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November 2011

Career Management Benchmarking Report

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 1

Highlights .................................................................................................................................................... 2

Purpose of Research ................................................................................................................................... 3

Description of Benchmarking Participants ............................................................................................ 3

How Employees and Companies Talk About Careers Has Changed ................................................ 4

Employee Perspective ...........................................................................................................................4

Company Perspective ............................................................................................................................5

Organizational Challenges ............................................................................................................. 6

Global Challenges ............................................................................................................................ 6

A Focus on the New Emerging Workforce: Generation Y .................................................................... 7

Career Management Philosophies ........................................................................................................... 8

Career Discussions ..................................................................................................................................... 8

Expectation Management ......................................................................................................................... 9

Providing Realistic Expectations About Advancement .................................................................. 9

Strategies and Tactics for Dealing with Frustration ....................................................................... 10

Best Practices that Support Career Management ................................................................................ 11

Training & Development ................................................................................................................... 11

Talent Reviews and Succession Planning ........................................................................................ 12

Internal Employee Movement — Beyond High Potentials .......................................................... 13

Mentors/Sponsors .............................................................................................................................. 13

Recommendation for Improving Career Management Practices ..................................................... 14

About E. L. Goldberg & Associates ....................................................................................................... 16

Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D — Biography .............................................................................................. 17

References .................................................................................................................................................. 17

1

Many companies today are struggling with how to meet employee expectations regarding career development and advancement opportunities at a time when organizations are delayering and growth in the U.S. has slowed. In order to address this concern, E. L. Goldberg & Associates has collected career management benchmark information and best practices from 34 organizations, representing a wide variety of industries. A supplemental study collected data from 75 professionals regarding how they define career success. Results indicate a significant shift in defining success in terms of intrinsic satisfiers versus the traditional more objective measures of success.

The benchmarking results reveal a major call to action for employers. Employees’ perceptions of career development and opportunities is frequently one of the lowest rated items on employee surveys, and research shows this is one of the top predictors of employee engagement. Despite this fact most companies subscribe to a philosophy of career self-reliance, essentially abdicating their responsibility for career management, leaving it up to the employee to figure out.

E. L. Goldberg & Associates believes that organizations can be more proactive in career management holding managers more accountable for understanding their employees’ career aspirations and educating employees on their career options. In addition, managers need to devote time to creating challenging opportunities that will contribute to individual career growth and development. This report outlines several best practices that participating companies utilize to facilitate career management with both high-potential employees and the broader employee population.

These practices can have an impact on changing employees perceptions as two of the more innovative companies in this study reported that they created greater retention and career development satisfaction by providing people with development experiences versus simply a promotion. It is time for organizations to change their career management philosophies and become a more proactive partner in helping employees build their career. n

Executive Summary

2

n A majority of survey respondents indicated that they define career success as being engaged in challenging work, continuous learning, having an impact (on people and the business), utilizing one’s skills, doing work they are passionate about, work-life balance, and the alignment of personal and company goals.

n Forty-one percent of companies had an explicit career management philosophy that was communicated to employees. In general this philosophy stated “The employee owns his/her own career, the manager facilitates it, and the organization provides resources to support it.”

n Half of the benchmarking companies indicated that their career discussions between an employee and manager were not formalized and the quality was highly dependent on the manager.

n Seventy-four percent of companies who had employee opinion surveys said that satisfaction with career development and advancement opportunities was a significant area of concern, if not the biggest concern raised in the survey.

n Sixty-eight percent of benchmarking study participants reported there are significantly fewer opportunities to advance in their organization compared to the past.

n As a result of delayering and changes in business strategies, senior leadership roles are requiring greater breadth than depth. This requires a different strategy for career development.

n There is a shift in organizational terminology from “career ladder” to “career lattice” or “career web.”

n Many companies reported that when managers have strong talent, they do everything they can to hold onto that talent, even if it is at the detriment of the individual’s career growth opportunities. In many organizations employees report it is easier to find a job externally than it is to find a job internally.

n More than half of the companies surveyed indicate that their Generation Y employees have higher, often unrealistic, expectations about career advancement.

n Less than half of the participating organizations said they make an effort to provide realistic expectations about advancement opportunities.

n Companies offer a wealth of training opportunities for employees. However, finding the time to take advantage of these offerings was a significant issue.

n Based on this research it is recommended that organizations take a more proactive approach to supporting, enabling, and developing individuals across the organization and hold managers accountable for developing their staff.

n Organizations should shift their language, and talk about “career growth and development” in place of “career advancement”.

Highlights

3

We embarked on this benchmarking study because we knew companies were struggling with how to meet employee expectations concerning career development and opportunities for advancement at a time when companies are delayering and growth in the U.S. has slowed. Several research studies (BlessingWhite, Employees Engagement Report, 2011; Towers Perrin, Global Workforce Study, 2008) have cited employees’ perceptions of career management (including both development and opportunities for advancement) as one of the leading predictors of employee engagement. Companies participating in this study echoed this finding based on their own internal research. Thus, as companies seek to attract, engage, and retain top talent, changing employees’ perceptions regarding their satisfaction with career development and opportunities for advancement must change. n

The following table presents the 34 organizations that participated in this study. On average these companies had 36,739 employees with a range of 4,500 – 273,000 and a median of 16,500. Their revenues ranged from $344 Million to $198 Billion with an average of $21.5 Billion and a median of $11.5 Billion in annual revenue. Each organization participated in a one-hour benchmarking interview. Interview participants were either the EVP/SVP/

