Designing and implementing a career system is part of an organization's overall workforce management and competitive strategy. This process should begin at the senior level and work its way through the organization.
In ideal situations, the charter for a career system comes from senior management; however, the need for a career system may surface at any level of the organization. In either case, a senior executive should champion the initiative. This person can either be directly involved in the process or serve in the role of adviser or sponsor. Ideally, this person becomes fully engaged and chairs an advisory board, council, or steering committee. Skilled organization development practitioners working with senior managers can help validate the need for the project. In many cases, the strategy is to help them build a business case for the work and then defend it in meetings with their peers.
Once the program is initiated, there are six recommended steps the organization should follow to create and implement a career system:
Inquiry and analysis.
Design.
Development.
Rollout.
Stewardship.
Integration.
The initial inquiry and organizational analysis phase collects relevant systemwide data, including the following:
global economic trends
general industry and sector trends
organizational business strategy and key business challenges
how a career system should support other strategic initiatives being executed, planned, or anticipated by the organization
organizational demographics and workforce issues, especially in multinational organizations with people from different cultures
workforce demographics, especially in multinational organizations
the system's measures including the micro and macro measures mentioned below.
Also in the inquiry and analysis phase, you should calibrate the career system with the organization's overall strategic direction. Usually, there is a “strategic screen” against which all initiatives and programs are measured to determine their rates of success. The strategic screen is a way of justifying the resource allocation and enrolling in the project those at the executive level.
Finally, you should think about system evaluation. Consider what capability is, or will be present in the organization because of the career system. Knowing what outcomes you want and what they will look like only makes later stages of the process easier. In the inquiry and analysis phase, you should think about three evaluation concepts: focusing your measures, planning the evaluation, and reporting the results.
Career system measures fall into two categories:
Micro measures are those indicators that are readily apparent and easily measured. These include measures such as retention of key individuals; feedback from participants; numbers of people in line for succession planning; employability and mobility of individuals; and performance indicators of people placed in key jobs or work assignments because of the career system. (For more information, see Info-line No. 9312, “Succession Planning.”)
Macro measures are those indicators that are more global and require a combination of factors and conditions before indicating success. These include measures such as profitability, return-on-investment, industry measures, shareholder value added, leadership competence, global career movement, and strategic and competitive measures unique to the organization's industry.
Career development evaluation and measurements also have implications for individuals. Measures of success that affect both individuals and the organization are as follows:
the number of new competencies—skills, knowledge, experience—that clearly are marketable inside and outside the organization
increased confidence and well-focused career plans, as measured by the number of actions linked to the business issues and executed as plans require
career mobility, as measured by the number of positions opened and filled as a result of career assessment, planning, and development
affiliation with organizational and professional networks, as measured by the number of development opportunities found and engaged
increased collaborative learning networks responsive to needs of customers, individual workers, business units of the organization
the number of new career field possibilities generated from the individual's work in career planning
the number of consultation requests for job or work redesigns to improve the matching of individual career profiles and goals with organizational needs.
One final note: No matter which measures you choose, you should work closely with the senior executives who champion the process to determine significant measures of success. The key question is: “How will you know that the ‘system’ is producing results in your business?”
Plan how to quantify the career system before you decide on evaluation methodology. You want to provide only pertinent data to management, not overwhelm them with extensive reports. The following questions can help your evaluation planning:
Include both qualitative and quantitative data. There are four types of data that can be useful:
Reaction data measures participants' attitudes toward training, and other activities or processes of the system.
Learning data measures the concepts, facts, and techniques participants learn from any career program, activity, or process.
Behavioral data measures changes in behavior related to careers, business culture, and performance.
Outcomes data measures the micro and macro indicators of the business and individual results. (For more information, see Info-line No. 9110, “Measuring Affective and Behavioral Change.”)
Choose your reporting audience and timing in consultation with clients and sponsors. Executives might prefer summary information, while business unit managers may prefer more detailed reports. Coordinate timely feedback/evaluation reports so they are helpful to managers making budget decisions, human resource groups planning training, or individuals needing support for their program requests.
These may include customer and workforce surveys; benchmarking studies; study reports on technical resources; productivity and performance reports; sales and customer reports; competency validation reports; or demographic data.
Seek not only the best but also the most cost-effective methods. These may include individual and small group inquiry sessions; one-on-one interviews; paper-and-pencil or computer surveys; focus groups; tests, simulations, and other assessment-designed activities; on-site observations; frequency of e-learning use; qualitative written and oral feedback; or email.
