Career Teaming

Organizations promote collaboration, teamwork, work groups and the like. The idea is, of course, to promote creative thinking producing diverse ideas, increase productivity, better problem solving, and other benefits among employees. What organizations seem to be a little less good at promoting is teamwork between it and the employees. What is that teamwork and why does it matter?

What It Is and Why It Matters

Why it matters is that according to a news release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), people born between 1957 and 1964 held 12.4 jobs between the ages of 18 and 54. According to Gallup, those born between 1980 and 1996 (the Millennials) job hop more than any other generation.

The bottom-line matters to every organization and every leader understand that turnover is expensive. Moreover, according to another recent BLS news release, wages and salaries increased by 1.2% and the cost of benefits rose by 1.8%. A bit of good news is that Gallup suggests that disengagement has dropped from 36% to 34%. However, again, according to Gallup, even your engaged employees are in danger of recruitment by another organization. All in all, the why of what it is matters.

What It Is

Obviously from the title of this article, “What It Is” is career teaming. However, that’s probably not a phrase you’ll hear tripping off tongues at your next networking event. Many employees feel that an organization is responsible for their career path. They feel this should come in reward for showing up for work, fulfilling a minimal amount of work requests, and doing long tenure. Long tenure, for some, is six months. Many leaders have a much different view. They feel that if an employee wants to get ahead, they should show up early, stay late, work their fingers to the bone while neglecting their families and friends and be there at least five years before consideration for promotion. What’s wrong with this picture? Well, it resembles both ends of the bell curve.

The Sweet Spot

As with most every endeavor, there are extremes and the middle ground where both parties are equally accountable for an endeavor. Examples are marriage, parenting, relay races, flying trapeze acts, and business partnerships. While those examples may seem glaringly obvious, career pathing does not share the same level of insight. So, let’s look at how such a partnership works.

The Employee: An employee wants to be responsible for his or her career path as it:

• Provides clarity on career and life goals
• Enables one to revisit his/her plan and keep motivation high even during tough times
• Build a network of mentors and one’s own personal board of directors
• Target and invest in the exact development one may requires
• Allows one to be in control and put forth the effort that no one else will

The Organization: An organization wants to be responsible for career pathing as it:

• Helps retain talent
• Attracts top talent
• Provides greater job satisfaction and engagement
• Increases productivity
• Builds financial return for the organization

In the not-too-distant past, career, community, and cause held high importance to employees. Today, the shift is toward the workplace experience. Employees want a place to work that is a fit between theirs and the organization’s values, culture, and expectations. Next is what links are of value to them in terms of relationships with the people at work. Next is a consideration of what sacrifices would be made by going to another company. In other words, what benefits would they be giving up by leaving you?

Summary

It’s easy to see how career pathing can fulfill these concerns. Building a better career through the organization’s career pathing program shows how the company values employees. Further having a robust career path program helps create a more positive culture and employees and the organization are more in tune with expectations of one another. Relationships and bonds are created as people progress through the program to leadership. Having to give up something of this value would certainly make an employee think twice about leaving such an attractive benefit. This is career teaming at its best.

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