VP of Human Resources, VP/Director of Talent Management or Organization Development, and in one case the Global Head of Career Management. A wide range of industries were covered in this research including: Consumer Products (3), Energy (2), Entertainment (1), Financial (3), Hotels (2), Materials (1), Oil (2), Pharmaceuticals (5), Medical Devices (1), Retail (5), and Technology (9). n

Purpose of Research

Description of Benchmarking Participants

7-ElevenAdvanced Micro DevicesBristol-Meyers SquibbCharles SchwabChevron – Project Resources GroupCollective BrandsDisney Consumer ProductsDisney-ABCGap Inc.GenentechGoogleING - U.S. AmericasInterContinental Hotels GroupJack-in-the-BoxJDS Uniphase Corporation

LaFargeLSI CorporationMattelMedtronicNetAPPOccidental Petroleum CorporationPfizerPacific Gas & ElectricQualcommREISamsung Telecommunications AmericaSC JohnsonSempra UtilitiesVail ResortsVM WareWells Fargo

Study ParticiPantS 1

13 companies asked to remain anonymous

4

According to Webster’s dictionary the definition of a career is “a person’s course or progress through life.” So regardless of whether individuals feel like they have a job or a career everyone really has a career. A few of the participating organizations differentiated Career Management (which they said was the employee’s responsibility to figure out direction) vs. Career Development (which they believed to be the organization’s responsibility to provide development). In this report we will use the two terms somewhat interchangeably to refer to both the process of creating the career the employee desires as well as the developmental activities required to achieve that goal. Although a few of the companies that participated in this study were unionized, for the most part the focus of this study was on professional, white-collar workers. Interpreting these results for other types of employee populations should be done with caution. n

Employee Perspective

To create effective career management systems, organizations need to understand how individuals define career success. If organizational career management practices are not aligned with the values and beliefs of employees, then this misalignment of expectations will likely cause frustration and dissatisfaction among employees. To capture how today’s employees define career success, we surveyed a group of professionals on LinkedIn as well as the participants from this benchmarking study. The table below presents the results of this survey in which 75 professionals participated. “Traditional” refers to the traditional definition of career success, representing more tangible items such as title, money and power. “Contemporary” refers to a newer, emerging definition of career success, which represents a more intrinsic means of satisfaction such as being challenged, being able to fully utilize one’s skills, having impact, and the ability to achieve work-life balance.

The survey revealed that the traditional, or more objective, measures of career success aren’t as valued or emphasized by today’s workforce (only 12 survey respondents used this definition). Instead, the focus is shifting towards more subjective, intangible measures.

The majority of employees in our survey (51 respondents) defined career success as being engaged in challenging work, continuous learning, having an impact (on people and the business), utilizing one’s skills, doing work they are passionate about, work-life balance, and the alignment of personal and company goals. Workers are not looking simply to being promoted, but they are looking to take on something more challenging that could contribute to their long-term professional growth. Another 12 of our respondents replied with a combination of the traditional and contemporary definitions by mentioning pay or title as being important, but also striving for challenging work where they can make an impact.

How Employees and Companies Talk About Careers Has Changed

How Professionals Define Career suCCess

Traditional ComboContemporary

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

5

Back in 2003 finance leaders at Gap Inc. realized that finance professionals were all developing themselves as specialists. When new CFO positions became available there was no internal talent to fill the roles, causing a significant morale issue as the company turned to external hires for these important roles. As a result, Gap Inc. created “Shaping Your Future Gap Inc.” a career management program that helped to define the lateral career moves needed to become a finance generalist and a career web (vs. ladder or path) that showed the various paths one could take to achieve individual career goals (Generalist vs. Specialist). Managers were trained on how to have career conversations with the new tools. As a result the company now regularly moves talent around and promotes from within, which has helped to engage and retain finance talent.

SPotlight on gaP inc: Building Breadth vS. dePth

It is suggested that organizational changes over the last two decades, such as downsizing and outsourcing have reduced the possibility of attaining of some traditional objective indicants of career success (Heslin, 2005). These trends may partially explain the shift in focus from objective symbols such as promotions or job titles that traditionally defined success, to more subjective measures such as job satisfaction or continuous growth and learning.

With the rise of single parent homes and dual-career couples in today’s society, the needs of employees have shifted dramatically. In the past, it was typical that men were the primary breadwinners of the family and women stayed at home to take care of the household and family. Men were able to devote more energy and time into work because someone else was paying attention to the needs of the family and maintaining the household. Given that the typical family structure has shifted

from traditional (man as breadwinner) to contemporary (dual-career couple or single parent), the level of worker dedication that has been traditionally expected in order to “get ahead” is practically impossible. Employees today have to juggle both work and life on a regular basis. Employees are now looking for careers that provide them with challenging and meaningful work, but they are not willing to sacrifice their personal commitments such as engaging in leisure activities, volunteer activities, raising children, or managing elder care in order to get ahead. This combined with an emerging generation in the workforce with a different set of values also explains the shift in how employees define career success. This shift has many implications for career management practices. New career management practices should be focused providing new experiences, building new capabilities, finding employees meaningful work, promoting work-life balance, and aligning individual career goals with company goals. n

Company Perspective

Sixty-eight percent of the companies in this study reported that there are significantly fewer opportunities to advance in the organization than had been in the past. Much of this has been due to significant delayering in organizations, which has come about in response to the recent economic conditions and slower growth in the U.S. One response to this from the technology sector was not to use the term “career” because it causes an automatic mental framework of moving up the career ladder. Instead they speak in terms of professional growth and development.

