We feel your pain but hold firm as you’re absolutely right in your desired approach.

When you join a smaller flatter organisation you are saying goodbye to all the structure and process and comfort of your career being laid out for you and instead, getting a different type of career experience – the ability to move around more easily,  get involved in broader activities, learn new skills etc.. But it does mean having to manage your own career and cope with ambiguity which can be tough for some personalities.

It might be worth pushing back to the managers that say they want and ask ‘Why do you think your people need this?’ or even asking your people the same question.  In our experience, the demand to implement career paths is a knee jerk response because people are frustrated by a (perceived) lack of career progression and recognition.  We know a career path is not going to fix that.

For the approach you’re advocating perhaps you could with them on how they want their people to feel about their career and then work on creating that feeling.  Then you can push back when they want to deviate to something more structured e.g.

“We want to provide you with an environment where you can learn every day, have the opportunity to grow and develop and to play to your strengths. We won’t map out your career for you and we celebrate our flat structure,  but we will make sure you’re aware of what might be available, talk about careers and your development and create some interesting opportunities for you to experience new skills. Ultimately though, you own your career and we look to you to know yourself, know what you’re good at, know where you want to go, etc. We’ll do everything we can to help you get there.“

How we will make it happen (you’re probably already doing this but a few examples)

• Encourage our people to ask their manager for a career discussion as and when they need one (search Box of conversations on the club for help with career conversations)
• Develop a careers/learning hub (e.g. Facebook Workplace) of curated resources: project opportunities, articles, videos, eLearning,  examples from your people about their personal career journey stories
• Encourage people to find their own mentors and shadow people in other teams
• Hold online lunchtime learning sessions to share knowledge.  Ask more employees to share their expertise
• Provide managers with a budget to recognise/thanks people for taking on additional responsibility, doing a great job –  in the moment appreciation
• Managers will meet together regularly to discuss their teams – who is ready for something different, what roles need refreshing etc..(Talent discussions support in the Box of Meetings on the club)

Good luck – let us know how it goes?

Hi Gemma,

So glad you found the webinar from yesterday useful. The ‘Career Navigator’ example is from UBS. You can read more details on how it works here.

Great idea regarding a toolkit! We’ll try and put something together soon and we’ll post it on the club.

Best wishes,

Disruptive HR Team