When setting out to design a reward strategy, many companies will start with their core principles which tend to be fairly generic in nature: ‘We will reward people for the work they do and how well they do it’. ‘We will stay competitive in the market’. ‘We will be fair and equitable’. ‘We will create opportunities for our workers’. These statements are easy to write but difficult to back up. What sits behind them is more important – your rewards Framework.

To operate in a modern organisation that supports careers and enables progression, companies and employees need three things:

• a clear picture of the company’s current role and reward structure
• transparent criteria for progressing both career and pay through that structure;
• a trusted framework by which these criteria are created, amended, judged and administered.

When all these things are in place, employees can gain a clear line of sight of their potential trajectory through a business, but it is by no means easy.

Challenges to progression

As organisations expand, contract, flex and adapt they often become more complex in terms of their job architecture, organisational design and administration. Where there is complexity, we often see a lack of transparency and simplicity in these things, which can leave employees in a position where they no longer understand where they fit, how their skills are relevant, and what their potential career opportunities might be.

Even if things go to plan, difficulties can arise. Facilitated Mobility - where people are given a ‘stretch’ project or are assigned to a new role - is often managed ad hoc to support a business need or to keep key talent. This is progression of a sort but is often driven by politics or contacts and doesn’t always result in the best business outcome. More planned progression can also end in frustration where the pyramid narrows towards the top and limits aspiration.

Talent Marketplace

For many businesses the answer could be a gentler evolution towards Agile Talent Mobility, where careers are seen more as a series of experiences and people are encouraged and enabled to move around more within a business, finding different internal positions, projects and mentors. Rather than viewing each stage of a career as an ‘earned’ progression, this is a more modular approach allowing people to build experience and skills in different areas.

This kind of ‘talent marketplace’ empowers employees to develop skills and reinvent themselves, and businesses to improve internal talent mobility. ​For other companies, a more root-and-branch strategic rethink will be required.

Strategic Case study

We are currently working with a large and complex business who are aiming to elevate their overall employee experience and create more visibility around career development. To do this they wanted to create a simple, easy-to-use interface that enabled every employee to see and understand each role across the organisation, helping them to take better control of their careers.

Using our digital levelling tool Evaluate, we were able to create a simple and agile job architecture with an ideal framework on which to base career pathways and map out roles across the organisation. We are also in the process of planning a fully customised 'Career Pathway Interface’ for employees to use.

Ultimately, harnessing technology for this is often now the best way forward. Using a digital levelling tool like Evaluate has helped to simplify over-engineered hierarchies and tee up meaningful conversations about the value of each role. This, in turn, allows HRDs, business leaders and employees to see how career pathways can be more adaptive, based not on job titles but on required skills. Most importantly, it will help create a more enjoyable employee experience where they can see and grasp the opportunity to grow their careers every day.

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