Career Pathways: Building Tomorrow’s Workforce Today

The Pursuit of “Better”

What started as the “Great Resignation” in 2021 continues to be a phenomenon that still rages in full swing. Unprecedented quit rates continue to be the trend, but the nomenclature has changed. Several people and groups have given it new names—the great re-evaluation, migration, and renegotiation, among many others. Interestingly, all of them are true in some way, because amid the massive shortages of talent and the war for talent, the workforce of today is empowered and liberated. Workers today are consciously evaluating, negotiating, and making decisions in pursuit of better jobs, better careers, and better lives.

Better Careers, Better Lives

So, what does the pursuit of better mean to these 4 million workers who are leaving their jobs every year? Well, 41% of the people who quit their jobs in the last two years left due to inadequate career advancement opportunities[1]. Almost 70% of employees today are looking for new jobs[2] and when looking for a new job, they value career advancement twice as much as compensation and benefits[3]. In fact, among 76% of the most successful companies, the most significant reason people love working there is extensive career growth opportunities. The answer is clear. The pursuit of better, is the relentless pursuit of better careers as a key to unlocking professional and personal growth.

Career Pathways: The Master Key to Unlock Growth

Employees want to grow. When they don’t find opportunities to grow inside the organization, they look for those opportunities outside. Essentially, people want to learn new skills and grow in new ways. At the same time, in today’s highly constrained labor market and amid massive industry convergence, organizations also need the same thing—they need workers to develop new critical future skills, and they need their workers to grow into new critical roles. What is missing, is the ability to connect workers’ aspirations with where the company needs new talent.

Organizations today need to facilitate growth by illuminating clear pathways for how people can grow into better careers and lead better lives by developing new skills and growing into new roles. It is a win-win strategy for workers and for businesses, and a strategic imperative for future-proofing individual and business growth. The master key to making it happen, is a new approach for unlocking career growth which we refer to as “Career Pathways”.

What are Career Pathways?

A “Career Pathway” is a series of career steps, designed through skills adjacencies, that show an individual how to move to a more valued, in-demand career. Career pathways include a series of carefully designed development steps, such as education, certifications, degrees, learning programs, experiences, gigs, mentoring and new roles that take an individual from their current role to a higher demand, often higher paying job. This is one of the most important new initiatives in HR, and skills and job data now make this possible.?

A Career Pathway is not a “career path”

Career paths help employees grow within a career domain, whereas Career Pathways unlock doors to new and aspirational career domains. Career pathways, are non-linear growth paths, that help an individual develop new skills, and take an employee to a new profession, a new industry, or a new role family. For example, as seen in the figure below, a laundry service employee in a hospital, could start as a bedside aide/nurse assistant, continue to develop expertise and get the right certifications to become a registered nurse. Bon Secours Mercy Health, in partnership with Guild, has created several such pathways for its healthcare workers.

Unlike career paths where people move within a cluster of jobs using their existing skills, through career pathways, organizations can tap into diverse talent pools—such as frontline workers and underserved populations, and unlock growth through reskilling and developing new skills. Walmart, through its LiveBetterU program and company-sponsored training, rotation, and educational assistance, is helping front-line store associates develop into cyber-security roles.

Rocket Central launched Rock Academy—a strategic education and skilling program that provides access to more than 200 personal and professional skills development courses ranging from certificates to Master's degrees, and access to new career pathways in multiple areas aligned with these programs, such as marketing, technology, product strategy and sales. Target, Disney, and Amazon have similar programs to build pathways to high-priority roles. These career pathways, which we also identify in our Global Workforce Intelligence Project, are the new future of L&D.

Conclusion

Career Pathways are indeed pathways to unlock opportunities—for both your business and your workforce. Through Career Pathways, organizations can empower their entire workforce with access to education, skilling, and career mobility and unlock opportunities to have better careers and better lives. Career Pathways are a much-needed approach for charting a way forward and transforming how companies compete for, inspire, and invest in talent to fill the jobs of today and shape the workforce of tomorrow.

Where to Go Next

• Read the full report Career Pathways: Building Tomorrow’s Workforce Today reserved for?Josh Bersin Company Members. You'll find a full description of our Career Pathways Framework, specific steps and strategies for constructing career pathways, and detailed case studies from companies like Walmart, Bon Secours Mercy Health, and Rocket Central.
• Read our brand-new Definitive Guide to Corporate Learning: Growth in the Flow of Work reserved for?Josh Bersin Company Members. This report helps organizations understand how to navigate the shift from facilitating a learning culture to a growth culture, and action steps for operationalizing growth for their workforce while building critical talent for their future needs.
• Stay tuned for our next detailed study on career pathways for healthcare called The Future of Careers in Health Care, coming soon!
• Contact us?to become a?JBC Member?for access to action-oriented, practical research, assessments and diagnostics, learning programs, community, and much more.
• Join 40,000+ HR professionals in the?Josh Bersin Academy?to learn more about career mobility, leadership, change agility, and design thinking in 25 certificate programs.