Commentary: Career Mobility is the new Career Stability

Commentary

Commentary: Career Mobility is the new Career Stability

Long gone is the notion that the ideal CV has a narrow, vertical progression, says Wood Wolf's Crystal Lim-Lange.

29 Apr 2022 06:35AM (Updated: 02 February 2022 06:13PM)

SINGAPORE: You've probably heard the rule that one yr to a man equals seven years for a dog.

These days, career coaches joke that one year in a single function for a millennial is the equivalent of vii years for a Gen X-er.

Frequent career transitions used to be a sign of failure but today, existence career mobile and having a diverse array of experiences is not merely common, but is rapidly condign aspirational.

Long gone is the notion of the career ladder, where the ideal CV looks like a narrow, vertical progression. Today'due south gold-standard CV looks like a career matrix, with horizontal and vertical moves signifying depth and breadth of experience, skills and exposure to different cultures.

Employers have gone from beingness cynical about hiring job-hoppers to becoming accustomed to seeing various CVs from acme talent who are in frequent demand.

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I remember existence asked "Why didn't you stay for longer?" in job interviews 10 years ago. Today I hear many employers request candidates "Why did you lot stay in ane role for and then long and not stretch yourself?". Information technology smacks of complacency.

WHAT CAREER MOBILITY LOOKS LIKE

Withal, information technology is important not to confuse career mobility with chore-shopping or task-hopping.

A more positive definition of a career-mobile individual is someone who constantly pushes themselves to abound and develop their skills by taking on fresh, professional challenges rather than stagnating in their comfort zone.

Career mobility could mean staying in the same firm while moving to a new office, or taking on an overseas posting or stretch assignment. Or it could mean choosing a different job intentionally to explore broadening 1's skill base.

Career mobility is almost playing at your competitive border, expanding your boundaries of competence. To possess career mobility, one must have self-awareness to understand where i needs to grow, and also strategic awareness of the bigger picture of where opportunities lie.

Woman at work looking at an iPad. (Photo: Pixabay)

When I read about the Government's plans to better career mobility for all workers to prepare them for a future of disruption, I was pleasantly surprised by this businesslike approach.

Companies are constantly in a country of disruption these days. Experts predict that the bulk of the jobs in a few decades practise not fifty-fifty exist today.

Every bit companies restructure internally and then oftentimes and kickoff-ups come and go, it is just sensible that our workforce learns to identify opportunities, continuously add to their toolbox of skills, and transition well.

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The data suggests that career mobility is hither to stay. In Singapore we already have one of the well-nigh career mobile workforces globally, at to the lowest degree in orientation.

Thirty-4 per cent of Singapore professionals have no intention of staying with their current employers for more than a year, well over the global average of 26 per cent, according to a LinkedIn 2022 report.

Yet Singapore workers are likewise the least confident of gaining access to and pursuing their desired opportunities amongst the Asean countries surveyed by LinkedIn in 2018, with the written report suggesting that the lack of potent networks are a major contributing gene.

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Iv Ways COMPANIES Can ATTRACT AND RETAIN THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST

To thrive in today's world, companies must examine how they tin can work with the career mobility trend by providing their employees more opportunities for growth and evolution rather than accept them leave to pursue options elsewhere.

A man in an office. (Photo: Pixabay/StockSnap)

Starting time, companies can introduce initiatives focused on deliberately developing employees' breadth of competencies.

For example, people can be encouraged to set i of their Key Performance Indicators to centre on visitor projects not associated with their usual job scope, or spend a portion of their week in another department to develop new skills.

For instance, having salespersons being exposed to information analytics will allow them to learn how to use surveys and statistics to tell stories. Having engineers spend fourth dimension in marketing helps them develop empathy and design better solutions for consumers.

Listen: How to have a successful and fulfilling career, an episode on The Pulse podcast

Second, it is essential for organisations to have learning and development programmes targetting social emotional intelligence skills such as cocky-awareness, empathic communication and influence because these abilities are timeless, transferable, highly correlated to success in the workplace, and assistance individuals adjust to disruption.

Harvard Academy Professor David Deming'southward research finds that if you really want to ensure relevance in the futurity, social skills are a much stronger predictor of hereafter employment and wage growth than cognitive skills. Social emotional skills combined with technical competencies make for an upwardly mobile workforce.

3rd, companies should rethink their approach towards hiring for career mobility. Most still prefer to rent candidates non actively looking for jobs, spending vast sums of coin on recruiters who identify these "passive" candidates and persuade them to get out.

A better and more adaptive operation review process is needed to keep employees answerable, bulldoze their operation and maintain the sanity of traditional managers. (Photo: Unsplash/rawpixel)

Still, Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli warns that at that place is no evidence that passive candidates are better employees. In fact, his analysis suggests that the number 1 cistron that encourages "passive" candidates to move is common cold, difficult money.

In contrast, "active" career mobile job seekers are more motivated by career opportunities, take higher levels of passion about their work, and are more engaged in improving their skills.

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Lastly, employers need to make sure that they are constantly "courting" their own employees past repegging their salaries to marketplace rates.

Enquiry suggests that the total direct and indirect costs associated with someone leaving can be upward to two years of their salary.

Nonetheless in many companies information technology is the norm to cap the maximum salary increase for a current employee to low single digits, making it hard for talent to resist outside offers that may be up to a 30 per cent increase in salary.

I've encountered this myself when my employees have handed me a resignation letter while expressing thwarting that they accept experienced being "penalised" for their loyalty.

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Wharton Business School Management Professor Matthew Bidwell estimates that external hires earn 18 per cent more internal promotes in the same jobs, yet at the same time, information technology takes new hires three years to catch up in terms of performance to internal hires.

It makes hard economic sense to actively invest in developing your existing talent and to continually let them know that you recognise their worth and contribution.

A woman in the office. (Photo: Unsplash)

One example of this approach in action is the Biopharmaceuticals Manufacturers Advisory Committee, which deputed a leadership skills evolution plan, which is unusual in that employees who I teach not only come from 16 different companies, only are also often straight competitors for the same puddle of talent.

At the inaugural run of the plan, senior management from the various sites turned upward to show their support and participate in a console give-and-take on talent development.

"We did consider whether the participants would bound to different companies, but we ultimately realised that they would be more likely to exit if we didn't invest in them", Ronan McGarvey, one of the program leaders said.

"And as well, once they talk to each other, they realise that we're all dealing with common challenges; there'southward no such thing every bit the perfect company, the grass is not greener on the other side."

This piece is the first of a ii-office series on career mobility by Crystal Lim-Lange. Part two will focus on how individuals can develop career mobility.

Crystal Lim-Lange is the CEO and Co-founder of Woods Wolf, a future-readiness and talent development consultancy.

Commentary: Career Mobility is the new Career Stability

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