How to build a career mobility strategy for your entire workforce

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No people, no company.

Why are the Fortune 1000 focusing on expanding career mobility for their workers?

Because they know it helps retain – and attract – talent at scale.

In this guide, we'll tell you how you can do it, too. We'll also cover:

→ Why investing in career mobility is crucial now
→ Why the "owning your own development" fallacy doesn't work
→ How to build a career mobility framework that drives measurable ROI you can show to your CFO

Table of contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction – What is career mobility?
• Chapter 2: Why investing in career mobility matters right now
• Chapter 3: The dangers of "owning your own development" vs. employer supported career advancement
• Chapter 4: How to build a career mobility framework
• Chapter 5: The ROI of career mobility

Chapter 1

What is career mobility?

The best definition of career mobility is any job movement that makes the life of an employee better.

In this chapter, we'll explore the definition of career mobility, why it's especially important for frontline workers, and the crucial difference between career paths and career pathways.

Talent is everywhere — but opportunity is not.

There's talent on the factory floor, at the call center, by the bedside.

That’s why employers of choice invest in unlocking opportunity for the people who work for them — at every level.

From the frontline to the mid-career employee, leading companies continue to make strategic investments in education and career mobility.

Employers of choice also know that what’s good for people is good for business.

In fact, a recent study conducted by The Josh Bersin Company that examined 94 L&D practices across 1,000+ organizations revealed that the #1 most impactful practice for driving better talent and business outcomes is creating extensive career growth opportunities. 

“The #1 most impactful practice for driving business, talent, and innovation outcomes is creating extensive career growth opportunities.”

The Josh Bersin Company research study of 94 L&D practices across 1,000+ organizations

And that’s what today’s employee is looking for.

In fact, 41% of employees left their employer in 2021 due to “lack of career development and advancement opportunities.”

The overwhelming majority of workers (78%) are frustrated because they’ve experienced challenges trying to advance their careers. Employers investing in growth opportunities for their employees are attracting – and keeping – the best talent. 

But… successfully creating upwardly-mobile pathways into high-demand roles requires the right foundation.  

Career mobility can be vertical or lateral.

Most people assume the definition of career mobility is career advancement – and that’s often true.

But it can also mean lateral movement into an area better aligned with growth opportunity, strengths, and interests, or stepping back based on individual needs.

The best definition of career mobility is any job movement that makes the life of an employee better.

The best definition of career mobility is any job movement that makes the life of an employee better.

When we think about career mobility this way, we center it on the employee experience. We must ask:

• Who can access mobility within the organization? and
• How might they access it?

To that end, it’s important to note the difference between career paths and career pathways.

What is a career path?

A career path is linear.

A linear path may make sense in a traditional “high-potential” mobility context.

For example, Sarah is hired as a Data Analyst, then promoted to Senior Data Analyst, then promoted to Analytics Manager.

But “high-potential” is a bit of a misnomer. What it really means is “proven potential,” in the form of prior performance or credentials.

What is a career pathway?

A career pathway is multi-pronged.

There is high potential in employees who haven’t had the right opportunity to demonstrate it yet.

That’s a core reason career pathways are so powerful.

Joe is hired as a Customer Support Representative, then upskills through short-form learning into an IT Support Specialist role, then completes an education program and is promoted to Associate Software Engineer. 

What is a career path?

A career path is linear.

A linear path may make sense in a traditional “high-potential” mobility context.

For example, Sarah is hired as a Data Analyst, then promoted to Senior Data Analyst, then promoted to Analytics Manager.

But “high-potential” is a bit of a misnomer. What it really means is “proven potential,” in the form of prior performance or credentials.

What is a career pathway?

A career pathway is multi-pronged.

There is high potential in employees who haven’t had the right opportunity to demonstrate it yet.

That’s a core reason career pathways are so powerful.

Joe is hired as a Customer Support Representative, then upskills through short-form learning into an IT Support Specialist role, then completes an education program and is promoted to Associate Software Engineer. 

The traditional linear career path lacks accessibility, particularly for frontline talent.

Non-traditional career pathways could be the answer for employers who have a large amount of open roles that are relatively difficult or expensive to fill, for example, in software engineering or data analytics.

These employers can tap into their large pool of frontline talent by presenting them with the opportunity to pursue in-demand career pathways, and giving them the training and support to get there.

Chapter 2

Why investing in career mobility matters right now

Employees are putting a premium on career advancement opportunities. Employers need a strong employer value proposition in order to attract – and retain – talent.

In this chapter, we cover why employers are prioritizing expanding their internal mobility efforts right now, and how they are already seeing powerful results.

Career mobility is a driver of sustainability for companies.

It serves as a major proof point in your employer value proposition (EVP), showing your investment in building equitable internal talent pipelines.

A differentiated EVP helps you attract and retain engaged employees.

Beyond this, there are a few key reasons why investing in career mobility is especially urgent right now.