Several organizations reported that both due to delayering, making management jobs significantly larger in scope, and changes in business strategies, they have found themselves looking for more breadth in their senior leaders rather than the deep experts they had been grooming in the past. This requires a different strategy for career development. These companies are focused on moving employees across different areas of the business so that they can build breadth in their experiences and can see the organization from multiple perspectives. This is in contrast to the way they were previously being developed to assume greater and greater responsibilities within the same function or specialty. Our spotlight on Gap Inc. provides an example.

As a result of this change companies have begun to talk in terms of the career lattice vs. the career

ladder. As an example, at one retail organization rather than defining career paths for their retail managers, they have defined a career lattice, which illustrates horizontal moves required to build skills and experiences in different parts of the business before advancing in the organization. While the majority of study participants (65%) had traditional career ladders for at least some key roles (only 3 companies mentioned having career ladders for most roles), 21% of the participants had shifted to talking about a career lattice or career webs. This was more prominent in Financial Services and Pharmaceutical companies. n

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Organizational Challenges

When asking companies if they were experiencing fewer promotional and advancement opportunities for mid-career and senior-level employees, we uncovered two significant challenges faced by the majority of companies who confront this issue. First, the impact of organizational delayering has meant that the next upward promotion is a significant step up with much more people management responsibility. As a consequence of the experience required for the remaining management roles, organizations have to look to external hires because the internal talent is not prepared to take these big steps. The organizations have not yet articulated a path for development that will build the competence needed to lead at the next level. Second, a few companies also mentioned significant strategic shifts. These shifts in strategy required new skills that were not resident in the organization, further negatively impacting internal candidates who were not capable to take on these new opportunities.

What this leaves us with is a great deal of frustration from employees in mid- to senior-level positions because they can’t advance in the organization and the positions they desire are being filled by external talent.

Very few organizations indicated that the organization displayed an openness to helping employees move across organizational boundaries. A main source of difficulty is that organizations are still operating in a very siloed manner, so there is little interaction between business units and/or functions. A second hurdle to this was managers hoarding talent. Many companies reported that when managers have strong talent, they do everything they can to hold onto that talent, even if it is at the detriment of the individual’s career growth opportunities. In many organizations employees report it is easier to find a job externally than it is to find a job internally. n

Global Challenges

Global companies may have reported fewer opportunities in the U.S., but they said there are lots of opportunities outside of the U.S. One company reported it expects its business in China to grow to be as big as its business in the Americas. Middle East, India, and Russia were also cited as major growth spots. While many companies have filled these roles with local talent when possible, there is a talent gap that is largely unable to be completely filled locally. Companies are using expatriates to fill some gaps, but there has been a recent pull back in the use of expatriates because (1) they are expensive and local managers are pushing back on the costs, and (2) with the rise of dual income couples, people are less willing to move to take a promotion. Since many global organizations have used expatriation in the past as one means of career development, this provides a new challenge in that these opportunities are not as available or attractive as they were in the past. The unwillingness to take an expatriate

assignment is seen as a largely North American issue as Europeans are much more willing to relocate for career advancement opportunities.

A second challenge cited by several of the global study participants is that employees in India and Asia are some of the most vocal employees about their desire for fast advancement. Because the market is so competitive for good talent, it is difficult not to provide some type of promotional opportunity to retain talent.

Another struggle these organizations cited was that in Asia and India the “manager” job title was seen as being very prestigious. As a consequence many individual contributors seek to move into management roles despite not having the skills appropriate for the role. This can result in an employee morale issue if people in management roles do not have the proper skills to manage their direct reports. n

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Generation Y consists of individuals who were born between 1980 and 2000 and composed of roughly 75 million people. Generation Y is close to the size of the 78 million Boomer generation and is significantly larger than the 50 million Generation X group. It is important for organizations to understand and to be able to manage the career expectations of Generation Y given that they are a steadily increasing demographic in the workforce.

This benchmarking study revealed that several organizations struggled with managing the career expectations of Generation Y. More than half of the companies surveyed indicated that their Generation Y employees had higher, and often times unrealistic, expectations about career advancement. Our findings are consistent with recent studies focusing on Gen Y that reported these employees have high expectations regarding job content, training, and career development. Career progression has also been found to be an important motivational driver for this generation (De Hauw & De Vos, 2010).

One executive participating in this study provided a clear example of how these generational differences are manifested in the workplace (although this sentiment was expressed by many participants). “New employees think they should be VPs in a week. The new generation has different expectations of work and what it should look like. I really do find that this generation interacts with the world differently, their experiences are different, and they expect to be able to add value immediately.”

In this economy, organizations have found it increasingly difficult to address the expectations of

Generation Y adequately. Our participants indicated that Baby Boomers are waiting longer to retire. This contributes to lower turnover in higher positions, affecting people behind them in line who have their sights on advancing. The impatient mindset of Generation Y coupled with fewer advancement opportunities, seems to present a unique challenge for organizations in managing their Gen Y employees. Companies are now faced with the challenge of engaging their younger workforce without moving them up like they expect.

One retail participant has started to address this issue through their Diversity and Inclusion team after noticing that Gen Y workers gave lower ratings on a survey item that measured the perceived value of their input regardless of experience, tenure, or level. They provided us with this insight, “New employees feel like they are expected to sit down and shut up until they have five years of experience. We are actively working on this so that it is o.k. to challenge the status quo so that we can capture the ideas of the newer generation to improve. We try to help managers understand the new generational expectations.”

