Career Pathing as a Talent

Imperative
 Executive Summary 1
In recent years, several talent trends have appeared, garnering significant publicity
within the business world: performance management changes, employee engagement
pulse surveys, and even the rise of informal learning. However, one trend that has the
potential to surpass all others in importance and impact is career pathing.

In our research on talent mobility, we have spoken with dozens of firms that are trying
to leverage the best talent within their four walls. When we dove deep, we found some
impressive results. First, our model depicting the maturity of employers with regard to
talent mobility:

Figure 1: Lighthouse Research Talent Mobility Maturity Model

This model highlights the steps organizations take from a passive, ad hoc approach to a
truly strategic, high-impact approach to career pathing and talent mobility. We’ll talk
more about this model later in the report by offering practical ideas on how to be more
strategic in this area.

On a business level, there is an even more compelling reason to prioritize the movement
of talent internally. Our research shows that there are very tight connections between
career development and employee engagement. The next link in the chain connects
employee engagement with positive business outcomes, from reduced turnover to
higher customer satisfaction and revenue. We have defined this series of connections as
the Talent Mobility Value Chain, taking the conversation beyond adopting a talent
practice to a whole new level.

http://lhra.io/blog/talent-mobility-maturity-framework-connecting-skills-business-
 Research Shows Career Development as a Key 2
Priority
In 1997, McKinsey coined the term “war for talent.” That term has become a mainstay for
employers in conversations across the globe, but in recent years, the competition has
become even more fierce.

Today’s workforce has more information at their fingertips than any other group in
history, and when employees feel the pressure, they have fewer barriers to exploring
other positions. Consider the following data points:

 Gallup’s State of the Workplace report shows that the number one reason people are
leaving their jobs is for career growth opportunities. More than 90 percent of those that
switched jobs in recent years did so by moving to a new employer, not to a new role within
their own company.
 Research from Glassdoor shows that while salary and benefits can be important touchpoints
in the employment relationship, worker satisfaction is dependent on broader factors:
Employees tell us that articulating a prosperous career path… and maintaining a positive
culture appear to be far more important ways to ensure [satisfaction].
 According to Aptitude Research, two-thirds of employers leave new hires in the dark when
it comes to development plans. This lack of transparency not only affects employee career
planning but also their engagement and willingness to stay with their employer.

These data points highlight an incredible opportunity:

Workers are clear about what they want in terms of growth and development
opportunities, but employers have to find a way to deliver.

One point worthy of mention: unlike some costly options on the table for creating
higher engagement, offering career pathing and development opportunities is valuable
for the employer as well as the employee. Having a well-rounded, highly trained
workforce that is agile and equipped to deal with challenges is the ideal way to prepare
for disruptive trends across a variety of industries or geographies.

However, it goes beyond business leaders simply saying, “More training!” as that doesn’t
necessarily reflect the strategic priority of career planning. Career pathing is about
finding the intersecting points between worker aspirations and capabilities and the
goals of the firm.
https://news.gallup.com/reports/199961/7.aspx

https://www.glassdoor.com/research/does-money-buy-happiness-the-link-between-salary-and-employee-

satisfaction/
 Competencies Make Skills Gaps Actionable 3
The skills gap costs employers nearly $1 million annually, according to research from
CareerBuilder. In reality this should mean that employers are looking to hire for specific
skills to fill their needs; however, when speaking with hiring leaders, they almost always
talk about skills gaps in terms of jobs and people instead of on an individual
competency level.

Let’s say, for example, that a firm had a skills gap. It was looking to hire technicians and
couldn’t fill the roles fast enough to meet the demands of the business. Instead of just
looking for more ways to hire technicians, what if the business broke the technician role
into specific competencies to see which were the most in demand? It might turn out that
others within the business had those desired competencies to fill a technician slot
without having to hire and train a new employee from scratch.

Employee Morale Work Productivity Employee Turnover

— — —
Workers picking up It's simply not possible Mounting stress can
extra shifts and tasks to to maintain the same lead employees to quit
cover vacant positions quality and output of or resign in favor of
can become work while a team is employers with more
overwhelmed and short staffed. balanced teams.
stressed.

