Calling all equity-driven people leaders: Are you familiar with the different types of career mobility?
It's time we better understand the different shapes internal (and external) mobility can take, so we can equip our workers – and businesses – for the future of work.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
→ Why career mobility is more than just “moving up”
→ The different types of career mobility and their benefits
→ Employers strategies to facilitate vertical, lateral, and hybrid career mobility
In this chapter, we’ll clear up:
→ Why the traditional definition of career mobility is outdated
→ What your employees are really looking for
→ Why career mobility benefits companies
It’s impossible to put too fine a point on the importance of career mobility for today’s workforce.
As business changes and new technologies emerge, new opportunities are created — and employees across job levels are feeling a sense of urgency to grow their skills and their careers.
Typically, when people think of career mobility, they think of either:
At its heart, though, the definition of career mobility is the ease and agility with which an employee can move into a better opportunity for them as an individual.
The definition of career mobility is the ease & agility with which an employee can move into a better opportunity for them as an individual.
That often means a promotion, but it can also mean a lateral move into a role or department better aligned with an employee’s talents, goals, and interests.
It can also mean dialing back to a role better aligned with personal needs and priorities that may conflict with full-time work or high-intensity work.
In short, a better definition of mobility is a job movement into a better opportunity.
We can think of career mobility as having three distinct types of pathways:
Understanding these types of career mobility can help facilitate career planning, upskilling, and advancement.
It ensures that corporate structures have the right on-ramps into roles necessary to keep a workforce agile to shifting needs.
It also ensures that a company can retain and attract talent through demonstrating a strong ability and commitment to add value to its employees’ lives and careers.
Employees who pursue vertical career mobility for chances to grow their finances, leadership abilities, and expertise. They also retain at significantly higher rates.
In this chapter, we'll cover:
→ What is vertical career mobility?
→ Why employers should care about it
→ How you can foster it at your organization
Vertical career mobility is the upward progression through a corporate hierarchy, typically in one’s field. This is most commonly achieved through promotions within the organization, as well as assuming higher levels of responsibility.
For career-oriented employees, vertical career mobility is a primary goal.
Upward job mobility often comes with:
For employers, vertical career mobility is an opportunity to retain, reward, invest in, and continue to benefit from top talent.
But for many employees, access to this type of career mobility is hard won — and in some cases altogether inaccessible.
Employers that invest in onramps and reskilling and upskilling accessible to their entire workforces tend to see significantly higher retention rates among employees who aspire to achieve career mobility.
For example, employees enrolled in upskilling programs through Guild’s Learning Marketplace were 2.1x less likely to leave their employer in the last 12 months relative to non-engaged employees. 1
There are a number of strategies you can employ to help your employees achieve vertical career mobility.
However, it’s essential that you complement these strategies with the right career mobility infrastructure.
In our recent article on the "owning your own development" fallacy, we talk about the crucial need for employers to recognize that their employees kick off the career race from diverse starting lines.
Why does this matter?
Because it means employees must receive the right support – whether technical, emotional, or otherwise – to ensure everyone can achieve career mobility.
Although determining the right career path and end goals are specific to each person, this is not something your employees should have to undertake in a silo.
Instead, managers should take the time to:
Growth and career coaching are invaluable to this process.
The key to goal setting is ensuring a growth plan is actionable. Often, this starts with:
Once skills gaps in the way of vertical mobility are identified, now comes the task of determining how to gain them.
But with thousands of credentials to choose from, just offering tuition reimbursement is not a reliable way to make sure your employees are gaining the skills and expertise they need to advance.
Instead, try leveraging a career mobility platform that offers:
Experience counts for a lot here, too. Make sure your employees have opportunities to complete “stretch” projects internally to demonstrate their ability to operate at the next job level.
Thoughtfully-designed mentorship opportunities are a must for career mobility.
Employers should provide spaces where employees can find community within the organization, such as:
Through mentorship, individuals connect with willing mentors who can share insights and wisdom from their experiences — and potentially help advocate for growth opportunities for their mentees.
This is a strong way to help employees build networking skills while learning about navigating their own career pathways within the organization.
Podcast plug: Hear more about the power of mentorship from ex-Amex CEO Ken Chenault in our recent Opportunity Divide podcast.
“I think it’s important for mentees to recognize “what are you doing in a very tangible way to grow as a person?”. It’s not that someone is immediately going to do great things, but what you will see are changes in people’s behavior, which is the leading indicator that they will do great things…. What to me is most important is the willingness of the person to understand how they are perceived by other people, as well as to understand that there are areas in their leadership behavior that they need to improve.”