This focus on diversity of thought should be a topic of discussion on all Diversity and Inclusion teams. Companies should be providing Generation Y workers with opportunities to contribute their input and ideas that will allow them to continuously develop. Companies can achieve this by increasingly providing Gen Y employees with new job responsibilities through lateral moves and providing sufficient learning opportunities through coaching or mentoring. n

A Focus on the New Emerging Workforce: Generation Y

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Forty-one percent of the companies we surveyed had an explicit career management philosophy that was communicated directly to their employees. One company said that even though it had an explicit career management philosophy “what they (employees) feel they should own may be different.” Thirty-five percent of the organizations reported that their career management philosophy was more implicit, meaning it was not communicated openly to employees but was well understood. Those companies reporting an implicit career management philosophy also expressed some confusion or doubt about what employees really knew. The remaining 24% of the companies said that nothing was communicated to employees, making the confusion all that much greater. Some organizations that did not communicate their philosophy openly to employees did reveal that employees were frustrated with the lack of communication about career paths and that managers had become frustrated with their direct reports for not owning their own career development.

A majority of the companies in the survey indicated that their career management philosophy (whether implicit or explicit) was somewhere along the lines of: The employee owns his/her own career, the manager helps facilitate it, and the organization provides resources to support the employee’s efforts. This is well aligned with the Career Self-Reliant philosophies adopted decades ago. This finding suggests that managing

careers is becoming less central to organizational management practices, placing the responsibility on the employee. Research suggests that this career management approach is driven partially by changing organizational contexts such as restructuring and delayering ( Lips-Wiersman & Hall, 2007). Frequent restructuring results in an unpredictable career environment where organizations are struggling to find new roles and opportunities for their employees. Shifting the accountability to individuals to take more responsibility for their developing their own career further exacerbates the employee’s dis-satisfaction with this process. Thus, this passive approach to career management appears to not be working well as is illustrated in the results from employee surveys. Thirty-one of our 34 benchmarking participants reported having an employee survey that asked questions regarding the relative satisfaction with career advancement and development opportunities. Of the thirty-one companies that had a survey, 23 (or 74%) said that this was a significant issue of concern for them, if not the biggest concern coming out of their survey. n

For those companies that had career conversations, there was an even split of those who reported that career conversations were part of the performance management process and happened at the same time vs. career conversations happening at a different time during the year. However, slightly over 50% of participants indicated their process was not very formalized. A common comment was “it might happen with performance reviews, or it might happen at another time”…. Ultimately they confessed it was just as likely to not happen at all. Most participants indicated the process

was not well monitored. The relative quality of the conversations was called into question by a majority of participants who said, “It depends on the manager.” Clearly more attention needs to be spent on having quality career conversations with employees so that managers can have more information upon which to create developmental assignments for employees. Despite the common career management philosophy that managers are supposed to facilitate the process for employees, it appears that most managers are ill equipped and not held accountable for their role in this process.

Career Management Philosophies

Career Discussions

24%

35%

41%

Explicit

Implicit

No Philosophy

CommuniCation of Career management PHilosoPHy

9

One particularly noteworthy example of career discussions came from a retail participant. They have an in-depth and holistic approach to career discussions for their high-potential employees. The HR business partner integrates the feedback obtained from the performance review process, succession planning, a 360-degree feedback

report, and other personality and cognitive ability assessments administered, and then facilitates a discussion between the employee and his/her manager to create an in-depth Individual Development Plan. They then bring in the function senior leader to further support the development action plan. n

One of the key drivers for starting this research was hearing concerns from our clients because they were unsure how to manage employees’ expectations regarding career advancement. Companies want to simultaneously increase engagement and decrease turnover all the while creating leaner organizations. They are clearly headed for an uphill battle.

To understand how organizations are fighting this battle, we asked two related questions. First we asked, “Do you make a specific effort to provide realistic expectations about advancement with employees at any level of the organization?” And next we asked, “What strategies or tactics have you put into place to deal with the frustration of employees who are not continuing to progress in their careers as they had anticipated?” n

Expectation Management

Providing Realistic Expectations About Advancement

Slightly less than half of the participating organizations said that they do make an effort to provide realistic expectations about advancement opportunities to their employees. How they went about it varied greatly. Five of the organizations said they publish timeframes for staying in a role before one should expect to advance. These timeframes varied from 12-18 months (12 months minimum) to as long as 5 years. Eighteen months to two years was a common timeframe. Other organizations described the competencies and/or experiences required or a learning path which describes what needs to be learned in this role before you would be ready to move on. Our spotlight on Expectation Management highlights one best practice example of how an organization described what was expected at different levels of leadership.

Because of the increased focus on developing business acumen to compete in these challenging times, several of the companies directly spoke about the expectation that employees would need to take lateral career transitions to develop greater breadth in their business understanding prior to being ready for an advancement opportunity. This gets reinforced as an expected norm by messaging in various communication channels. This is also role modeled at the top by having senior

executives coaching their direct reports on the need for lateral moves to gain a new challenge and develop breadth in order to prepare an individual for a promotion. Global companies that require relocation for advancement opportunities report being very clear about this expectation.

