Are You Using a Career Pathing Tool for Your Workforce?

If we talk about the critical technologies for companies in 2022, career pathing is right up there on the list. As we witness the Great Resignation and a gradual reshuffling of the global workforce, career pathing tools aren’t just helpful for individuals.

Career development must evolve in the modern workplace transitions from traditionally linear career advancement to a more complex lateral career movement. As a result, current employees proactively seek their career development and advancement opportunities instead of patiently and hopefully waiting for opportunities to present themselves in a traditional organisational hierarchy.

Competency-based succession planning enables an organisation to determine the critical competencies necessary for urgent jobs and the strategic competencies required for future success. Once this has resolved the ‘best fit’ people, specific developmental plans can then be formulated that build upon these competency requirements to allow the individual’s abilities to meet the strategic business needs of the organisation

They help organisations inventory their internal skill and talent mix to chart out meaningful career pathways within the organisation. As a result, employees can steadily progress in their careers while the employer is assured of engagement and retention — it is a win-win, a goal that companies must achieve if they are to win the war for talent.

If employees want to see and understand the opportunities available within their company, they are dependent on HR or their superiors to appreciate their growth opportunities. Thus, they expect to see career development opportunities while satisfying and motivated. As a result, career pathing is essential in other strategies, including employee engagement and retention. It ensures employees can engage in the digital world with low touch engagement with the HR and Talent management team in a constructive way. It also provides companies with the opportunity to differentiate themselves from competitors.

What is a Career Pathing Tool?

A career pathing tool is an analytics software that takes a data-driven approach to employee skill development and candidate-to-job matching. Typically, the system will generate multiple career scenarios that are possible given an employee’s current skill set. Next, it will assess the organisational structure to identify jobs that might be a good fit for the said employee sometime in the future. Finally, it will recommend the upskilling measures required to prepare the employee for the job role.

Career pathing tools can be generic, designed to generate organisation-wide results and accommodate talent and skills across verticals. Or, it may be vertical-specific, for example, a career pathing tool for sales. Large enterprises may even develop career pathing tools to formulate structured employee development plans and succession strategies in the mid-manager segment.

Why Are Career Pathing Tools Essential in 2022?

Most employees have faced unpredictable career trajectories, postponed progression, and job uncertainty in the last two years. Research reveals that 1 in 5 employees had an appraisal or promotion deferred, interrupting their pre-pandemic career plans. It has two effects:

1. First, stalled progression may lead to disengagement and discontent. As a result, the employee’s overall productivity declines.
2. Second, a dynamic labour market means that there are now more job opportunities for every skilled professional. When discontented employees leave in droves, organisations may fall prey to the Great Resignation.

I discussed how recruiters could go about talent acquisition despite above-average attrition in a previous article. However, this trend can be stemmed at its very root by investing in career pathing technology.

Tools like these have several benefits:

● They help engage your workforce (and its most talented members) at a time when there is no regular one-on-one interaction. A career pathing tool ensures that an employee, their manager, HR, and other stakeholders remain involved in a continuous process of development, improvement, and alignment.

● It reassures employees and boosts resilience. During a global crisis like the pandemic, it is natural for resilience to dip and for employees to show a decline in their confidence in the organisation’s future. However, career pathing communicates to employees that the organisation values them and has a vital role in its future.

● It helps save on people costs. Ultimately, this is the most significant benefit for organisations, as they can save hugely on attrition costs and the cost of having to hire fresh talent. Furthermore, since career pathing applies primarily to mid-level and senior executives, it unlocks substantial efficiencies as the need to engage in executive hiring is reduced.

3 Career Pathing Tools That Should be on Your Radar in 2022

Career pathing is a young technology segment, and most organisations still rely on homegrown frameworks, analysis models, and software tools. Fortunately, the market has seen significant evolution in the last few years, and there are three powerful tools you need to explore:

1. TalentGuard — TalentGuard has become almost synonymous with career pathing technology. It was among the first tools to provide a comprehensive solution — from internal talent matching to part-building and development plans. In addition, TalentGuard can evaluate employees based on their current roles and suggest upskilling opportunities.
2. PathSavvy — PathSavvy works exactly like TalentGuard — the only difference is that it includes a crowdsourcing tool to help aggregate competencies across all jobs in your organisation. PathSavvy can double up for performance management use cases as well.
3. C2 Career Pathing Tool (CPT) — CPT focuses on building future job competencies through training and certification. You can also identify any potential for cross-skilling between functional areas and consider employee preferences.

As certain offices reopen and some switch to hybrid working, 2022 will be an eventful year for the global workforce.

We can expect the Great Resignation to plateau — but continue, as professionals get to know themselves better, feel comfortable chasing new opportunities, and explore possibilities outside their local regions. Career pathing will be an essential part of the HR toolkit if employers are to hold onto their top talent and contain the reshuffle within the organisation’s boundaries.