Ken Chenault, ex Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express on two-way mentorship
Lateral career moves help employees break into entirely new areas with high-potential for growth. They also happen to be a secret weapon that forward-thinking HR leaders use to build internal pipelines.
In this chapter, we'll cover:
→ What is lateral career mobility?
→ Why it’s essential for building internal talent pipelines
→ Ways you can foster it at your organization
Lateral career mobility is the job movement from one department or field to another without a significant change in the level of responsibility between the prior role and the new role.
The motivation for lateral career mobility is often strategic.
Employees recognize that moving into a new department or role may result in better opportunities to progress in an area better aligned with their interests.
For example, a sales associate who wishes to pursue a career in marketing may make a lateral move into a marketing associate role.
But wait, there’s more.
In addition to helping employees take a step toward achieving their own personal career goals, lateral mobility is a critical talent tool for employers.
Lateral internal mobility is a powerful way for employees to chart their own career pathways.
Here are a few strategies to streamline a lateral career shift:
It can be difficult to know for sure which skills will translate across roles. Because of this, we suggest employers think about skills as durable or perishable – instead of soft and hard. For example:
In general, durable skills are more likely to transfer than perishable skills.
Individuals should know what their durable skills are before looking into lateral movement opportunities.
Next, managers should to take the time to personally assess their areas of strength and interest.
Here are some questions to get that conversation started:
Together, knowing what transferable skills a person has and what they most enjoy doing can begin to shed light on potential lateral career moves that may already be accessible.
Together, knowing what transferable skills a person has and what they most enjoy doing can begin to shed light on potential lateral career moves that may already be accessible.
Managers should help employees network internally outside of their own department.
This can be achieved through:
Expanding internal networks lets employees:
Once employees have expressed interest in a lateral move, they can either:
These are both great ways to gain exposure to different areas of the company and build some of the skills that may be required for a lateral move.
Companies will need to create a framework for employees to volunteer or be nominated for rotations or cross-collaborative work.
For employees, with appropriate managerial support, this can include hand-raising to see if a specific department has a need for an internal “gig” worker on a project.
Employer PSA: It’s important to build career mobility programs with DE&I in mind. Many frontline workers often do not have enough:
For strategies that promote DE&I for strategies & remove these barriers, check out our guide to inclusive career mobility.
By leaning on these two pillars, companies can focus on building a culture of promotion in their workplaces.
Hybrid career mobility combines vertical and lateral movements that most of your employees will experience in their careers.
In this chapter, we'll cover:
→ What hybrid career mobility is and why employers should care about it
→ Strategies to foster hybrid career mobility
→ Additional resources for further exploration
Hybrid career mobility represents a combination of lateral mobility into new role types or departments, along with vertical mobility in the form of promotions.
For today’s workforce, hybrid career mobility is often the most common shape individual career paths will take.
Employer-funded learning can help an employee on their path to hybrid career mobility.
Expert tip: With the proper career mobility framework in place, employers can take measures to invest in the talent development of their frontline employees – who often start their careers with little to no education – to retain and promote them long-term, increasing:
Employers can fund stackable credits, or short-form learning programs that can “stack” together into credit for an employee’s diploma or degree.
Employers can fund stackable credits, or short-form learning programs that can “stack” together into credit for an employee’s diploma or degree.
For example, this can help employees grow from Store Associate roles to Frontline Supervisor roles, and eventually even a Supply Chain Management or Software Engineering role.
Companies committed to creating opportunities for their workforces are clear about the pathways employees can access – vertically, laterally, and beyond.
They also invest in the right education and training programs to foster career mobility. develop relevant skills accessible.
Making internal mobility equitable means ensuring every employee has an opportunity to discuss and explore their skills and interests.
Companies can facilitate this process by:
What does this mean? It could look like:
Pro top: HR departments and people teams can create accessible databases of internal job postings with regular communications about internal opportunities (including “gigs” and apprenticeships) to ensure transparency.
Access to mentors and coaches should be at the core of an internal mobility strategy.
Internal mentorship programs that connect employees with willing and able mentors can:
For Guild partners: Our enhanced coaching services help your employees:
In addition to knowing what internal mobility options they have, employees should also have access to the right skills to become competitive for them.
To ensure employees can build the right skills, this should include:
Finally, growth stems from embracing a growth mindset in which continuous learning is recognized as essential to ongoing personal and professional growth.
Growth stems from embracing a growth mindset in which continuous learning is recognized as essential to ongoing personal and professional growth.
To increase employee engagement, companies should offer fully-funded programs and development resources, including:
All of these resources help employees along their education and career journeys.