Case Study: Creating a new career culture in healthcare

The healthcare industry’s need for high-demand skills has driven a new approach to career development. Here is how one of our clients in the sector is helping employees to grow and develop.

Key Takeaways

• Career was a strategic priority in a sector with high-demand skills, where agility and mobility are essential for growth.
• Employee research revealed that career expectations were not always being met – a new approach to grow and develop employees was needed.
• Actions were prioritised to create a career strategy roadmap. This included building awareness, changing behaviour and shaping a new culture around career development.
• Taking a strategic approach to careers as part of an overall talent and learning strategy has had a far-reaching positive impact on employee and organisational growth.

The Situation

Our client is a leading tech-enabled health and data science service provider worldwide. It needed to rapidly expand its workforce to help it grow, in an industry which already faced intense competition for high-demand skills.

Even before the pandemic, our client had recognised the strategic importance of a focus on careers for current and future employee engagement. This is why it began a partnership with The Career Innovation Company.

The Challenge

The demand for critical skills was beginning to outstrip supply, while there was also a need for a more agile talent market, one which enabled our client to identify and mobilise talent where and when it was needed to deliver on its growth strategy. Employee data revealed that employee expectations around careers were not always being met, with some employees commenting that it was easier to find an opportunity externally than it was internally.

Historically, career development had focused on upward progression and a linear journey. However, this was out of step with the people and organisational realities of agile businesses, in which disruption and speed influence career journeys in unpredictable ways and where employee career aspirations are increasingly driven by purpose and impact.

The way work and careers were evolving required a new approach to enable all employees to grow and develop. This included a mindset shift in the following ways:

Actions taken

Our client worked with us to identify the factors that underpin a holistic career strategy, along with support needed to embed a future-focused perspective.

The client’s first step was to define their career strategy and prioritise areas to drive cultural change. It looked at external and internal data to highlight key priorities, including:

• Making career development a priority, with senior leader advocacy.
• Communicating a clear and different career proposition.
• Improving access to careers information.
• Equipping employees to drive their own careers.
• Upskilling managers to support career development and mobility.
• Exploring internal candidates for roles as part of the recruiting process.
• Creating experience maps to help employees develop their careers

Solution

Actions were prioritised to create a career strategy roadmap. These included:

1. Building awareness

Expanding current careers resources for employees and managers became a priority to support and enable career development.

• A dedicated career microsite was refreshed and relaunched, as part of a talent and learning hub. This was based on our 7 career skills, that support employees to futureproof and build self-driven and agile careers.

• An overall framework was developed with the client to describe differing types of career journeys.
• An established career pathways tool was enhanced by featuring ‘experience maps’ for many job families.

2. Changing behaviour

• A new approach to performance management placed an emphasis on ‘continuous listening’ with greater clarity about skills and experiences for internal mobility.
• Additional support equipped team leaders to hold positive and ongoing career conversations.
• Regular communications from senior leaders, careers weeks, and Q&A sessions were used to reinforce messages.

3. Changing the culture

The team recognised the importance of continuing to shift mindsets and see all the opportunities for career growth, not just traditional upward career advancement. To achieve this, it implemented a more transformative career experience with our Be Bold in your career experience. Participants were motivated and empowered to direct their own career, widen their horizons about career pathways, and develop the behaviours most likely to make a difference to their development. A version, specific to the client, was created and runs twice a year, nearly 3000 employees have taken part.

An AI-driven talent marketplace was also piloted, then launched a year later. Thousands of employees are currently actively engaged in the platform.

Achieving Impact

Taking a strategic approach to careers as part of an overall talent and learning strategy has had a far-reaching impact. Understanding the data, labour market, future skillset and employee experience has enabled the organisation to change the career culture – for employee and organisational growth.