Skills & Career Advancement

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Provide opportunities and tools for workers’ self-realization and advancement in their current jobs,
within the organization, and outside it.

Strategies and Actions

Offer multiple ways for workforce members to gain skills and progress.

• Equitably—and transparently—offer skills training for increasing levels of competency.
• Respond to workers’ personal needs and your organization’s needs.
• Communicate clear, transparent career paths within the organization, along with the skills, competencies, and experiences needed to progress on those paths.
• Offer training opportunities that lead to industry-recognized credentials such as a certificate, license, or degree.
• Support organizational performance improvement and intelligent risk taking and reinforce ethical business practices.
• Expand position descriptions to reflect new responsibilities and roles.

Make skills building free.

• Offer scholarships or tuition reimbursement for local and online educational programs.
• Offer Registered Apprenticeship programs for new and incumbent workers.
• Establish paid internships and school-to-work programs as pathways to full-time positions.

Cross-train employees.

• Cross-train workers such that employees and managers have ownership and specialization over a specific department but can step in to help other departments when needed.

Provide ongoing performance reviews and promotions.

• Ensure that workers meet with managers at least twice per year to review their career paths and development areas.
• Establish clear and transparent promotion pathways that prioritize internal candidates.

Ensure performance management and development.

• Establish a performance management system that uses compensation, rewards, recognition, and other incentives to encourage high performance, intelligent risk taking, and a customer and business focus.
• Ensure that part-time work does not adversely impact career advancement.
• Create clear and transparent off- and on-ramps to full-time work.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your learning and development programs.
• Examine learning outcomes with respect to worker engagement measures and key business results.
• Ensure that performance management development processes promote equity and inclusion for all workforce groups and segments.