Elements of Enterneering®/People/Career
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What is meant by career, and why should companies practise active career management, though it is primarily focussed on the professional life of each individual in the workforce?
Given that career development is a crucial aspect for employees, companies should have an interest in not passively accepting their plans and decisions. On the one hand, the company's goals regarding personnel development and staffing must be actively promoted. On the other hand, unforeseen surprises in people management should be reduced. After all, a significant proportion of employees often decide not to pursue the next career step with their current employer.
But what is the reason for this? And, is the topic of career still relevant in the smart, digital age of generations XYZ...? Strictly speaking, a career is the sequence of jobs or positions a person holds throughout their professional life. The term 'career' does not imply a gradual increase in personal responsibility or leadership competence. For example, a craftsman who has worked in his learned profession for 5 different employers throughout his professional life has also gone through a professional career, even if he did not reach the role of a foreman or company boss.
The prevailing conditions in the labour markets in which a company operates also play a crucial role in shaping the concept of careers. In some industrialised countries, for example, it can be observed that fewer young people perceive the goal of a career with hierarchical advancement and increasing managerial responsibility as desirable. The associated high personal responsibility and above-average availability requirements in the job are becoming less appealing to the younger generations.
In addition, traditional career paths have already transformed considerably in many companies. New roles have emerged, and the structures in so-called middle management are breaking down in many organisations. Hierarchies are becoming flatter, structures more agile, and careers more talent-based and less career-path-oriented. This is evident, for example, in the companies that have introduced agile structures.
However, some core elements of people management remain constant. These include the importance of each person's value system. People with values that emphasise power and status will continue to look for hierarchy-based career paths and experience their personal validation and satisfaction in them.
Many people aspire to continually grow in their professional life and broaden their horizons. They are not inclined to stay in the same position within a company permanently, regardless of the labour market conditions or the environment in their current company.
In addition, individuals undergo different personal and family phases in their lives, which, in turn, have an impact on their needs from the job and influence their motivation to seek change.
Ultimately, the companies themselves are also continuously developing and changing. This is accompanied by shifting demands for the required talents and resources, which need to be actively managed.
Regardless of the approach to career management that a company chooses, it is crucial to avoid operating based on the random reward or cousin principles. None of these methods provide an objective assessment or establish a sustainable win-win situation as the foundation for staffing decisions. Some companies, for example, provide career advancements to dissatisfied employees who possess qualifications that are important to the company. In doing so, they may reassure the person in question for a limited period. However, they have neither ensured that the original dissatisfaction has been permanently eliminated nor that the person will really do a good job in the new position. The same applies to so-called 'Vitamin B appointments'. Companies that allow complaisance or friendship appointments risk lasting damage in several ways. Firstly, such favouritism never goes unnoticed; it quickly leads to dislike within the workforce. Secondly, there is no guarantee that the favoured person will perform well. On the contrary, it can often be observed that there is a noticeable headwind from the other staff towards these persons, which quickly leads to performance losses.
CAREER AS A PATH
The traditional career model is dominated by the principle of qualification and hierarchy levels. Typically, each level represents an expansion of responsibility or authority or both and is associated with a specific grouping in the remuneration and competence matrix.
Classically, careers are divided into two career paths: the expert career path and the leadership career path. Towards the end of the 20th century, many large companies started emphasising the equal importance of these two paths. It was not uncommon for personnel interviews to provide options for young individuals to choose either of these two career paths, highlighting the attractive conditions and development prospects available in each. This approach is often supported by medium-to-long-term personnel development programmes, which suitable candidates usually go through in seminar groups.
Companies implementing this approach usually require level-based job profiles or job descriptions with pay grades and authorities. This approach offers a transparent design and good equality elements, which are common in large companies with well-established employee representation. It facilitates effective development and budget planning. It also allows career examples and outlooks to be communicated to the workforce in a more transparent way, and further education and training measures to be designed efficiently. However, this approach carries the risk that careers may be too mechanical and, in the worst case, may follow waiting or service periods. In labour markets where staff are no longer motivated to think and act in terms of these two career paths, a rigidity or blockage in the staffing system can quickly occur. In addition, the career path approach is less flexible than other approaches. Temporary fluctuations in demand in the company can be accommodated only to a limited extent.
One of the bigger weaknesses in the traditional career model is that companies tend to repeatedly switch between the expert and the leadership paths for an individual’s development without conducting a sustained talent review. A classic example of this is when a senior manager with many years of experience is appointed as the head of a department without having demonstrated substantial evidence of leadership talent and experience.
CAREER FOR TALENTS
An approach that is probably unconventional even today but that holds promise for the future is the orientation of career management towards talent and its use. To understand this approach better, it is helpful to refer to the explanations provided by the Enterneering® element Talent.
In careers for talent, the two traditional paths of leadership and expert take a back seat, giving way to a largely free-grouping approach tailored to the needs of the company. In this approach, career development takes place across proficiency levels within specific talent groups. For example, an Inter-Master group could be formed to lead all talents who excel in interdisciplinary and interactive planning and coordination. In such a group, roles such as Scrum Master, Change Master or Project Manager would be assigned and organised into career levels based on their talent and seniority. Another group could bring together all those with a strong talent for pure people management. In this way, depending on the size and complexity of the company, several different talent groups could quickly emerge, according to which, career planning and development could take place.
This approach assumes that the company's current and future requirements for staff talent are known. Traditional and rather inflexible job descriptions are not useful here. Instead, it is important to determine the structure of tasks and skills that the company needs to successfully meet current and future challenges. It is essential to identify and clearly describe the talents that are critical to success. Within this talent structure, particularly those individuals in the company who possess the talents that are critical to success, or who acquire and successfully use them, can develop further, thus achieving growth in their careers.
The strengths of this approach lie in the higher flexibility regarding the adaptation to the needs of the company and the markets. More than the career path model, this approach is in line with agile and self-organised structures. Ultimately, the motivational potential within the workforce speaks in favour of this approach, as it focusses more on people's real talents, aligning with their personal inclinations and strengths. The disadvantage of this approach, though, is that it can quickly become complex and confusing without the consistent adaptation of organisational management to agile forms of work. It partly requires new tools and methods compared with conventional career models. Above all, however, it requires a suitable corporate culture.
CAREER AS A DEAL
An enhanced form of 'career for talents' is the individualised offer form of a talent-based career. This form is not to be confused with a reward approach or incentive. It aims to integrate the existing elements of Enterneering® within the company in a targeted and authentic way, aligned with the ‘career for talents’ approach described earlier. With this link, customised offers can be formulated for individual employees. In addition to hard factors such as income, such offers should include soft factors such as the meaningfulness of the job, the talent-based attractiveness of the task, the working environment and the corporate culture, as already described elsewhere in Enterneering®.
If such an individual offer meets the internal criteria of the 'career for talents' approach, it represents a permissible and smart combination of the needs of the company with the personal values, inclinations and strengths of the employee.
The extension from 'career as a deal' can be a valuable tool in modern labour markets with scarce and valuable labour. Like most specialised tools or concepts in people management, this approach involves increased budget and administrative effort. It also requires a corporate landscape in which the essential elements of Enterneering® are authentically implemented. In companies where stressed rationalisation and cost efficiency dominate management, this approach is unlikely to lead to sustainable success.
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