Introducing the Opportunity Employer: A revolution in equitable talent development

Table of contents

1. The broken system — and a new path forward

2. What is an Opportunity Employer?

3. HR blind spots: The hidden barriers every employer needs to tackle

4. Opportunity Employer spotlight: The virtuous cycle of opportunity

5. Next steps

The broken system — and a new path forward

Most employers today have some type of strategy in place around workforce development.

Popular workforce development efforts might include:

• In-house training or internal academies

• Education benefits

• Skilling platforms and programs

• Content partnerships

• Or all of the above

Unfortunately, too many leaders view these programs as cost centers instead of strategic investments.

And here’s why: They don’t have meaningful ROI to show for them.

In addition, workforce development programs are typically not designed with the entire workforce in mind, riddled with hidden barriers that stunt:

• Equitable growth

• Cultures of opportunity

• Innovation

This is the key: A better talent development strategy means a better company strategy — period.

There’s a better way forward. It’s the Opportunity Employer framework.

What is an Opportunity Employer?

An Opportunity Employer is an organization that offers equitable, accessible education and career growth opportunities for their entire workforce by removing commonly overlooked obstacles to growth, particularly for the workers who need it most: America’s frontline.

Opportunity Employers see the business impact of their investment in education, skilling, and the creation of highly visible career pathways.

What does this look like practically?

It looks like:

• Longer tenures

• More promotions and role changes

• Higher employee engagement

• A new wave of employee evangelism

Take Guild member Sherry Reese, for example. If we take a look at her LinkedIn, here’s what we’ll see.

Sherry doesn't just have an admirable career journey — she actively celebrates the opportunity Tyson Foods provided her.

When employers remove barriers to growth, then employees start learning, start growing — and start talking about it on their networks.

HR blind spots: The 8 hidden barriers every employer needs to tackle

Becoming an Opportunity Employer means doing things differently.

Let’s take a look under the hood.

We have to start by identifying and dismantling the systemic barriers to career growth that many don’t even realize are there.

Here are the eight most common obstacles to growth.

In our work with Fortune 1000 companies across the U.S., we’ve seen how innovators flip the status quo on its head and dismantle these obstacles.

1. Unintentionally inequitable programs

Tuition reimbursement has been a hallmark of employee development programs since the U.S. government launched the $5,250 tax-free education benefit in the 1980s.

And while the widespread adoption of tuition reimbursement was initially a step in the right direction, it’s no secret that these programs have always favored white collar workers for several reasons:

• Education: Certain education levels (e.g. bachelor’s degree) are often required in order to be eligible for tuition reimbursement.

• Finances: Workers must be able to confidently pay for their education out-of-pocket before receiving reimbursement.

• Time: Time is a commodity. White-collar workers typically have more flexibility, which is necessary for employees to partake in education programs.

Additionally, there are often strings attached to participation, like:

• Manager approval

• GPA requirements

• Tuition clawbacks

All of these policies raise the barrier to entry, particularly for frontline workers.

2. Financial barriers to entry

If employees can’t afford to front the money for tuition in the first place, they’re obliged to take on student loan debt — adding to the already astronomical crisis affecting millions of Americans.

And considering 4 in 10 Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency expense, there’s a considerable percentage of your workforce that can’t access the learning needed to grow their careers without taking on debt.

“The real unlock came for us in 2019 when we opened up the fully funded tuition program. This was where we opened it up so that our employees could access business and technology degrees — and we further expanded it into culinary, hospitality, agriculture degrees — that allowed them to pursue that advanced education in a fully funded tuition model.”

Daniel Banks, Director of Global Benefits, Chipotle

3. Lack of cultural support and buy in

Even when executives believe that people are their biggest asset, not all of them prioritize career growth — particularly when it comes to the oft-overlooked frontline workforce.

An investment in real talent mobility can be a significant cultural shift — and it takes significant buy-in from the top to make it a part of a company’s overall strategy.

But it’s not just the C-suite that can be a barrier. Managers may refrain from encouraging career growth to retain their best workers. The system does not incentivize them to foster mobility in the first place.

4. Lack of employee visibility into career growth opportunities

Even if a career growth program is structured equitably and supported by company leadership, it can’t drive mobility if employees don’t know about it.

That doesn’t just mean intentionally and broadly marketing the program, though that is certainly a big part of it.

“When I think about talent mobility and the way we define it at Target, which is … providing access for people to take control of their career experiences and dream big and aspire to do more, it was really, really important that we did three things: Number one, we provided visibility to those opportunities. So making sure that every team member, no matter who you are, what function you sit in, has visibility to the roles that are available and how you could pursue them.”

Kiera Fernandez, EVP and Chief Community Impact and Equity Officer, Target

It also means helping employees see what’s possible for themselves, both at their company and beyond. Even if they do, they might not believe a new role in a new field is within reach.

5. Failure to see beyond gateway jobs

Career growth and development isn’t a linear progression. But when many employers think of workforce development, they think of helping employees take the next step — and then stop there.

That creates plenty of managers, but it doesn’t unlock an individual’s full talent potential. It doesn’t account for roles that can help employees springboard into even more meaningful, lucrative, or in-demand jobs.

As for employers, it creates a talent bottleneck. Employees are able to move into what we call gateway jobs but not beyond — even as companies struggle to hire the higher level skills they need.

6. Employee occupational identity

Not every employee grew up with a personal community that exposed them to different professions and career paths. Not every employee went to college. Not every employee has experience with the job search and application process.

All of these considerations — often taken for granted by white collar workers who grew up with built-in experiences and networks — inform an individual’s occupational identity, as we outline in this blog.

When organizational leaders don’t intentionally foster and develop occupational identity through mentorship, job crafting, and more, they limit the career growth options for a large part of their workforce.

7. Training for skills of yesterday vs. agile skills for tomorrow

Beware of creating career mobility into dead-end jobs. Leading organizations are finding that to have the right people with the right skills at the right time, you have to think ahead.

While you shouldn’t neglect talent shortages today, many workforce development plans fail to account for skills that support where the business is heading in the future.

Even considering that we can’t really predict the future, learning is its own skill — one of the more important ones to instill in organizational culture. Failing to do so can hurt agility and innovation as workforce knowledge runs the risk of stagnating in the face of rapid technological change.

8. Antiquated HR team structure

HR teams and structures are still rooted in practices and methodologies from 30 years ago. Benefits are often considered a box to check — and are largely viewed as a cost center.

But the businesses and teams HR supports are drastically different today. The world is different, and most HR departments have not kept pace.

The metrics HR tracks also tend not to measure real mobility or opportunity. Employee engagement is important, but it doesn’t necessarily point to opportunity created. Likewise, program and benefit usage doesn’t tell you whether individuals are moving into new roles or changing fields entirely.

The answer: The Opportunity Employer model

Opportunity Employers do things differently. They remove these common barriers and move from:

• Inequitable programs to accessible policies

• Financial barriers to fully funded tuition assistance programs

• Lack of cultural support to executive champions + dedicated resources and processes

• Lack of employee visibility to systematic promotion of internal opportunities

• Failure to see beyond gateway jobs to a range of gateway and destination roles

• Failure to foster employee occupational identity to processes, tools, and coaching that fully support individual’s growth

• Training for the skills of yesterday to education that supports in-demand skills of the future

• Antiquated HR team structure to roles aligned to mobility and outcomes

So where are the employers using this model today? And what results are they seeing?