Reporting and facilitating interpretive feedback on strategies can make or break a system. Use data skillfully to ensure sponsors interpret and benefit from the data, and take meaningful action to sustain the system. Here are some guidelines:
Purpose. Clearly state the purpose of the report, and tie it to the strategic screen.
Audience. Consider the audience and its primary concerns. What does it need to know about the system?
Content. Report results accurately and honestly. Tie results to the organization's business issues, strategy, and unique cultural conditions. Wherever possible, link significant business results to career development activities.
Process. Consider the agenda design, process flow, and pacing of the client reporting. Factor in adequate time for the process so that you include discussion with clients about the report results and how they influence their business.
Format. Tailor the format to the audience. Use simple, straightforward language and avoid jargon.
Release. Make sure audiences get the report when they need it. Be prepared; have all of the information handy. Respect confidentiality.
Publicity. Use newsletters, bulletin boards, email, and press releases to inform, publicize, and promote program results. Work with communications and public relations professionals to reach outside audiences.
The design phase begins with the chartering of the Results Management Team (RMT) as well as additional task teams to represent the organization's various constituents. It is critical that this group include key executives and business unit managers as well as highly valued technical and professional people at all levels of the organization. It should be a diverse group representing gender, cultural, and geographical diversity. This group sets up the career system's basic structure and approach.
The RMT would meet often to:
prepare the system
design criteria for system performance
communicate the initiative to the workforce
provide leadership, and respond to issues and inquiries during the process
keep an eye on business results and how the system will work to achieve them
enroll people throughout the organization to participate in the high-level design of the system.
Note
It is really easy to lose sight of the business applications when very creative people get together and begin designing. The RMT needs to ensure that the system is simple, basic, and easy to understand.
A good strategy is for the RMT to establish sub-groups of different-level individuals to research and design various elements and to serve as sounding boards for ideas generated from the rest of the organization.
In this phase, RMT members enter into a learning process to become experts in career systems, and to learn best practices through site visitations and benchmarking. This could include participating in learning journeys that actually involve site visits to organizations that have “cracked the code” in career systems implementation and are innovative and unique in their approach to career development and performance. As the group evolves, it achieves ownership of the system. This is critical for later phases.
During this phase, the RMT should confirm the proposed high-level design with key sponsors in senior management and test each element against the strategic screen identified in the inquiry and analysis phase.
Once various groups and management understand and validate the career development design, the development phase begins.
If the organization has no internal career development expertise, the RMT should now recruit outside sources to assist in the detailed design of specific components such as training materials. These external consultants have the expertise and welltested materials you'll need to get your program up and running. With the help of the consultants, you will:
create and customize process and content designed for the organization's culture
prototype the program, process, or activities with various groups making up the workforce
develop internal capability to facilitate delivery of the program, process, or activity (train-the-trainer competency-based sessions, shadow consultation, or observer validation of demonstrated capability for roles), and delivery of seminars, workshops, and other activities
schedule enrollment sessions with senior management, business unit management, and functional groups to get their support.
Program materials created to monitor and collect data should support the measures identified in the inquiry and analysis and design phases. The internal team and the external consultant(s) also should develop approaches that value diverse domestic and global workforces.
Finally, develop a strategy to market the plan to the general workforce population. Although communication and promotion of the system should exist from the beginning of the development phase, assume that much more must happen before you get total system acceptance and participation.
The key to this phase is flexibility. Integrate the developing programs with existing systems, key sponsors, and organizational subcultures. Only then can you ensure program compatibility and organization-wide support. (For more information, see the sidebar, Are You Ready?)
Up to this point, only a small percentage (about 10 percent) of the workforce has had input and involvement in the system. Now the rest of the organization needs to become involved.
The best way to get full support is to form an implementation team. This team will help conduct briefing sessions and get consensus and support from line managers.
The implementation phase also is a time for visits to off-site domestic and international locations, if necessary, and meetings with their key stakeholders.
In this final phase, the RMT stays in business to support management in monitoring and tracking of results. In some cases, this group may be totally new, but it needs to understand the system and take over monitoring the results. It devises communication strategies to report results to senior management and identifies and corrects system performance gaps.
This group is responsible for strategic staffing. It will rotate key people on and off the committee, depending on the organization's strategic intent and market conditions. It also will work closely with the organization's human resource unit to integrate the system into existing and planned human resource policies and practices.
The RTM sustains the system for an extended time and ensures the system is kept current and relevant. This group also can form various subgroups to identify redesign areas and recommend appropriate changes to the system.
