4 Career progression

So far this week, you’ve focused on the beginning of someone’s career within your organisation, but career progression also plays an important part in maintaining their commitment and focus.

In this short film, Asif Sadiq explains the role of equity throughout the recruitment process and beyond – creating a level playing field for people from all backgrounds to succeed.

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Transcript: Video 7: Equity

Asif Sadiq

Many times we talk about equity, but people say, well, actually we’re trying to embrace equality, we want to treat everyone the same. The truth is, we can’t assume that if we give every single person the same tools they will succeed because people have different needs. What equity is about is about providing different tools to different individuals based on their needs, not to give them an advantage, but to bring them to the same start line to level the playing field.

So when we think of recruitment and we think of equity within recruitment, it’s not about giving someone a job because of their diversity or the different elements they bring, it’s about bringing them to that same level as others, having the same opportunities. But as I said, we know that because of historical challenges or other challenges that different underrepresented groups face, they will not have that equity. So we need to create that.

The other big point with equity is that equity doesn’t mean tokenism. It’s not about that we need to because of equity employ a woman or someone who’s from an ethnic minority background and so on. It’s really about creating for those diverse groups, the various groups that we have, the opportunity to be able to at least access the process, access the system.

And then when we talk about inclusion in the workplace, equity doesn’t end unfortunately just at the recruitment stage. Equity continues within people’s experiences, their day to day experiences in the workplace, but also their career journey. During that career journey, we need to continue to create that equity and create that level playing field for each and every person.

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Ensuring that all opportunities for progression and development are made transparent and inclusive, is another important step.

Transparent career paths

Coffman et al (2021) describe three steps an organisation can take to establish a culture of transparency in this context:

• create strong career paths, determining the required skills and competencies to reach various roles or career stages
• identify available training and professional development resources for employees to gain those skills
• clearly and consistently communicate that information to employees so they can make informed decisions and pursue growth opportunities at the company.

Once everyone knows, or can easily find out, what their options are, careful monitoring of the diversity characteristics of those who apply for and obtain the various opportunities should be undertaken.

If the results of that monitoring demonstrate an issue with inclusion, there are a number of initiatives an employer might consider.

Career mentoring and sponsorship

Mentoring is a more familiar concept for most of us, described by Omadeke (2021) as

‘a relationship between someone sharing knowledge and providing guidance (the mentor) and someone learning from that person’s experience and example (the mentee).’

Sponsorship can be thought of as a more active process, in which the sponsor advocates for the sponsee in situations where they are not in the room, e.g. with senior leaders or decision makers.

Watch this short video from Everywoman Ltd., explaining the importance of sponsorship to those who are under-represented.

If you’re interested in finding out more, Bain and Company have some advice about developing a sponsorship and mentoring programme:

Development programmes

In her article on diversity, equity and inclusion ‘game changers’, Corrales (2021) shares several examples of employer initiatives that are making opportunities more accessible for under-represented groups. These include programmes focusing on:

• Women in leadership
• Autism at work
• Youth employment
• Flexibility and work life balance
• Targeted groups, e.g. migrants and refugees, or ex-military.

In several cases, an external organisation has been brought in to provide the structure for specialised training, coaching, networking etc.