Essentially, this is one of the key value points for taking a competency-based approach
to hiring, development, and career pathing. Instead of only looking at the firm as a
collection of job titles, employers can look at jobs as loose aggregations of
competencies, allowing them to be more agile and targeted when the situation requires.

http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-04-13-The-Skills-Gap-is-Costing-Companies-Nearly-1-
 4
A natural byproduct of this is a desire to create a list of the knowledge, skills, and
abilities attached to each job, but this is an extensive undertaking. To remedy this, there
are actually off-the-shelf competency frameworks, such as the one developed by IBM,
that allow employers to quickly implement a proven set of competencies instead of
attempting to build an in-house competency model, which can only be done at the
expense of considerable time and resources.

The value of having a competency framework is to create an objective view of the skills
and capabilities needed within an organization. Additionally, by using an objective,
established set of competencies, employers can actually quantify skill gaps in practical
terms. The first step in solving a problem is defining it, and competency frameworks
allow employers to do this in a targeted manner.

These points are interconnected. Competencies form the foundation of hiring and
development, but they also offer insights into skill gap deltas for workers between
where they are and where they want to go. If Sam wants to be a senior technician, he can
see what kinds of competencies he needs to move from his current role. If Mary wants to
leap from finance into an entirely different career track in technology or marketing, she
can see those gaps and understand objectively which may be more within her reach
based on natural talent and available developmental resources.

https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=LOS14093USEN

https://www.mercer.com/newsroom/one-in-three-employees-claim-to-have-a-job-rather-than-a-career-new-mercer-survey-finds.html
 5
In the perfect world, every employee would have a clear line of sight to the
opportunities in front of them. They would also have insight into the competencies
required to fulfill those roles. Managers would have unprompted, in-depth
conversations with their staff with the goal of helping them to develop and prepare for
those future roles.

Additionally, employees crave transparency. Mercer data says nearly eight out of ten
employees would stay with their current employer if they knew their career path.
Offering clear visibility into career paths and competency gaps creates a more level
playing field for workers.

However, it’s too challenging to scale this based on human power alone, even for those
companies with great leaders and managers in place. Having a technology partner in
place provides essential structure and enables this career pathing process to scale and
reach every employee, unlocking the value in the employee experience on a highly
personalized level.

https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=LOS14093USEN

https://www.mercer.com/newsroom/one-in-three-employees-claim-to-have-a-job-rather-than-a-career-new-mercer-survey-finds.html
 Success Stories from Prioritizing Career Development 6
While the research shows career development to be a critical point in the employee
experience to prioritize, the truth is employers in a wide variety of industries have
already taken those steps and are reaping the rewards of a more focused approach.

In one research study, high-performing firms were actually shown to be twice as likely to
prioritize the movement of talent, while low performers are more likely to say that
moving talent doesn’t really matter. This is more than just a siloed talent process--it’s a
holistic practice with dramatic business impact. Below are some examples from diverse
industries illustrating just how organizations can benefit.

https://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2016/04/14/i4cp-study-finds-managers-who-cling-to-good-talent-are-bad-for-
 Insurance and Financial Services 7
Credit Suisse is a financial services firm with 46,000 employees and revenues of approximately
$21 billion annually. Like any large company, the firm has had its struggles with finding and
keeping the right people.

To meet that ongoing need, the firm’s Internals First program was developed to help solve a
variety of challenges: recruiting the right talent, keeping employees within the firm’s ecosystem,
and lowering costs of training and turnover. The program has delivered impressive results--a
conservative estimate of $75 million has been saved since the program’s inception.

The program includes a variety of components aimed at retaining workers. For instance, when
recruiters call someone about a job, that person is often an internal candidate, not an external
candidate. Additionally, internal referrals are a common practice. Instead of “hoarding talent,”
managers actually encourage workers to seek other opportunities to leverage their skills and
create a rich, diverse career path. Credit Suisse puts a high priority on growth within the firm, as
evidenced by some of the key statistics from the program’s 2016 operation:

 Nearly half of director roles were filled internally

 500 jobs were filled with Internals First program
 39% of all vacancies were filled internally
 4,400 employees made an internal move laterally or vertically (nearly 10% of workforce)
Every employer can learn a lesson from this approach, even if starting from scratch. Credit Suisse
didn’t solve this problem overnight, and neither can anyone else. Importantly, the results the
organization has achieved are achievable by other firms as well.

https://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2016/04/14/i4cp-study-finds-managers-who-cling-to-good-talent-are-bad-for-
 Healthcare 8
Cardinal Health is a $91 billion healthcare services company with 34,000 employees. The firm has
taken numerous initiatives to prioritize development, and the demand comes from a business
need, not a standalone HR decision. In fact, on the company’s public-facing careers page, it even
commits to supporting career planning to “allow you to see the skills you need to achieve your
goals” at Cardinal Health.

