’ve seen this in action. By focusing on education, skilling, and career mobility for the frontline, our employer partners have found that employees engaged with Guild have a 2.2x higher likelihood of internal mobility among employees engaged with the benefit vs non-engaged employees1.
They’re also more likely to retain: employees who access our Learning Marketplace were 2.1x less likely to leave their employer in the last 12 months relative to non-engaged employees¹.
The value of retention alone makes up between 65% and 85% of the ROI our partners see, an average of $3 savings for every $1 invested in education and upskilling through Guild2.
4 steps for organizations to invest in — and ‘own’ — employee development equitably and at scale
So if employees shouldn’t solely own their own development, how can your organization make up for inequities and create more opportunity for all?
If you want to invest in career growth opportunities for all workers, you can start by focusing on high-impact areas: removing barriers to access for learning and development, building bridges and connections for mentorship and networking, providing the social context and coaching guidance needed, and telling the story of career potential and pathways.
1. Show people where they can grow with assessments and skills-matching tools — but make sure to capture more than just the usual education and work experience.
At Guild, we believe that talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not.
Your frontline employees have the talent, but they might not know what opportunities are available to them.
As part of your employee benefits and resources, try including assessments and tools that can help employees evaluate interests as well as skills they may already have or want to build.
Skills assessments probably aren’t a new concept to you — but what should be new is a more holistic approach that considers who employees are outside of work as well as how their existing education and work experience prepares them for the next role.
Many workers have a wealth of knowledge, learning, and experience, whether that’s from on-the-job training or their general work history. Those experiences just haven’t been recognized as defined skills or translated into academic credit.
Some learning providers are open to recognizing this kind of training or experience as credit toward a degree or stackable credential.
What we call “credit for experience” or “credit for training” has become a way for companies and learning providers to work together in validating meaningful experience and accelerating skill-building.
By categorizing and counting this learning toward an employees’ degree, you provide a key boost in motivation by showing workers they already have valuable skills and knowledge. It also saves time on completion for learners while saving cost for education for the company by avoiding redundant coursework.
2. Make career pathways clear and visible — and tell the story of those who have already made the transition.
Career pathways aren’t linear. Your company is not a factory that moves people into an assembly line.
People and the career pathways they pursue are messy and meandering, but as humans, we build meaning through stories. Use storytelling to your advantage in encouraging career mobility by showing it’s possible.
Even if pathways aren’t always straight, start by making the ones that are well-trodden and clear as visible as possible. Start showing people their options — and show them that people like them have already done it.
Many of Guild’s partners do this by regularly (and publicly) celebrating program graduates and anniversaries — both externally and internally. Target has highlighted career growth stories of associates who moved from hourly roles into engineering positions.
PepsiCo’s CHRO recently shared a video on LinkedIn celebrating one year of their myeducation program, which features a learner who moved from an administrative assistant to a food service sales analyst, and an operator who became a mechanic.
3. Create proactive mentorship through growth and career coaches.
The first two strategies involve some level of individual exploration. But just as important as discerning skills and telling the story broadly is the personal support that can help working adults navigate what might be to them a complex and opaque process.
Mentorship is an absolute essential element of career development — and it’s one that isn’t available to every worker.
Not everyone grows up in an environment at home or in their community to grow their skills or receive the support and encouragement they need to reach their full potential.
Many employees not only don’t have mentors, they have the challenges that any working adult faces when deciding to pursue education.
There’s work, school, and family to juggle. Many employees have been out school for years, carry previous student loan debt, or — crucially — may be navigating college as a first-generation student.
This is where personal, human support can make all the difference. If meaningful guidance is part of what’s been lacking, adding that through dedicated coaching can significantly improve outcomes and make career advancement seem possible.
This kind of support should be available every step of the way, from initial job exploration to learning persistence to interview prep and beyond.
(For Guild partners: We recently launched Career Accelerator for employees to gain some of the social capital and confidence they need to apply the skills they are learning to their new job search.)
4. Make learning free – no tuition required.
While wraparound support and storytelling can help level the playing field for many workers by providing the context and tools they haven’t had access to, there’s still a major barrier to career and economic opportunity: the cost of education.
This is a big one. A college degree may be required for many of your salaried roles, but being able to afford or attend college is far from a foregone conclusion for a majority of the U.S. population.
Guild has found that 3 out of 4 employees who do not hold an undergraduate degree select tuition assistance (or when an employer pays for education upfront) over tuition reimbursement programs when their companies offer both funding options, increasing to 9 out of 10 for employees with no college experience3.
It’s not just about college, though.
All credential-bearing programs — including certificates, bootcamps, and more — should be available free of charge for all employees.
By covering costs of education, employees can gain skills without major financial barriers, and you make career growth affordable for frontline workers.
Help each and every employee build the careers they want and gain the skills your organization needs.
Accounting for the needs of disadvantaged workers creates a richer experience for all employees, no matter where they start from.
By fostering occupational identity broadly, you help all employees build the careers they want by making it simpler and more affordable to get the skills and experience needed to fill bigger and better roles. In turn, that benefits the full cycle of your talent strategy: attracting, retaining, and moving top talent into high-demand jobs.
- Guild’s internal data over the last 12 months as of 01/01/2023 from employers who have provided the required data for at least 13 months post launch
- Average of all Return on Investment analyses conducted by Guild for employer partners as of 01/01/2023
- Guild’s internal data over the last 12 months as of 01/01/2023
About the author
Matthew J. Daniel
Matthew is Senior Principal, Talent Strategy and Mobility at Guild.