1. Competing in today’s labor market means seeing talent differently.

Although investing in your people is a good idea no matter the labor market, the gap between unfilled jobs and available talent remains immense and continues to drive urgency for companies to stand up a strong employer value proposition.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, if every unemployed person found a job, there would still be close to 5 million unfilled jobs.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce (March 2023)³

2. Today’s employees are putting a premium on their future skills and mobility.

People are willing to leave companies that fail to bring them the career opportunity they expect in exchange for their time and talent.

A recent report from Robert Half International shows that nearly half of American workers are either currently seeking out a new role or plan to do so during the first half of 2023.⁴

“I applied for (a) job because I wanted to learn about finances, but at the same time I felt like at such a big company, they have to offer something else. During my interview, I actually asked him on the spot, ‘Do you offer anything else? Potentially higher education?’”

Omar, Financial Services Worker

How unlocking career mobility boosts talent attraction and retention

For employees, accessing employer-funded learning changes the landscape of opportunity at your company.

Many companies have relied on tuition reimbursement programs versus full tuition assistance, and yet tuition reimbursement prohibits many employees from participating due to the upfront costs.

For the 30 million U.S. entry level employees in food prep, retail, and healthcare with a median pay of less than $15 per hour, employers offering tuition assistance (covering the cost of tuition, text books and fees) are removing a key financial barrier to career advancement.⁵

In fact, 3 out of 4 employees who do not hold an undergraduate degree select Tuition Assistance over Tuition Reimbursement programs when their employers offer both funding options, increasing to 9 out of 10 for employees with no college experience.⁶

3 out of 4 employees who do not hold an undergraduate degree select Tuition Assistance over Tuition Reimbursement, increasing to 9 out of 10 employees with no college experience.

 Guild internal data over the last 12 months (01/01/2023)

Investing in your talent gives them tangible proof that they are valued, engenders company loyalty and creates a positive halo effect that attracts new employees and retains existing ones.  The proof is in the numbers:

Chapter 3

The dangers of “owning your own development” vs. employer supported career advancement

Telling your employees that they are in charge of "owning their own development" puts all the onus of career development onto them.

The result? It disproportionately disadvantages those in greatest need of growth opportunity: people in entry-level, frontline, and automation-risky roles. 

In this chapter, we'll discuss why this approach often fails, and how tailored academic programs paired with 1:1 coaching can lead to better career mobility outcomes.

Tell us: How many promotions has your company made based on whether an employee watched a video? 

The Learning Experience Platform (LXP) market has led to the rise of home-grown learning journeys, with a range from a few discrete videos that can be completed in 30 minutes, to others that may be weeks or months long.

They may be about developing a new competency or skill within a current job or developing skills for the next job.

Yet even in these instances, a lack of standardization within this category makes it unclear what an employee can expect on the other end of completing their journey.

Employees walk away with little more than a "check mark" or a badge that bears little importance anywhere else in the world.

A lack of standardization within the Learning Experience Platform category makes it unclear what an employee can expect on the other end of completing their journey.

Why employees "owning their own development" doesn't produce outcomes

DIY — often called “owning your own development” —  also puts all the onus of career development onto employees, which disproportionately disadvantages those in greatest need of growth opportunity:

• Entry-level employees
• Frontline workers
• And automation-risky roles

And here's another issue – equity gaps won’t be solved by offering education alone or standing up one-off diversity initiatives, or even by changing hiring practices.

The good news? Employers can use education to drive DE&I outcomes with career mobility, especially with the help of personalized coaching support.

How different are academic outcomes with 1:1 personalized coaching support? 

Employees who begin their learning and career exploration journey with the assistance of personalized coaches persist to program completion more successfully.

At Guild, we've also seen that coached learners achieve higher academic advancement and save employer spend by applying credit for prior learning and on-the-job training to required college credits. 

Chapter 4

How to build a career mobility framework

Building an equitable career mobility framework starts with ensuring the right foundation for mobility is there.

In this chapter, we will go over the first crucial steps employers can take to align on a vision for mobility and outcomes.

1. Gather internal and external data

Start by benchmarking your current efforts with internal data. Here are some of the first exercises we suggest from our career mobility fundamentals workbook:

• Conduct an internal survey: Examine current efforts as well as employee awareness and sentiment (i.e. Do employees know about/understand existing tuition assistance policies? Do they check internal job postings? How often?).
• Ask the hard questions: Do ALL employees actually believe your opportunities are accessible? Pay attention to trends among demographics and role types. 
• Explore managerial enablement: Do your mid-level managers and floor supervisors believe that career mobility is possible? Are they equipped and motivated to help their team access new opportunities?
• Run a macro trend analysis: Look at macro trends in the talent market to inform your Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) efforts across many dimensions, including competitiveness, job creation trends, and ways to evolve existing roles.

2. Align on mobility goals and desired outcomes

Company-wide career mobility is a cross-functional initiative that implicates (and benefits) multiple teams throughout the org.

As such, your leadership should meet to set goals and expectations before setting out to design your strategy.

