Our current blog series is focused on the ways L&D creates opportunities for growth. One of the most consistent themes we hear about is the importance of ensuring people have the skills they need to be successful. Today, we’ll focus on the importance of career pathways, sometimes called "learning pathways", and how this can help fill the skills gap within organizations.
“At their best, learning pathways stitch together disparate educational resources into rich, diverse, cohesive and enlightening learning journeys which can have a transformative impact on both our professional and personal lives. (HBR)”
Career Pathways
Career pathways are a powerful tool because they offer opportunities for (1) organizations to plug skills gaps and, (2) for individuals to keep growing in intentional ways as they seek to further their career. It's one tool which has the potential to solve two complex organizational problems!
What is a career pathway? Simply put, a career pathway is "a designated sequence of activities, often from different sources and in different formats, devised to develop the skills and behaviors of colleagues" (HBR).
How does a career pathway work within in organization? Here's a quick overview that could be customized to meet your specific needs:
Begin with identifying skills your organization needs to fill - these can be technical skills, soft skills, etc. - but the more specific you can become in outlining the needed skills, the better your pathways will be. This might entail bringing people from different teams or departments together and working through a skills inventory to determine where the needs lie across the organization.
Determine the people who will help create the pathways you need - this is one of the greatest benefits of a well-designed career pathway. It can be hard to determine the learning needs and skills gaps across a whole organization, so bringing people together from different units of the organization can open up new possibilities for collaboration that benefits the whole. When you view the organizational needs through a desire to build new skills it establishes a focused process for learning. It also has the potential to engage employees in their learning and growth more intentionally - this can happen through cross-training, mentoring, or other forms of employee-to-employee learning.
Begin building pathways - once you have established the skills and goals you want to meet, and you know the people who can assist, you're ready to build your pathways. Designing a pathway is an exciting process and often involves building levels of customization - what works for one person or team might differ for the next group. A pathway can include existing training formats that are already part of the organizational L&D process, but this process also provides opportunities for creative thinking and bringing together new ways to offer training.
Career pathways provide a strategic way to engage employees and teams in their learning, actively works to meet skills gaps within an organization, and opens up new avenues for learning. Click the box below to learn how Lightbox can help your organization design customized career pathways to help your teams grow.
Lightbox provides a range of solutions to help your organization thrive. Contact us below to learn more.
HBR, (2022). Create learning pathways to close your organization's skills gap, https://hbr.org/2022/02/create-learning-pathways-to-close-your-organizations-skills-gap
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