Traditional career development simply isn’t keeping up with today’s ever-evolving workforce needs, Julie Giulioni, who leads DesignArounds, a workplace training provider, told attendees April 21 during a SHRM Talent session.
At risk are higher levels of employee disengagement and turnover — or not even getting workers in the door in the first place, she said.
“The old rules simply don’t apply as they did before,” Giulioni said, emphasizing that HR professionals need to move on from encouraging workers to own their career development.
“To expect people to be able to own in this whole world of unknowns sets them up for something less than success,” she said. “My proposal is that the new frontier is to move beyond this notion of ownership to the notion of agency, which may be more aligned with current conditions.”
Career agency, she said, means urging workers to embrace uncertainty, to experiment and to make data-informed choices as they navigate a market characterized by increasing skills volatility, technological advances and changing job roles.
“With as fast as things are accelerating, imagine what’s [in] the future that’s not even on our radar screens yet,” Giulioni said.
Career agency, however, is not “a solo job,” she said, and requires help from organizations and leaders.
To create a culture that supports career agency, organizations need to focus on awareness, access and action, Giulioni explained.
Awareness means giving workers more information and insight about what is going on in the organization and what the strategy, priorities and emerging skill needs are, she said.
“Leaders need to be really candid with feedback about performance and skill gaps, and individuals need to be a lot more reflective in understanding their strengths, their opportunities,” Giulioni said. “We need to dramatically elevate awareness if employees are going to be able to exercise agency.”
As for access, employers need to not only make career development opportunities available but also remove roadblocks, she said.
Workers need “transparent systems for being able to access opportunities. They need to have less gatekeeping and more support for experimentation,” Giulioni said.
To spur action, meanwhile, involves ensuring that employees understand that development now is about experimentation and iteration, she said.
“They’ve got to be able to experiment, learn, iterate and experiment again, and that’s going to be the cadence of learning going forward,” Giulioni said. “Leaders need to be prepared with a cadence of check-ins and support to be able to encourage and allow for that kind of adaptation and adjustment.”