We all have designed career paths; there is no secret to that. Career paths have existed in the past and will continue to exist in the future to a certain extent. There has been an emerging narrative around career frameworks for a long time. Certain job roles emerge, stay, have a shelf life of two years, and then they evolve significantly. Can your career framework accommodate this changing scenario? And most importantly can you simplify your policy framework for people to be able to navigate that? One of the most substantial challenges that organizations have faced is to be able to, first in an effortless manner, articulate what that career framework looks like and then create a policy framework that enables you to navigate that career framework.

In a panel discussion at People Matters L&D Conference 2019 on ‘Learning to build careers & business’ Anupam Suri, Sr Vice President & Head - Talent & Learning, Citibank India (Chair), Ankur Walunjkar, Partner, Deloitte India, and Bhavin Patel, Director GBS (APAC), Degreed shared insights on what organizations should focus on to build the right career framework.

Career Framework

The future of work is here, but it is still in the future. All of us are dealing with the pace of evolving trends on a day to day basis. Business is changing at a lightning speed. Organizations need to focus on what is it that’s going to happen; whatever may be the horizon - 10 years,15 years, 20 years and in alignment with that, what is the operating model and design of the organization which will then define what the career framework would be. There are mainly three components that any organization should be focusing on. 

• The organizations should be able to pivot their operating model and the design of their organization in keeping with the changing scenario for which you need to estimate the future of work. So the following two components would be - 
• what your future of business is going to be 
• what your future of workforce and workplace is going to look like.

Most of the organizations, even today, seem to think that if they are able to onboard contractors, they have optimized their productivity. What is interesting to explore is that when you speak about workforce, you need to realize that it is made up of competitors as well and that can be used to one’s advantage by figuring out a way to make your traditional competitors aid in growth where you all grow together. What it means then is how you are set to operate - is it a physical workplace, a virtual workplace or a combination thereof. Once you do the same, your career framework would be more defined, and you will get an idea of how it will look like. 

One of the significant components of the career framework becomes learning. Now, where does learning fit in?

Learning enables people to seek the intersection between business objectives and personal goals and aspirations.

Importance of Skills

In the existing world, the business environment is experiencing constant change.

Every hour, every minute, every second careers are becoming less defined in organizations.

It is only the language of skills that is easily understandable to business organizations and individual learners equally because only through skills can they get job opportunities or a new career line. The key then is to ponder upon the questions - what are the skills that we have and what are the things we require. 

This language of skill is very easy to comprehend and makes it very engaging for individual learners as well. All you need to have is a right skilling strategy that will connect you to the aspired business. Careers have grown very dynamic in the last few decades, what can organizations do to support this? Organizations are dealing with a lot of ambiguity as well, and to address this obstacle, organizations can approach solutions that would enhance the growth of the business as well as that of any individual. We have heard a lot about learning in the flow of work. This is undoubtedly possible in a theoretical sense. Still, to execute it in a practical scenario, one has to understand the kinds of change in the business environment and acknowledge the evolving trends. 

Investment on Restructure and Re-skilling 

Many of us read stories day in and day about whether or not an organization succeeded in restructuring and reskilling. For example, PWC talking about investing around $3 Bn in a period of two years to restructure and re-skill. Similarly, there are companies that are laying off people because they do not fall in line with what their customers are demanding. At the end of the day, learning is something that one cannot afford to miss out on. Moreover, not only learning but identifying the scope of growth and focusing all the energy in restructuring particular aspects of the organization would put you on the path towards overall development.

(This session is based on panel discussion at People Matters L&D Conference 2019 on Learning to build careers & business which included Anupam Suri, Sr Vice President & Head - Talent & Learning, Citibank India (Chair), Ankur Walunjkar, Partner, Deloitte India, and Bhavin Patel, Director GBS (APAC), Degreed.)