Companies can illustrate real-life examples of individuals who have advanced their career by

The Leadership Development Team at one consumer products company has mapped out career milestones for their early, middle, and executive leaders in some functions. They defined the competencies required for each role as well as the key areas for learning at each career stage. Direction was provided to managers on which assignments and activities to emphasize to help master a given career stage. They also provided a realistic timeframe of how long it would take to advance to each level and provided a list of keys for success for each stage. By providing their managers with clear expectations, this organization took the mystery out of what was expected of an employee and how to develop their career within the organization.

SPotlight on exPectation ManageMent: leaderShiP career MileStoneS

10

taking lateral moves. By providing employees with less abstract and more concrete examples of how to take charge of their own careers, employees will gain a better perspective as to how they should focus their efforts. For example, two companies cited Career Fairs as a highly successful way to educate employees about the different opportunities that are available to them. Rather than having one-off brown bag lunches to talk about a particular division, these companies devote a day or half-day to discovering different career opportunities that are available to employees. One best practice during the career fair is to have leaders give panel discussions about their careers and how they advanced to their current position. These informal hands on experiences provide employees with tangible examples of different career options within the

context of the organization, which are not always advancements in their specific area. E. L. Goldberg & Associates has also worked with organizations to put career stories on their intranet highlighting key executives and the journey they have taken on their careers, and calling out key learning experiences that helped them to advance in their careers.

Providing clear expectations for growth and promotional opportunities is important for all employees. This is especially important for Generation Y employees given that they often have higher, and sometimes unrealistic, expectations about career advancement. If organizations provide a clearer picture up front about the expectations regarding career progression, it may help eliminate future frustration associated with not advancing fast enough. n

Although virtually all companies expressed concern about having an established strategy to deal with employee frustrations about the lack of promotions, only roughly one-third of the survey participants had established specific strategies. Those companies applied a variety of strategies to deal with this frustration. One organization said they are using special projects as a means of providing challenges and developmental experiences. They said that because organizations are running leaner than ever before that there were certainly plenty of opportunities to take on special projects that are not getting done in the normal workflow. Other companies cited using “stretch” assignments or specific development activities to help with a specific development gap. The assignment of special projects for development means taking on some risk that the person may not be able to fully execute on a project. These companies said they were willing to take on the risk because of the advantages this development experience provided to the employee and the company. A director recently interviewed reported that he rose to the senior director level in his organization because his manager did such a good job of crafting challenging assignments for him that grew his skill set. He is now seeking to do the same for his staff.

Several companies cited the use of lateral career moves and then providing examples of people who have taken lateral moves and how it affected

their careers and why the lateral moves were critical to their career advancement. Expatriate assignments are still being used for development purposes, although there is less of this due to the associated costs and the availability of local talent. Mentoring and facilitating networking opportunities are two additional strategies being used by some organizations.

In Asia at least one organization mentioned the use of business card titles to deal with the continuous demand for quick promotions in a highly competitive talent market. This means that from an organization’s perspective the level of the position has not changed, but the employee is able to portray to the external world a new title, implying a promotion. While we would not promote this as a best practice, we did want to share it as a reality of what is transpiring in Asia.

Across various suggestions, we can see a common theme of creating challenges for individuals in their current roles (vs. creating a promotional opportunity). Whether this is done through an assignment to a special team (while doing their same jobs), or a lateral move to create new experiences, the goal is still the same – what new experience will stretch this individual and help them to grow professionally? This takes a bit of thought and planning. You will see in the Succession Planning section below that proactive career management is certainly a trend for high performers. n

Strategies and Tactics for Dealing with Frustration

11

The companies participating in this benchmarking study told us about many tools, processes, and resources they provide to employees and managers to aid in career management. Some processes were strictly owned and operated by corporate, while others were more employee self-service tools or resources. Below we have highlighted some of the best practices we have learned from this research. You should consider whether these practices are culturally-consistent for your organization and if you could adapt or modify these practices for your organization. n

Best Practices that Support Career Management

Most study participants report that they offer plenty of training and development opportunities. Whether it was on-line or face-to-face providing training opportunities was not a problem. However, finding the time to participate in training course was a significant issue. Fourteen of the participants specifically cited lack of time or support to attend training resulting in the fact that most offerings were underutilized. With organizations running as lean as they are today, employees find it difficult to take time for training because they still have to get their “day job” done. Only three companies said either that a minimum amount of training was mandated or that it was highly supported in the company. One solution turned to by a few companies was to offer “bite sized” training and development experiences for employees. While this only works for certain kinds of training, it is an approach that has mobile application possibilities and should be considered for future training needs.

Several companies cite the problem that training programs are thrown together without a strategic framework to guide the content or the various offerings. Training is often not tied to the business strategy, a career framework, core company-wide competencies or any other organizing structure. This haphazard assortment of training classes leads to a lack of utilization. In contrast, one highly utilized development offering was a Career Center featured in the spotlight on this page.

One company in our survey mentioned that they used development assessment centers for people who have the potential to move into key roles (e.g., GM) in an effort to build their leadership capabilities and strategic skills. This structured leadership assessment experience offers employees the opportunity to demonstrate skills and

capabilities in a challenging, realistic environment and to receive feedback from senior managers on performance. For the organization, this process provides an accurate, independent assessment of potential leaders, a valuable tool in organizational development efforts. The use of this type of development center is a good example of how an organization can link development opportunities to company competencies as well as identify the right talent suited for key roles.

