Job Benchmarking-Right Way to Approach the Dual Ladder Career System
Over the past 30 years there has been considerable debate both by academics and business professionals over the effectiveness of dual ladder career progression systems. Some insist that a dual ladder career path encourages retention of highly skilled technical employees, while others argue that the dual ladder encourages mediocrity by rewarding employees for loyalty instead of performance and serves as a dumping ground for those not fit for management.
Before I go any further I should probably offer a working definition of the dual ladder approach to career progression, since you may be unfamiliar with this somewhat obscure topic. A dual ladder career system is essentially the practice of offering two separate career paths within an organization – one for managers, the other for technical workers - that offer equitable pay scales at each "rung" of the career ladder.
The whole idea behind this system is to provide an alternative method of career progression to technical workers such as engineers, programmers, and scientists who often feel "forced" to move into management to progress their career and take home a larger paycheck. As a result many skilled technical workers end up in management positions that are highly administrative in nature and much of their technical knowledge and expertise is not fully leveraged. The technical ladder is seen as a way to retain highly skilled technical workers who are interested in, as one 3M executive quipped, "Molecules, not meetings"
The debate has raged on for years over the usefulness of the dual ladder approach as success has been consistently inconsistent from one organization to the next. It seems that for every story of success using a dual ladder career progression system one can find a contradicting story of failure with such a system.
How can this be?
In my opinion, the number one problem that organizations have when implementing a dual ladder system is a failure to properly identify which individuals are best fit for each career path - job benchmarking. For many organizations deciding which path a worker should follow boils down to little more than an educated guess. Even worse, some organizations rely on their team members to determine which career path is best for them. Don't get me wrong, it's great to get an employee's input as to their career aspirations, but employees have a tendency to choose the wrong career path for the wrong reasons and their employers are usually the ones who end up paying for it.
One reason for this is that despite equitable pay scales, the management ladder is often preferable to the technical ladder as one's status, prestige, and power within an organization is often measured by the number of individuals one has underneath them as direct or indirect reports. Given the choice of which ladder to pursue, many individuals will choose the management ladder in an effort to gain greater respect and prestige within one's organization even though an "equitable" position exists on the technical ladder.
This can pose some serious problems for an organization as employees often pursue the management ladder when they are a better fit for a technical career. The reason being that as it becomes clear that an individual is not fit for a career in management he or she will often be sent to the technical ladder to see if they fare any better there. While this seems like the natural thing to do, the technical ladder becomes a sort of "consolation prize" to the individual removed from the management ladder, and many times he or she will choose to find employment elsewhere as a result of being "demoted" to the technical ladder.
This of course is contrary to the very purpose of establishing the dual ladder in the first place: retaining highly skilled technical workers.
As I see it the only way to ensure that a dual ladder career path is successful is to put into place systems for determining which career path is the best fit for each individual. This means not only asking an employee which path they would like to pursue, but following up their interest with an objective method of determining which path is really best for them and their organization.
I have had great success helping clients identify which individuals are best fit for a career in management and which are best fit for a career that is more technical in nature with the use of job benchmarking that can identify the unique needs of each career ladder and match one's team members to the appropriate ladder. This approach is a great way to remove the guess work involved with a dual ladder system.
In implementing a dual ladder career system in your organization it is absolutely critical that you determine which individuals are right for each career ladder. Guessing or relying on your team members to determine which path is best for them is a recipe for disaster and will create serious problems down the road.
The bottom line is that the best way to approach the dual ladder system is not to rush the process, carefully determine what needs or opportunities this system is going to address, how success will be measured, ensure that adequate resources are available to fund the salaries on the technical ladder, achieve buy-in from key stakeholders, and above all be sure that you are placing team members on the right career paths within your organization.
1-866-988-RAIN
