Why the Corporate Ladder is Broken | 2-Minute Video

Could it be time to toss the corporate ladder?

Not everyone can – or should – climb it. In fact, there are proven better ways to develop employees before they even consider walking out the door.

What’s Up in This Episode: Replacing the Corporate Ladder

In this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, our expert, Guadalupe Garcia, Senior Director, Talent Solutions, ADP, explains why the traditional corporate ladder isn’t today’s best way to help employees grow and thrive within organizations. Instead, she offers more effective ways to help employees develop, learn and thrive.

Click, watch and listen for more details on helping employees grow within your organization.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

Time to toss the corporate ladder.

Everyone can’t climb it. There are more and better ways to grow at work and build a career. Simply put …

Guadalupe Garcia, Senior Director, Talent Solutions, ADP: “Growth is actually bigger than moving up. And it involves also what can you do in your current job.” 

Not everyone can or wants to be a boss. And some people just shouldn’t be the boss. But employees need growth, development and challenges.

To that, Garcia offers these ideas:

Garcia: “Rotational programs tend to be very intentional in providing experiences to the person, the employee, so that they can get the different perspectives from a job and from the company. That we know that it’s always a way to grow and you develop and make sure that you’re not just taking your perception and your angle on how to tackle a goal for the organization.” 

So letting employees try different roles for, say, six months is a career builder. Another idea …

Garcia: “Even without going to a full extent of a rotational program, building a culture of stretch assignments, projects, and that requires, I actually have this strategic goal or initiative in my work. How can I build a project out of this initiative that I need to put in place? What are the skills I need and who could be the people that can be interested in participating in this project, right?”

One caveat when you offer these growth opportunities …

Garcia: “As long as you have clear criteria. What is the project about? How long is it going to take? It’s typically on top of your day-to-day, right? So people need to have clarity of what it means to sign up for that project.”

So to help employees grow without making them trip over each other on a corporate ladder:

• Create opportunities. Build a job rotation program.
• Give them room to stretch. Invite employees to take on and learn from bigger assignments.
• Be clear. Ensure employees know what they’ll need to do, and more importantly, what they’ll get out of the growth opportunities.

The best part: When you help employees grow, you’ll have more leaders ready to step up when you need them.

What Employees Want

When it comes to learning and development, you can find out what employees want in this story from HRMorning: Learning & Development Programs: 6 Key Features Employees Want Most.

In a nutshell, they want:

1. Access to courses from anywhere, anytime. Increasingly, people want to learn at their computers or mobile devices.
2. Shorter content. Try micro-learning, where they can do short sessions with high impact.
3. Multimedia. Think video and interactive gaming.
4. Social learning and gamification. With this, they can collaborate with and learn from others, plus have some fun.
5. Quizzes and assessments. Many employees want to see how far they’ve come by gauging skills and knowledge before and after learning.
6. Learning paths. Most employees want to do more than brush up on skills. They want to be promoted, and they see learning and development as the way.