In an effort to create valuable and purposeful development opportunities, one technology participant has crafted an innovative approach to training which advocates the use of cohort groups who participate in shared developmental experiences together. Senior leaders nominate employees to go through their leadership

Training & Development

One benchmarking participant discussed their on-campus Career Center where employees can access on-line assessments and speak to a career coach to help them think about their career. They also have courses on how to brand yourself, tips for writing resumes, how to interview, how to have a career conversation with your manager, and how to market yourself for an internal position. The Career Center is focused on exploring the possibilities and determining what is the right fit for the employee. The Career Center also offers a Mentor-Match program. There is a waiting list for 1-1 consultations and the company receives feedback from employees that this is the most impactful program offered.

SPotlight on career centerS

12

development program and participation is by invitation only. Employees who go through this cohort-style learning format with fellow potential leaders are exposed to experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise get in typical half-day to one-day classroom style training. Participants benefit from being provided a place for critical reflection, the development of shared understandings and experiences, and the ability to obtain multiple perspectives. Organizations that use cohort groups and encourage communication among group members after the training has taken place can facilitate the transfer and application of knowledge, providing a valuable and purposeful experience to program participants. A few other study participants also used this approach and these development experiences were in high demand.

To further enhance training efforts, organizations need to ensure that the training or developmental opportunity offered is purposeful so the employee can get the maximum benefit possible from the experience. It is important to note that employees will not always recognize the development

opportunities provided to them as valuable (or even that they are for their development). Managers should be up front about articulating how the development experience fits into the broader organizational strategy as well as the employee’s specific development goals to drive his/her motivation to learn. Before the employee engages in any developmental experience there should be a discussion about why they are going and to create a learning goal. After the training the employee should provide feedback to his/her manager regarding how the new learning will be applied on the job, and then he/she should receive feedback on this new application. This is how real learning takes place. n

A participant from the hospitality industry has a Talent Development team that works with local leaders to ensure that development plans for Hi-Pos are specific to get the experiences needed to achieve goals. They facilitate assignments to ensure appropriate career growth based on the desires of the employee. This team collaborates with a Resourcing Team who meets monthly with Regional & Function managers to discuss upcoming positions and key talent that need to be moved for developmental purposes. The Executive Committee level looks across all plans globally. This way the organization ensures that an appropriate match is made to fill function or regional roles with high-potential talent from anywhere in the world.

SPotlight on Facilitating neW oPPortunitieSIn the Talent Review or Succession Planning process, being identified as a High-Potential (Hi-Po) or in a critical position, has a significant impact on the level of career management assistance to which an employee gets access. Not only is entrance to this pool the ticket to special developmental opportunities, but one-third of the participants mentioned that for this group the organization has a process to craft opportunities needed for development to prepare them for a promotion. Our spotlight on facilitating new opportunities provides one example of how this is being done on a global level within the hospitality industry.

Although the spotlighted approach has special dedicated teams to manage individual careers, other organizations described having monthly “talent talks” where senior executives actively speak about the top 50 or 100 employees and upcoming openings of critical roles. Some organizations do this on a less frequent basis for a larger pool of employees (top 300 high-potentials on a bi-annual basis). This ensures the right people are getting the opportunities they need to develop to both meet organization and individual needs. n

Talent Reviews and Succession Planning

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Our study indicated that almost all companies provided an internal posting system to notify employees of new positions as they became available (often simultaneously to posting externally). Most participants indicated it was the employee’s responsibility to search the postings for opportunities of interest. Eight of the organizations offered a “push” feature that allows the employee to enter a profile of their ideal job. Postings fitting the profile are then electronically forwarded to the employee once available.

Only a few companies reported having an integrated talent management system that included employee profiles which lists specialized skills and past experiences for each employee. Because these systems are integrated with the performance management process they can access individual competency ratings as well.

One company in the study has a set of internal recruiters who scan this talent database for people to fill new roles based on the skills and experiences needed. Employees opt-in to the search process by indicating they are open to hearing about other opportunities. This way the company can be more aggressive about enabling movement and providing new opportunities to high performing talent with needed skills. Once employees make it past the initial interviews for the position, if they are still interested they are required to notify and engage their manager. This way managers get engaged in the process early so that they can immediately work on backfilling the position. Managers are still a bit resistant (managers don’t like to lose their best talent), but the company would rather have great talent move internally then get bored and look externally for a new position. n

Having a mentor or an internal sponsor can have a significant impact on an individual’s career. Research has shown a significant positive relationship between mentoring and greater compensation, salary growth, promotions, and career satisfaction (Allen, T.D., Eby, L. T., Poteet, M. L., Lentz, E., & Lima, L., 2004). Several organizations in this study had some innovative approaches that worked for a larger employee base than just high performers. In one of the benchmarking participant’s organization each employee has a Personal Development Representative (PDR), who represents them then on the Personnel Development Committee (PDC). The PDC meets a couple of times a year to look at job vacancies and assign people who are “ready” to do a new job. There is one PDC for entry-level through second-level managers. Above this a different group of senior executives form the PDC for more senior-level employees. Each PDR represents anywhere from 25 to 100 employees, depending on the level of the positions. The PDR is essentially the employee advocate in the PDC meetings who knows what the employee’s career goals are and helps figure out the best next moves and then acts as an advocate. Although the company does have a job posting process, the preferred method of filling positions is the PDC process. A majority of jobs are filled through this process.

As can be seen in our spotlight on this page, Google has managed to marry the concepts of career management and social networking to create their internal career website.

