What is a career mobility platform? Key features & considerations for employers.

Organizations can combat HR tech stack bloat with a career mobility platform – here's how.

Career mobility platforms provide a central, strategic solution that won't confuse your employees.

In this employer’s guide, we'll cover:

→ What career mobility platforms are and why they matter now
→ Best practices for leveraging career mobility platforms
→ How to evaluate career mobility platforms

Table of contents

• Chapter 1: What is a career mobility platform?

• Chapter 2: The highest value features of career mobility platforms

• Chapter 3: How decision-makers should evaluate adding a career mobility platform to their tech stack

What makes a workforce agile?

A workforce’s agility can be defined by how well an organization provides the infrastructure necessary for employees to access career development and growth.

In pursuit of agility, companies tend to roll out a suite of different tools and resources aimed at skilling and career mobility.

But here’s the tricky part: In the process, they often unintentionally end up:

• Creating confusing mazes of systems that don’t talk to each other

• Leave employees disoriented and unsure of where to start

• Maintain a bloated HR tech stack that ultimately stifles the agility and internal mobility it was created to build

The solution?

What employers and employees actually need is a career mobility platform: a central resource for all things career development.

What employers and employees need instead is a career mobility platform: a central resource for all things career development.

How does a career mobility platform work?

Career mobility platforms turn disparate software solutions into a highly effective talent mobility engine by acting as a centralized resource for education, career development and internal mobility needs, including:

• A catalog of strategic education and skilling programs aligned to open roles in their companies

• Career pathways – from entry-level, to gateway, to destination roles

• Coaching services

• Career development resources

• Benefit and tuition administration

• Real-time data for employers to track employee progress

See chapter 2 for more information about these features.

Career mobility platforms turn disparate software solutions into a highly effective talent mobility engine by serving as a centralized resource for learning, career development, and internal mobility.

For employers

With the right career mobility platform, employers have access to:

• Curated programs aligned with business needs

• Access to data critical for internal hiring and recruiting

• Insight into skilled employees ready for their next career move

For employees

In a career mobility platform, employees have access to:

• One place to check their program eligibility

• One place to enroll in development opportunities

• One place to access career and growth coaching support

• One support system to acquire crucial career development skills

Who is a career mobility platform for?

Career mobility platforms are most useful for large employers who want to:

1. Boost retention: Increase employee tenure, particularly for high turnover roles (i.e. frontline roles)

2. Improve talent attraction: High growth companies that need to attract new employees who are energized by the idea of career growth

3. Grow valuable skills: Build new skills in their workforce to adapt to market needs (i.e. train employees on how to use AI)

4. Become an employer of choice: Fine-tune their employer value proposition by offering career growth opportunities aligned to skilling and education

5. Build internal pipelines: Decrease dependence on costly external hiring and recruitment by skilling employees within their organization

6. Create a culture of opportunity: Improve employee engagement by building a culture of opportunity that embraces different types of career mobility

7. Make strides in DE&I: Using career mobility to diversify business leadership and close historical opportunity gaps

For example, Guild works with Fortune 1000 companies like Walmart, Target, Chipotle, and more to do exactly that. See how Chipotle uses Guild’s career mobility platform to fuel business growth.

The top 5 features of a career mobility platform

The five features below are some of the most powerful tools a career mobility platform can offer, propelling individuals toward their career goals with precision and purpose.

1. A catalog of education and skilling programs aligned with company needs

This is key: The more aligned the programs in an employer’s catalog are to the open roles at their company, the higher the probability that employees will actually achieve career mobility.

The programs in an employer’s catalog should:

• Align with internal mobility opportunities: Show a clear connection between the skills employee need & the programs that will teach them those skills.

• Be financially accessible to those who stand to benefit the most from them: Employees at any job & income level should be able to access learning opportunities. In other words, provide a robust catalog of Tuition Assistance programs in which employers cover tuition costs upfront (versus reimbursement).

• Be flexible: Programs should be designed to meet the needs of employees as working adult learners (e.g. dynamic online learning, options for self-paced learning, access to learning tools and resources online).