"When you ask CEOs what keeps them up awake at night, they say things like keeping up with
the speed of change, globalization, data security -- but especially the ability to remain relevant,"
says Lisa George, vice president of global talent management at Cardinal Health. "The ability to
remain relevant is directly connected to leadership, talent and adaptability."

The company decided to make the specific development of employee strengths a priority,
leading to increased manager effectiveness and higher team performance. This focus has been so
impactful for the firm that it now weaves that strengths-focused approach into the employee
experience from the earliest onboarding stages through to workforce planning and talent
reviews. By prioritizing strengths at the individual level, Cardinal Health can help them find their
own internal career path to success.

An example of this was a recent joint venture between Cardinal Health and CVS Health to form a
new business entity. The partnership created new career opportunities for workers at both firms,
offering an exciting new career path for those interested in blazing new trails at the startup.
Because the healthcare firm had data on its employees’ competencies and interests, it was able
to quickly find the right ones for the opportunity, creating a powerful moment of engagement
and filling critical roles for the firm at the same time.

https://www.credit-suisse.com/careers/en/articles/careers/boost-your-career-through-internal-mobility-201702.htmlDouble-clickto

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Career Pathing as a Talent Imperative 9
When we consider the preceding stories and others like them, what is the common
thread? It’s not an industry sector, company size or vertical--it’s a focus on career pathing
as a talent imperative.

Designing an employee experience with career pathing as a core component is shown to

deliver on engagement and performance, metrics every business leader would be
interested in improving.

Research Point: Talent Mobility to Supercharge Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity is a critical agenda item for firms both large and small, and this importance
will only increase as data are found supporting diversity's connection to performance
outcomes. That said, many employers try to treat diversity as a hiring problem, but if
there aren’t adequate talent mobility practices in place, any success in diversity hiring
will fail to penetrate into higher levels of leadership. Strong career pathing practices
can lead to greater diversity by moving a diverse hiring slate upward through
succession and development. Conversely, failing to prioritize career pathing can lead
to stagnant talent pools and ultimately less diversity.
 10
Tying it All Together
There are many branches of the HCM function--recruiting, talent, core HR, etc. When it
comes to the issue of finding and keeping talent, almost everyone immediately looks at
the situation as if it were a recruiting problem. The issue with that is even if your
organization is phenomenal at recruiting, it still may fail to move people adequately
internally, leading to higher turnover and lower engagement.

That means while recruiting may play a role by targeting internal candidates for
openings, it needs to be a part of a bigger conversation to have the true impact business
leaders are looking for. The following list provides a series of actionable takeaways for
employers that want to move into a more strategic approach to career pathing and
talent mobility.

Action Items for Career Pathing Success

As highlighted in the Lighthouse Research Talent Mobility Maturity Model,
Strategic Talent Mobility has three key components:

Employee-driven Technology-enabled Growth imperative

 11
Business leaders need to look at ways to make career pathing an increasingly strategic
process to ensure the full value is perceived by the organization. Below are some
recommendations for employers to prioritize career pathing.

First, this must be an employee-driven approach. It can’t solely rely on managers, or it

will surely fail to meet the target objectives. Empower employees by encouraging them
to share aspirations, career goals, and desired development opportunities with their
manager.
 Train managers to ask open-ended questions about employee aspirations, goals, and
career directions, opening up the last few minutes of regular one-on-one meetings to
allow workers to guide the agenda themselves.
 When employees are moved internally, highlight those moves in company
communications (newsletters, email digests, or other tools) to reinforce the notion of
talent mobility.