In contrast to Google’s internal website, global materials company LaFarge has a much more hands on approach that engages the employee, manager, and the HR business partner in a Career Interview Process. The process can be initiated by the employee or the manager. The process is quite formalized and has some standardized questions for the employee and the manager to think through prior to meeting. For employees, it includes questions such as what they like and dislike about their current role, how mobile they are, in which types of roles they could see themselves in the future, etc. The managers’ questions include items around the employee’s performance, development progress, getting feedback from others on strengths and weaknesses, etc. With all this information in hand, HR then facilitates a conversation between the employee and manager to develop ideas about what the employee could do to develop his/her career. n

Internal Employee Movement — Beyond High Potentials

Mentors/Sponsors

Employees can go into the internal website and enter an area they are working on or need help with then they can connect with others who have skill or expertise in that area. It will also connect employees with common interests to collaborate on volunteer projects together. In addition, the website will also share with employees common roles people like them have moved onto next in their careers, helping employees consider new career opportunities.

SPotlight on google: linKing Social netWorKing and Mentoring

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It was clear from this research that organizations have made significant investments of time and effort in aiding the career management of their high-potential employees. Segmentation of talent is a best practice as a company cannot deliver the same level of high-touch services to all employees. While the efforts around providing career management support to high-potentials is to be applauded, it is no surprise to find out that company-wide surveys show a great deal of dissatisfaction with career development and advancement opportunities. This is because 80% of the effort is going to less than 20% of your population (often more like 5%). Research indicates that high-potentials do have higher levels of satisfaction with career advancement and development opportunities (Sirota, 2011), so it appears that these activities do have some impact. However, companies are not providing proactive career guidance to employees that are not deemed high-potential. So organizations need to develop some less time and resource intensive approaches to help the broader employee population. While this report has shared many great practices that are focused on high-potentials it is also intended to help organizations consider other approaches that will serve to attract and retain the bulk of your employees.

Organizations need to take a more proactive approach to supporting, enabling, and developing individuals across the organization. While employees need to define what they want from their careers, it is up to the organization (and that’s usually the manager) to help guide the individual to new opportunities for growth and development. This means creating more relevant tools and resources for employees and having managers, or a Personal Development Representative, work with employees to help them understand how to move into new roles that will provide challenge and career growth opportunities.

In order to ensure an employee’s career goals are aligned with the company’s goals, the company needs to be open about its strategy and future directions. If the company plans on pursuing new opportunities which would make some skill sets obsolete, employees should know this up front and

decide for themselves if it is time to move on or if they want to be on the forefront of developing new skills to help explore new opportunities. Employees can’t be in charge of their career and make good career decisions (e.g., which is the best role to take to develop themselves for the future) if they don’t understand where the organization is going.

The effort it will take for managers to have high quality career discussions and come up with new challenges cannot be minimized. So managers will need to receive more training and support regarding how to help their employees. Nine of the companies participating in this study specifically mentioned that they provide training to their managers on how to have career discussions with their employees. This is a growing need to change the perceptions of employees about their satisfaction with career development and advancement opportunities in their organizations. One organization provided training to help managers learn to craft development opportunities. This is a high value-added practice. It is clear from this research that the laundry list of training courses is not helpful (and largely under-utilized). Managers need to step up into their roles as managers and spend time learning about their employees and their career aspirations. Organizations need to stop reinforcing the idea that career growth means an upward promotion and start discussing the importance of lateral moves for development and progression.

Recommendation for Improving Career Management Practices

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Managers also need to do a better job of offering special assignments or increases in a job responsibilities rather than completely new roles.

Managers need to get better at looking beyond their own group for growth opportunities for their direct reports. While internal posting systems may help employees lean about new opportunities that are available in the organization, we found two innovative practices that better helped employees to look beyond their current group for new opportunities for growth and development. The first was having a feature in the posting system that will “push” opportunities to employees that fit their interests. The other, more time intensive and personalized approach for moving talent within the organization, was the concept of internal talent search for new opportunities. Companies need to get out of their silos and encourage managers to share talent for the best interests of the organization and the individual.

Another trend noted in this research is that some companies are becoming less tolerant of leaders who are not developing their talent. Talent Development is increasingly a metric against which managers are being held accountable. For example, twice a year Google employees complete a survey about how their manager is doing on several management attributes, including career management. Managers who score low in this area receive additional help in trying to improve their abilities to manage their employees.

Employees are seeking clarity around expectations to advance in the organization. Most of them want a tight script they can follow, and although this is not realistic in the dynamic business environment in which we work, there are ways that we can do a better job of communicating some basic expectations that will serve as a guidepost for career growth. The spotlight on Page 9 focusing on Leadership Career Milestones is one example of how a company may articulate what is expected at different levels of leadership. Another opportunity to clarify expectations is to clearly define the learning path the employee needs to take in the current role to prepare them for a larger role. This may be about a certain level of competency, experiences, experiencing one or more business cycles for learning to take place, particular achievements, or specific development assignments they must complete prior to advancement.

It is interesting that employees expect the same career trajectory (advancement every two years) even when they reach the higher levels of the organization. With the exception of two companies

that reported they were top heavy, all other study participants reported their organizations were pyramid shaped with fewer opportunities at the top (further accentuated by recent delayering creating a squat pyramid). If you showed employees these pyramids, it might help explain the logic concerning promotional opportunities after advancing beyond the managerial level. There simply are not as many positions for advancement once employees move into the managerial ranks. Employers expect employees to draw this conclusion independently. However, most employees are probably not looking at the big picture but rather remain focused on themselves and their individual career aspirations.