The RTM group should work closely with important business units to update the competency models of their key positions. In rapidly changing markets, job profiles change with market needs and customer expectations. What was true six to 12 months ago is not necessarily true today. And organizations will constantly alter the ways in which they retain and service customers. Those closest to the customer must continually evaluate what the organization needs to do to improve business and then feed this information back to the workforce through career system processes.
Now that the system has been designed, where does it fit into the day-to-day operations of an organization?
Integrating the new system into the everyday life of an organization is perhaps the most challenging phase of the career system process. The organization should keep the system relevant, flexible, and responsive to the business. This means the system must support new initiatives, and those monitoring the system should be willing to alter the system if new business developments warrant a change.
The architects of the system should leave a legacy of ongoing responsiveness in a charter to those who succeed them. Commitment to such a charter is crucial to a sustainable system that remains viable. This charter should address the following concerns:
The organization's business strategy drives the career system; that strategy is the only agenda that counts.
Individual growth and development is critical.
Benefits to individuals and organizational goals justify the system.
In whatever form, the system is a process to foster individual performance and organizational capability.
A review of the field's practitioners has resulted in the following list of key lessons (including some pitfalls) that may be useful to others as they explore the possibility of using career systems to manage their workforces more efficiently.
Link the career system initiative to your business strategy. Discussions with people in the field reveal that both individual workers and senior management need to see the career system as a management initiative designed to improve business capability and performance.
Executive sponsorship is mandatory. This is true for any strategic initiative, but it is critical to the success of a career system. Also, make sure that executive sponsorship continues after the original individual sponsor moves on.
Involvement from all levels in the design process is critical. Enrolling those people who are close to the action and understand the issues is absolutely essential. In the early stages of system design, approximately 10 percent of the workforce should be involved in some way. Later, this 10 percent can help to start the initiative in the rest of the workforce.
Be inclusive from the beginning. Successful practitioners identify key powerful individuals and groups and include them in the process early on. Others in the organization receive regular and complete, yet brief, updates and reports. Practitioners invite opinions and input at all phases of the process. These powerful sources prove helpful in the rollout, as they advocate the process and do not see it as something forced on them.
Calibrate the system to the strategic screen of business goals. Remember that existing systems, if not continually reviewed, become rigid. So that all understand how the initiative fits in with the strategic intent of the organization, continually test the system against the strategy the organization is following.
Continue to focus on results and benefits to key stakeholders. To ensure that the system doesn't surprise key stakeholders, practitioners should continually remind them of what the system will do once implemented. Also be aware that key stakeholders and executive sponsors often leave an organization through job change, career transition, and retirement. Start early in the initial phase to develop a network of support at the executive and business unit level so as to ensure that future clients and sponsors will have the same commitment and ownership.
Outsource your external consultants for specific career development assignments later, rather than earlier, in the process. Because ownership and commitment are critical, internal practitioners recommend that external consultants be brought in later in the process. When bringing in external resources, it is important to create a collaborative design group that ensures that career technology and processes are learned and internalized by the inside resources of the organization.
Maintain coordination and management of the design, development, and implementation of a career system. These phases take time. It is easy to lose focus as business conditions change and other initiatives become important. Be consistent in purpose, creating boundaries of responsibility and accountability for managing the project. As the system is better known within the organization, roles shift to those using and maintaining the system. Executive sponsors can be very helpful in giving their input to sustainability of the career system in terms of emerging business needs.
Benchmark often. Site visits and benchmarking partners can improve a career system considerably. There are several excellent organizations that are worthy of best-practices benchmarking for key lessons and applications. Design a consistent structure and process for your benchmarking activity to include site visit approaches and methods for appreciative inquiry, data collection and documentation, and the reporting of trends and themes relevant to your business.
Be flexible in implementation. Support flexibility in how the system is implemented by various business units and subcultures in their particular workplace. This is particularly true for global organizations.
Reward and recognize participants often. Those who design, develop, and implement the system should be acknowledged as often as those who use the system effectively for themselves and for the organization. Communicate and showcase examples to other units and employees.
Link career systems with other initiatives. As each new business initiative is identified and approved for implementation, stress its connection to the career development system and how the system can help achieve results for the new initiative.
Foster a learning organization. Remember that it is easy to view a career system as the center of the universe, all other agendas springing from it. Be open to new ideas and willing to suspend your personal agenda to be receptive to innovations from other sources. (For more information, see Info-line No. 9306, “Learning Organizations: A Trainer's Role.”)