Career enablement solution empowers employees to chart their own careers

Situation

To broaden awareness of career options and facilitate growth for employees in one business segment of a large healthcare company, WTW was selected to develop an engaging, user-friendly career enablement solution. This solution is now driving meaningful employee-manager discussions, and thoughtful decisions regarding development and rewarding career experiences.

Objectives

The team identified the following goals:

1. Develop a single framework with a common language and consistent expectations to inspire employees and managers to look at career development more comprehensively across roles and geographies.
2. Raise awareness that many skills are transferable across different groups, opening new career paths to consider.
3. Provide employees with an engaging, easy-to-use experience to help them explore options and understand how to achieve their career goals.
4. Build and strengthen core capabilities and skill sets for the short- and long-term to support business strategy and drive optimal business results.

Approach

Attracting, growing and retaining top talent was the overarching goal in designing the career enablement solution.

1. 01

   Step 1: Define knowledge architecture

   The team first established a thorough overview of the range of capabilities and skills needed to be successful within the business unit—and how different job levels are expected to exhibit these capabilities. Then, to better understand group-specific skillsets and delineate career path options for employees, WTW enlisted its Data Science & Innovation team. The team uses leading research technology and web scraping of peer group data to pinpoint job-related skills. Our proprietary role/title taxonomy process incorporates internal and external database analysis to identify prevalent and emerging skills. The result? WTW and the project team utilized these insights to identify ten specific skills needed for each group in the business segment and career path options within and across related business groups.

2. 02

   Step 2: Establish an immersive digital career platform

   This initiative gives employees a digital tool to navigate their own careers. Instead of waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder to suggest a career path or relay a business need, an employee can, on their own, map out career opportunities and determine which skills they need to develop. The platform provides comprehensive information on each of the skills. Employees can see where there’s an overlap in skills and which skills they need to develop to progress their careers in any number of directions within their current group or beyond. Employees are encouraged to consider overlaps and investigate how they can fill gaps with company-provided resources to map their future careers. These resources include thousands of external courses, abstracts of relevant business publications and a robust internal education website to access career development resources, tools and programs.

3. 03

   Step 3: Identify potential career journeys and encourage employees to explore development options

   Once the knowledge architecture and digital platform were built, it was time to launch and communicate how to use the platform. In addition to developing an easy-to-follow guide for employees, WTW conducted several train-the-trainer sessions with the company’s HR department.

   Adhering to a strategic implementation plan and internal communications program focused on generating excitement and support, HR then managed the roll-out sessions — with great fanfare — to leadership and employees.

Outcome

Benefits to employees, managers and the organization

The career enablement solution:

• Supports career equity with consistent guidelines for careers and equitable access to the career platform and development resources.
• Promotes better understanding of career growth opportunities and provides transparency regarding the capabilities and skills required for different options.
• Empowers employees to explore growth and development opportunities and discuss their career aspirations with mentors, managers and leaders.
• Promotes better understanding of transferrable capabilities and skills to visualize multi-directional career mobility across the company.

Author

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Danielle Rasey, Ph.D.

Senior Director – Work & Rewards

email Email phone 404-771-9413

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