What is career mapping? Why career pathways are HR's #1 tool for retention

In this video, I'm going to break down the essence of career mapping: what it is, why you should use it and how you might go about it.
Hi, welcome to the Let's Talk Talent channel where we discuss the world of HR and talent management. We're here to help you unlock the potential in your people.
So why is career mapping important? Well, it's important from an individual, team and organisational perspective? So let's take them in turn. When we think about it as an individual, you might use career coaching to
think about: why do you want to go from A to B? And actually, you're starting to get people to think about how they might plan
their journey. Because most people, when they think about career mapping, they think about the destination. But I like to think about it as the journey.
In an adage that I've used many, many times with individuals, I've said to them, it's the old world of looking at a map with a compass, and knowing how you're going to get from A to B, but actually now having a satnav, and thinking about the multiple destinations that you could go.
Do you go up the M1? Or do you go up the M25, or the M40? It doesn't really matter, it's how you get to that perspective. So if you think about it from a team perspective, career mapping
is thinking about where can your team go. Where are they in the ecosystem of the organisation? How do they play the part? And in an organisation perspective, this is where you're going to really need to lean in.
This is thinking about how you get that journey to that destination. And we like to think about it based on an axis of expertise, and experience. Building people's expertise is really important. So competency frameworks play a massive part here. So how you build someone's expertise to be brilliant in their job, ultimately, your driving performance. Experience is about increasing that person's potential. And that's where career mapping plays a massive part.
So what you might want to think about is where someone can go from, I don't know, an apprentice up to Chief Technology Officer - you might map that whole progression, right? But nobody normally does that. And what people are going to ask you is, the time it will take from going from an apprentice to a CTO, for example. You want to get away from those questions. What you want to think about is those lateral moves. So where can someone move during their career? So can they move across the technology department? Can they move into marketing? Can they move into commercial? Can they move inside your organisation? Can they move outside of your organisation?
And that's where career mapping plays a massive part. You're creating a picture. It's like the old painting by numbers - all will be revealed as your career develops. And for an individual, that's incredibly powerful, but for an organisation, it helps you get, keep and grow brilliant people.
And that's career mapping. If you found this video helpful, please like and subscribe for more useful HR and talent management video content.
Hope you enjoyed this video. See you next time.