Career Pathing: Mapping Out the Employee Development Journey

Career pathing—a systematic approach to career development that enables employees to map multiple career path scenarios, review role competencies, evaluate skills gaps, and plan for development—confers many benefits on organizations that do it well. However, the evidence suggests that career pathing is still not the norm among Canadian organizations.

This briefing makes the business case for career pathing and showcases career development and career pathing practices at three Canadian organizations: Sierra Systems, Export Development Canada, and Bruce Power. It discusses each employer’s unique approach to developing employees and ensuring they have the resources they need to map a career within their organizations. It also provides keys to success that other organizations could adopt in developing and implementing their own career pathing programs.

Organizations that successfully implement career pathing can expect to benefit from enhanced employee engagement and performance, improved attraction and retention rates, stronger internal talent pipelines, narrower skills gaps, and more effective succession planning.