• Align goals to business impact: Define measurable goals that align with unique business outcomes and illuminate knowledge, accessibility, and equity gaps.
• Establish a system to measure ROI: Start tracking the key value drivers that lead to positive program ROI as you implement career mobility initiatives: talent attraction, retention, DEI, improved education and skilling, and job movement.

3. Identify 2-4 key career pathways mapped to priority roles

Career pathways are the cornerstone of any career mobility strategy. They motivate your employees by helping them visualize a path forward in your organization.

To identify key career pathways to pursue and promote, start by:

• Evaluate current career pathways: Look for a few well-trodden career pathways within your business and the roles/positions along the way. It’s useful to think of roles in terms of exempt/non-exempt status, skills and experience requirements, and mobility potential especially with frontline positions.  
• Take inventory of your current talent pool: Look for the few frontline jobs where the greatest volume of “source” talent exists.
• Identify hard-to-fill roles: Establish a dozen or so critical roles that will be hard to fill in the future.
• Design clear career pathways: Create career pathways that take employees from frontline to gateway to entry level to destination roles. Then, provide employees with the appropriate education and training to achieve career mobility.

For a full list of the step-by-step exercises in this process, check out our career mobility fundamentals workbook.

4. Rally internal champions

As the capital of any company becomes increasingly centralized in its people, the prominence of the CHRO will continue to grow — as will the business problems they’re expected to solve. Cracking career mobility is no small undertaking, so rallying internal champions is critical.

• Use storytelling to inspire: Employee success stories, employer savings, improved talent attraction or career mobility case studies from other successful HR innovators enabling internal mobility at scale.
• Find your team of champions: Help others see the multi-layered impact of a culture of opportunity and encourage them to join your workstream and play an active role in launching this solution.
• Pro tip: Use our career mobility champion's toolkit to access all of the data-backed talking points and case studies you need to champion career mobility as a company-wide initiative.

Identify the right partners to accelerate your vision.

Partnering with the right people takes the guesswork out of internal mobility and sets the stage for sustainable growth.

Although every organization’s vision for mobility is unique, the hallmarks of success and failure within a mobility program are not.

Taking a DIY approach to mobility reveals several areas where internal pipelines stall before they’ve even started: 

With a DIY approach, scalability becomes impossible...

• Complex organizations need complex solutions: A copy/paste approach to smaller-scale mobility pilots does not translate across complex organizations.
• Manual solutions aren't scalable: DIY efforts tend to be highly manual and lack the right infrastructure to drive adoption and measure success. 
• Limited programming is prone to lose momentum: DIY approaches tend to be limited to one or two job families or role types which can overlook potential onramps to other (unarticulated) pathways as well as talent. Overwhelm causes programs to fizzle out.

...and education and skills seldom align.

• Curation of learning programs requires a deep expertise of the learning landscape: To create an effective network of education and skills provider, you must not only have a deep understanding of your peoples' needs as learners – including the right flexibility and modalities – but also expertise in the credential and skilling landscape to determine which programs (out of millions) will best align people with the skills they need.
• Huge lifts in resources: Even at the pilot level, this is a herculean task – now multiply that by the number of priority roles you have. 
• Equity can be compromised: Asking employees to parse credentials for themselves is inequitable and unintentionally discriminatory, favoring those with insider knowledge.

Beware of choosing the wrong partner.

Choosing the wrong partner will drive results similar to a DIY approach – but at a higher cost. A quick way to judge the fitness of a partner is to ask them for their outcomes and ROI data. 

Specifically, a great partner will be able to provide you with:

• Metrics: Access to metrics across leading organizations to understand how they compare to competitors
• Seasoned experts: Consultants who specialize in implementing and growing career pathways and mobility at scale
• Program catalogs: Curated for your needs and vetted for your workforce as learners
• Wraparound supports: Learner supports within the Guild Career Opportunity Platform™, including consistent 1:1 growth and career coaching (not call centers), and free career readiness support through our dynamic Career Accelerator tool
• ROI calculations: Relevant program analyses to mark progress, calculate ROI, and empower data-driven decision making

Employers who work with Guild benefit from all of the above.

We work with leading Fortune 1000 employers across a number of industries to turn your unique goals for internal talent pipelines and equitable mobility into actionable steps with measurable progress indicators and outcomes.

Explore the ROI we help companies achieve below. 

Chapter 5

The ROI of career mobility

Historically, career mobility has been the exception – not the rule. This has made it's impact on a company's bottom line extremely difficult to measure.

However, when employers start strategically executing against career mobility frameworks, data can now be collected and measured at scale.

In this chapter, we'll cover what ROI you can expect from career mobility.

If your current L&D efforts are not driving ROI, it's time to reassess.

Done right, investing in career mobility and education for your entire workforce drives measurable outcomes. 

Here are some of the stats we have seen from our employer partners that point to the ROI of their career mobility efforts.

More career mobility resources

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[Interactive exercises] Career mobility fundamentals workbook

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The metrics that matter for skilling investments — and the ones that don’t

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Career pathways: Building tomorrow's workforce today

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