It should be stated that just because the employee has what it takes to progress in the organization, does not mean that the organization has a business need for a person in that role. So the business must always communicate this fact and help provide other challenging assignments while an employee waits for a new position to become available.

Some additional practices that support a more facilitated approach include:

n Career Centers — A place, whether virtual or physical, where employees can go to explore their options, learn about the possibilities, get guidance from an objective party on how to advance their careers, seek advice on how to talk to managers about their careers, how to find a mentor, and how to develop individual career plans.

n Lattice-like career paths — If the organization demands the development of career paths to demonstrate for individuals how careers advance, consider presenting paths in a more lattice-like manner to show that lateral moves may be a helpful way to advance one’s career.

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n Development Conversations — Treat develop-ment conversations with the same level of respect that we give performance conversations. Train managers (and employees) on how to engage in the conversation, how to handle challenging conversations, what tools and resources are available to them, and how to ensure the process is executed in a timely and motivating manner.

n Career Stories — Share the stores of successful executives in your organization and the paths they took to get to where they are today. Be sure to highlight executives who have taken many lateral or unusual moves and help them articulate how these experiences contributed to their success today.

n Create challenging assignments — Educate managers on the importance of providing challenging opportunities for their employees. Provide training to help managers learn how to design special projects, assignments, new responsibilities or other developmental activities to create challenges for their employees in

meaningful ways that contributes to their career growth.

Finally, it is recommended that organizations move away from the use of the terms “career ladder” and “advancement” as careers no longer climb up ladders. The jumps between those rungs on the ladder are so large that other interim steps need to be taken. These steps are likely to be along a different path that provides new opportunities for growth while not necessarily being “advancements” along the career ladders. Two of the more innovative companies in this study reported that they created greater retention and career development satisfaction by providing people with development experiences versus simply a promotion. So companies should look toward special projects or other developmental or stretch assignments to keep employees continuously challenged. Thus, we promote the use of terms like “growth and development” in place of advancement and career ladder. n

n Over 25 years of experience in designing HR processes to improve business results.

n Experience in various industries allowing us to draw upon the most appropriate cutting-edge solutions to meet your needs.

n A flexible approach — we can work in partnership with you as a member of your team or we can provide complete project management.

n We deliver the experience, quality and service of a large consulting firm in a cost effective manner.

About E. L. Goldberg & Associates

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Edie Goldberg is the founder of E. L. Goldberg & Associates which was founded in 2001. She has specialized in talent management and organizational development for over 25 years. She focuses

her practice on designing HR systems to attract, engage, develop and retain employees. She has deep expertise in assessment and development and as such has completed many engagements regarding employee selection, performance management, career management, leadership development, and succession planning.

Before starting her own company, Dr. Goldberg worked for TowersWatson, formerly Towers Perrin, as the Global Thought Leader in Learning & Development, Career Management, & Succession Planning and was the West Region leader for Performance Management. During her last year with Towers Perrin she co-lead a company-wide initiative focusing on Talent Management which resulted in groundbreaking research on employee perceptions regarding what attracts and retains them as well as the development of a process to help companies attract, retain, and engage their workforce.

Prior to working for Towers Perrin Dr. Goldberg spent five and a half years as a business unit manager for another management consulting firm that specialized in assessment and development.

She also worked for the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, where she participated in some of the seminal Total Quality Management research in the U.S.

Some of Dr. Goldberg’s clients include: California State Automobile Association, Charles Schwab, Cypress Semiconductor, DBS Bank (Singapore), Fireman’s Fund Insurance, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Gap Inc., Genentech, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, PG&E Corporation, SAFECO Insurance Company, Shinhan Bank (South Korea), Sony Computer Entertainment America, Southern Wines & Spirits, Star Alliance, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Washington Mutual, and Williams-Sonoma.

Dr. Goldberg has written articles and presented at conferences in the areas of career management, performance management, building management capability, women in the workplace, competency modeling, employee retention, total quality management and organizational change. She earned her Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from the University of Albany, State University of New York, and her B.A. and M.S. from San Diego State University. She is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the American Psychological Association. She is the founder of the Bay Area Applied Psychologists, is the Past-President and current Board member of the HR Strategy Forum, and is the Vice-Chairperson of HR People & Strategy (HRPS; formerly the Human Resources Planning Society).

Edie L. Goldberg, Ph.D—Biography

n Allen, T.D., Eby, L. T., Poteet, M. L., Lentz, E., & Lima, L. (2004). Career Benefits Associated with Mentoring for Proteges: A Meta Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(1), 127-136.

n BlessingWhite, Inc. (2011). Global Engagement Report, BlessingWhite, Inc. Princeton, NJ.

n De Hauw, S., & De Vos, A. (2010). Millennials’ career perspective and psychological contract expectations: Does the recession lead to lowered expectations?. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 293-302.

n Heslin, P. A. (2005). Conceptualizing and evaluating career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(2), 113-136.

n Lips-Wiersma, M., & Hall, D. T. (2007). Organizational career development is not dead: A case study on managing the new career during organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28(6), 771-792.

n Sirota (2011). Personal Communication.

n Towers Perrin (2008). Global Workforce Study, New York, NY.

References

950 Siskiyou Drive n Menlo Park, CA 94025 n ph. 650.854.0854 n www.elgoldberg.com n © 2011