• Be vetted for quality: With over 4,000 degree programs in the US alone –and exponentially more short-form and certificate programs – learning and skilling programs should be rigorously vetted for quality, learner outcomes, and alignment with business needs.

• Meet a broad range of learning needs. Some employees may want to complete their GED, pursue English language fluency, or earn their MBA (and some may want to achieve all three eventually).

For Guild employer partners: We help your employees navigate this catalog in a user-friendly, interactive way. They can even take a quiz to see what programs best align with their own interests.

For a deeper dive on this topic, check out our guide on how to design education benefits to enable career mobility.

2. Clearly defined career pathways

Career pathways are a critical part of any effective career mobility program.

They refer to sets of roles that exist across an organization — from frontline to “destination” roles, the skills that connect them, and the on-and off-ramps between them.

Although each person’s career pathway will look different, career mobility platforms offer pre-built pathways that connect multiple roles, particularly priority roles organizations need to fill.

Here’s the win-win: These pathways not only help employees explore and choose education programs that align with their own goals, but also their organization’s priority growth areas.

Finally, these pre-built career pathways can be turned on immediately, but can also be tailored to fit unique organizational needs.

3. End-to-end education benefit administration

Career mobility platforms should provide support within the platform for employees to understand their education benefit and their eligibility. They can also show how much funding has been used, and how much is available for the current benefit period.

Career mobility platforms also take a number of administrative burdens off employer’s plates, from:

• Program administration

• Invoicing

• Data synthesization

The secret sauce: Progression data

Progression data is important both for measuring success and for refining talent strategies.

Tracking learner progress in their education programs helps companies understand how well employees are persisting and how close they are to completing a program.

Reporting dashboards can help:

• Scope internal pipelines: Talent executives can better understand the size and shape of internal pipelines

• Prep internal hiring managers: Internal hiring managers determine when to reach out to employees who are close to becoming qualified for priority roles

• Fast-track your internal mobility goals: These features – when used correctly – can help employers reach their internal mobility scores significantly faster

When career mobility platforms have deep data integrations with their learning partners, progression data can also be used to improve program participation.

For a closer look at this process, here is a case study on how Guild worked with a learning partner to optimize their programs for first-time college students.

4. Personalized coaching and support services

According to the statistics below, coaching consistently proves to improve employee persistence and confidence in their education and skilling programs, and helps these learners stay:

• Engaged

• Empowered

• Persistent in their programs

When it comes to coaches, instead of just having third-party technical support, it is extremely beneficial to have coaches that are in-house and aligned with your current talent strategy and goals.

“[My coach] kept me strong, accountable, even through all my bad times… She was wonderful. She listened, gave criticism, told me affirmations, and told me how great I was doing. I don't know what I would've done without her all this time helping me and supporting me... I just can't say enough about her."

Recent Guild graduate and future analyst, Bachelor of Web Development

They’ll be able to better articulate to your employees what the growth areas of your business are and where they are more likely to find career mobility.

For Guild employers: Guild’s enhanced coaching services include career coaching.

Career coaches help employees prepare for the next step in their career journey, whether it’s by:

• Learning how to navigate LinkedIn or

• How to identify new job opportunities or

• Prepping mock interview questions

Guild coaches support employees all the way through their career development journey.

5. Career development resources

The secret to an agile workforce?

Empower your workers to navigate career pathways with confidence. This is where career development resources play a pivotal role.

Career development resources help employees gain the confidence they need to successfully move into a new role. These resources can be a combination of self-paced and guided:

• Interactive skills modules offered at different levels of skill fluency help employees prepare for the career advancement process. Guild’s Career Accelerator tool, for example, provides multi-modal, self-paced modules to help members learn how to build a resume, prepare for an interview, network and grow their social capital, and more.

• Career discovery pages embedded in the platform help employees to explore internal roles available to them. This resource is important as employees are considering how they want to grow their careers, as well as visibility into roles aligned with their skills.

• Guided support from an expert helps employees discuss goals, options, and strategies for mobility in personalized 1:1 sessions.

“The #1 most impactful practice for driving business, talent, and innovation outcomes is creating extensive career growth opportunities.”

The Josh Bersin Company research study of 94 L&D practices across 1,000+ organizations

Understanding the HR tech & career mobility platform landscape

It isn’t uncommon for companies to leverage multiple platforms at once – and with good reason.