Next, the best companies have talent mobility practices that are enabled by technology.
When technology is not in place, career pathing is static, ad hoc, or completely ignored.
If this is a priority, technology can play a key role in enabling better talent practices.

 Does your talent technology have a library of competencies that you can use without
having to spend resources creating your own? Are those competencies integrated into
talent processes or siloed off from other relevant decision-making?
 Is career pathing a key part of your talent technology stack, or is it a “bolt on” feature
with minimal capabilities, added simply to check a box on a technology selection form? For
example, TalentGuard is designed with career pathing as a key talent practice, integrated
deeply with succession, performance, learning, and more.
 12
Finally, is there a growth imperative at your firm? In our research we’ve seen a surprising
number of firms that prioritize one thing and one thing only when it comes to employee
value: seniority. This characteristic is an important one for maintaining continuity over
time, but while tenure is one indicator of performance, it can’t be the only one.

 How heavily does tenure factor into decisions on promotions, compensation

adjustments, or career mobility discussions? Within development conversations,
managers need to be prioritizing growth over tenure. An employee that has one year of
static experience ten times is less valuable than an employee with ten years of
increasingly complex responsibility.

 If you have the data, look at how much learning per employee was consumed in the last
year. Do the data indicate whether development is a priority or not? Training is often
seen as something that people do when they are not working. That is a false assumption,
because learning is an inherent part of work, and it needs to be treated with the same
priority.
 13
Conclusion
By now we’ve made the case time and time again that career pathing is, and should be, a
critical component of your organization’s talent management strategy. Not only is it a
powerful enabler of employee engagement and performance, but it also supports
company goals by supplying an eager and highly capable workforce.

Unlike other compartmentalized talent practices, such as performance management,

career pathing touches on so many aspects of the employee experience that its value
cannot be denied. Career planning and development is at the heart of what creates a
lasting value proposition between workers and their employers.

If your firm hopes to take advantage of the value career pathing can bring, it needs to be
approached strategically: employees must have a voice in the process, technology must
be leveraged to achieve the best results, and growth must be prioritized as a component
of the employee lifecycle.
 About TalentGuard, Inc.

TalentGuard Inc., the Predictive People Development company, is a global

provider of career pathing and talent management software. Our cloud-based
software uses machine learning to help employees take control of their own
career growth, while giving their managers deep insights into their teams’
greatest strengths and areas of growth.

With our integrated suite of talent management solutions, organizations can

automate performance management, 360 degree feedback, career pathing,
succession planning, individual development planning and certification
tracking. TalentGuard also helps improve business outcomes with our
extended network of credentialed career coaches, training programs and
content.

Through its network of trusted integration partners, TalentGuard is

seamlessly integrated with the broader HCM ecosystem, including HRIS,
Applicant Tracking, Compensation Management, and Learning Management.
For more information, visit https://www.talentguard.com.
 About Lighthouse Research

Lighthouse Research & Advisory is a modern, independent analyst firm dedicated to

setting the standard for excellence in talent, learning, and HR with practical research and
a hands-on approach. By providing compelling research and actionable insights, our
team enables learning and talent leaders to deliver more value to the business. Our
research examines competitive practices, cutting-edge technologies, and innovative
strategies.

Ben Eubanks is the Principal Analyst at Lighthouse, providing insights for today’s talent
leaders and vendor partners. In 2018 his book, Artificial Intelligence for HR, was
published. This was the first piece of in-depth research on the topic published anywhere
in the world and helped to solidify Lighthouse as a leading analyst firm.

Prior to joining Lighthouse, Ben worked as a researcher, writer, and speaker for nearly
ten years, focusing on learning, talent acquisition, and talent management. During his
tenure as a researcher, he has published more than 250 assets and provided advisory
services to executives from some of the largest and most respected organizations in the
world.

He also has hands-on experience working as an HR executive, leading both strategic and
tactical talent practices and giving his research a distinctly practical perspective. Ben has
interviewed business leaders from notable organizations such as Southwest Airlines,
H&R Block, and AlliedUniversal in his role as the host of We’re Only Human, a podcast
focused on the intersection of people, technology, and the workplace. In addition, he
founded and operates upstartHR.com, a community serving HR leaders that has reached
more than one million readers since its inception.