Activating a new career culture: bringing theory to life

To explore this issue, we were delighted to welcome Tom Hilpert, Senior Talent Strategy Specialist at BMW Group, to our latest Virtual Roundtable. BMW has been activating a new career and development culture across the group. And Tom described their approach and the challenges involved in bringing it to life.

Defining a career culture

Many HR leaders often struggle to define what is meant by their organisation’s culture. It’s sometimes difficult to arrive at this broader definition, let alone go on to define their career culture, but it’s important to try. Tom suggested a working definition for career culture for his provocation, which was “the way things around developing talent are perceived and done within our organisation.”

As part of increasing its own understanding of the career culture, BMW looked at different stages of the employee journey, including those moments when individual development opportunities arrive for employees.

Rethinking talent

The eventual result of its analysis, was the initiative called “Rethink Talent” with a sub-title of “A million ways to grow.”

To further underline their approach to talent development, three specific slogans for key stakeholders involved were chosen. These are filled with clear role descriptions and actionable recommendations.

• Grow your own way for employees.
• Empower and Engage for leaders.
• Pave the Way for HR.

Career platform as entry point

BMW’s career platform acted as the entry point for all matters relating to career development. It acted as what Tom called a “single source of truth” where people would find everything they needed to develop, all in one place. It has been developed in line with four principles. These are Reflection, Dialogue, Feedback and Development (horizontal and vertical). The Reflection principle includes the Career Trails and the telling of career stories. The latter involved interviews with colleagues about their BMW career journey to date.

How to make change last

To deliver lasting change through a career culture at BMW means addressing both individual and organisational factors.

• Individual
  • Mindset shift. The way people feel (their thoughts, emotions and beliefs)
  • Behaviour shift. The way people act (their roles, skills, practices and performance).
• Organisation
  • Culture shift. How an organisation acts (their purpose, values, mission, language).
  • Structure shift. How it is organised (its policies, procedures and technologies).

Early learnings

While the development of BMW’s career culture is ongoing, some valuable lessons have already been learnt. These include the following:

• Never assume knowledge. It’s really important to give context, more than once if necessary.
• Acknowledge different maturity levels. Perspectives around career development are bound to differ across divisions, countries, or types of stakeholders.
• Use role models and advocates. This is a great way of promoting career development.
• Never stop anchoring. Anchor key messages, but also be aware of the reactions to them.
• Leverage timing. Be opportunistic – understand and support people when they need it most.
• Moving from mindset to behaviours. This takes time, and the factors driving action are:
  • To be aware of the distinction between the two.
  • To know what the best behaviour looks like.
  • The right situational context. i.e. when/how to empower and engage employees.

Pulling the right levers

At The Career Innovation Company we believe that activating a new career culture means pulling different levers at different times. This involves:

1. Winning Heart and Minds

This means engaging leaders and employees to sustain a focus on career building by:

• Senior Leader role modelling. This could mean personal story telling, walkabouts, development chats, having a regular executive agenda slot and promoting achievements.
• Fostering understanding & conviction. By presenting the business case to line managers, being clear on what’s expected, nudging people, sharing success stories and linking development to improved performance and career progression.

2. Supporting with formal processes and interventions

This means differentiating the offer through the quality of its execution by:

• Developing capability. This is achieved by developing career conversation skills, promoting knowledge sharing, curating career support, and making all career information clearly relevant and useful.
• Reinforce with formal mechanisms. By providing career type or pathway models, running engagement, 360 and pulse surveys, using performance metrics, and recognising and rewarding desired behaviour.

You can find out more about our Virtual Roundtables here. And explore our Career Trails and Career Inspirer solutions, for on-demand career support for employees and managers.