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As any architect will tell you, it is the structures both supple and stable that withstand shocks. The same is true for how enterprises organize jobs.
In uncertain times, career frameworks must be robust enough to link core HR processes (such as recruitment and development) but have sufficient elasticity to accommodate future roles, manage costs and strengthen talent capability over time.
When designed well, a digitally enabled career framework provides organizations with transparency into employee skills, the control to guide the best talent toward critical roles, and the velocity to prepare top talent and enable organizational agility.
It also acts as a visual guide to disruption. By mapping workers’ skills against those most at risk of automation, HR can identify re-skilling opportunities and pick out appropriate new roles for displaced employees. With a career framework in place, an action plan emerges for building a workforce for the future.
Career frameworks will also have to adapt to organizations’ new “platform for talent” mindset. Under this approach, organizations may have only a core set of employees to fulfill roles such as strategic leadership, differentiated intellectual capital know-how and partnership management. Variable staffing models will deliver specific skills. And core employees will manage the system using AI to deploy people around an event, and move on.
"Predictable requirements from 10 years ago have been disrupted. Employers and employees need to be thinking together about future opportunities and creating a platform to be able to foresee how work is changing. For instance, the role of a ‘digital storyteller’ didn’t even exist five years ago. Organizations are transitioning from being very structured and linear to now creating agile career paths to match employees’ different talents, values and aspirations to business requirements."
— Anne Fulton, CEO and Founder, Fuel50 CareerPathing
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