No one platform covers every unique talent, recruiting, learning, and human capital management need in totality.

Below is a list of a few of different popular tech platforms in today's HR landscape:

• Education Benefit Provider: Support the administration of education benefits to employees through billing and access to courses and/or learning programs

• Learning Experience Platform (LXP): Comprehensive hub for self-serve access to skilling and education programs

• Human Capital Management Platform: Record-keeping system for employee information, benefit management, payroll, and performance management. These tend to be the most foundational tracking systems within HR

• Talent Marketplace: Internal talent management systems that help with recruiting by matching skills to internal job opportunities (some will support talent searches)

• Recruiting Platform: Systems for tracking applicants, managing the candidate experience, and documenting / driving consistency for the recruiting and hiring processes

The truth is that many of these platforms can complicate (rather than complement) the critical human capital management systems that organizations rely on.

Employees – who are already short on time – are forced to navigate separate systems to access:

• Skilling programs

• Coaching

• Career readiness support

• Education benefits and funding

The result?

• Inefficiencies within internal talent pipelines

• Lower adoption rates

• Reduced workforce agility

This is where a career mobility platform shines.

In addition to providing learning and skilling programs tailored to organizational needs, a career mobility platform can serve as a single source for employees to:

• Access and understand their education benefit

• Explore career interests and employer-funded programs that align with them

• Access support from a trained coach during their learning journey

• Brush up on career readiness skills like interviewing and resume-building

The 7 questions for decision-makers to ask when evaluating a career mobility platform

Don’t know where to start when evaluating a career mobility platform? Below are 7 key questions for decision-makers to ask.

1. How will employees be guided to the right jobs?

Platforms should be designed to help any employee prepare to grow their career through highly visible career pathways.

2. What learning and skilling programs are offered on the platform – and how are they vetted?

Offering the right learning experiences and credentials makes or breaks talent mobility efforts.

A range of programs should be offered to meet not only the needs of an individual organization, but the individual needs of the people who work there.

3. How are new skills proactively connected back to jobs and careers?

Skills are only one part of the equation. Career readiness preparation — like interviewing or building a resume — are also critical for mobility.

Employees nearing the end of their programs should have access to learning and coaching that helps them identify and prepare for internal opportunities.

4. How does the platform enable talent strategies and operationalize internal pipelines?

Talent development analytics that enable employers to track learner progress are critical to internal recruiting and predicting your future workforce.

When the platform isn’t directly integrated with learning partners, organizations can’t see who is nearing program completion and might soon be ready for a new opportunity

5. What pre-built, vetted career pathways are available?

Priority career pathways that cover multiple roles can help employees explore their program choices and find the roles that align with their interests — and your highest priorities.

6. What support do frontline employees have to navigate career mobility?

Frontline employees face many barriers to mobility. Career navigation tools can help enable more equitable access to opportunity.

To achieve that, employees need to see what’s possible and exactly how to get there.

7. Can employees access career coaching?

Coaching isn’t a 15-minute call for administrative help.

Employees at or near program completion are preparing for the next step in their careers, and need support at this critical moment on their:

• Career readiness skills

• Cover letters

• Interview prep

• Resumes

• ...and more

Is a career mobility platform right for your organization?

As summarized above, when used correctly, a career mobility platform is:

• (Chapter 1) A single platform for employees to access education, skilling, and career development resources

• (Chapter 1) Is optimal for large employers looking to boost talent attraction, retention, engagement, and agility

• (Chapter 2) Administer education benefits aligned to employer talent needs

• (Chapter 2) Offer career pathways and career development resources to get there

• (Chapter 2) Offer support from trained coaches

As a decision-maker, for questions to ask when considering a career mobility platform, reference the questions in chapter 3 or download our comprehensive buyer’s guide.

When executed correctly, a career mobility platform can act as the crux of your talent strategy, helping your employees evolve to changing needs of your business and empowering them to navigate their unique career paths with agility and purpose.

Any questions we didn’t answer? Request a demo of our career mobility platform, or check out our complete guide to building a career mobility for your entire workforce.