It’s not uncommon for titles of the same position at separate companies to differ: a UX architect here might be a product designer elsewhere.
But what happens when different titles represent the same role at a single company?
When Associate Director of HR Alex Kewney joined CCC in 2018, “junior engineer,” “associate engineer” and “engineer 1” were used interchangeably for an entry-level developer role.
As such, associate engineers who noticed open engineer 1 positions at CCC were eager to speak with management about moving up. But it wasn’t a promotion; it was a lateral move muddied by the overlapping titles.
This, alongside an employee engagement survey, sounded alarms that formalized career development was a necessary step for the team behind CCC’s AI-powered auto care platform.
“One of our engagement surveys revealed that less than half of the organization said they knew what career opportunities were available to them, with a majority of these coming from the product and technical teams,” Kewney said.
Concerned and eager to fix it, leadership partnered with HR to design and implement a career ladder that reflected industry standards. The team took into account market compensation surveys and manager input to define criteria for each role under the technology function to inform CCC’s development plan, which took about nine months to finalize.
Career Paths vs. Career Ladders
- A ladder provides standardized criteria that differentiate between unique levels of individual contributors (ICs) and people leaders within the company.
- Paths show how to move throughout the organization to help employees reach their professional goals.
Today, ICs lean on the one-page document to manage their career growth while leaders use it to identify strengths and gaps on their team. Additionally, CCC leadership has a separate ladder to inform their next move within the company.
“Our career ladder is a tool to help them navigate their career. It outlines expectations at various levels, because as employees advance, those expectations grow,” Kewney said.
After implementing the career ladder, CCC reported “significantly higher” retention in 2019, and a 40 percent bump in promotions among its more than 600 employees on the technical team following title and salary adjustments, Kewney said.
Developing a career ladder is something that most HR people don’t get to do every day, but when you get to, you want to do it right.”
“Developing a career ladder is something that most HR professionals don’t get to do every day,” Kewney said. “But when the opportunity presents itself, you want to do it right.”
Here are seven steps Kewney suggests to ensure a successful career ladder ideation and implementation.
1. Identify a department within the company that would benefit the most from career development.
If starting from scratch, consider building the first career ladder for the part of the business that needs it most. At CCC, they piloted their career ladder with the technical organization.
“Our product and tech team is the largest organization in CCC,” Kewney said. “We saw evidence that there was an issue and that employees on this side of the house needed clarity on career development.”
Since introducing it with the technical function, CCC has launched career ladders for product management, a subset of their sales organization and is currently working with a group in product implementation and delivery.
2. Ensure strong management support.
Career ladders take a collaborative effort from HR and the organization’s leadership. If those in leadership aren’t willing to invest the time and resources to make it work, Kewney said the development plan is likely to fall flat. Early and ongoing buy-in from leaders helps ensure the career ladder is designed correctly from the onset and used effectively once in motion.
“We believe strongly at CCC that the career ladder is most effective — and maybe only effective — when two things are happening,” Kewney said. “The first is that there’s evidence of an issue that employees need clarity on career development. The second is management and leadership support. If you don't have that, you're going to fail.”
3. Use compensation benchmarking and internal discussions with management to ensure the ladder is aligned to industry trends.
To show how IC roles grow from a level one engineer or an entry-level engineer to a level six engineer, or what CCC calls a senior principal engineer, Kewney and his team utilized benchmark surveys, compensation surveys and market research. Then they cross-checked their findings with CCC leaders to make sure it matched up.
4. Set clear expectations between each level, but keep it simple.
CCC kept its career ladders to one page and avoided concepts that were too technical or specific. Employees have access to it via SharePoint and are encouraged to print it out, hang it at their desks and to bring it to their mid-year reviews.
“We’re not saying as a software engineer or a systems engineer that you need to have a basic DevOps understanding or that you need to know automation,” Kewney said. “Our career ladder doesn’t get that specific. We’re saying, as a level two engineer, for example, that you should be developing professional expertise and applying company policies and procedures to resolve a variety of issues.”
Using Metaphors to Help Further Understanding
5. Include advancements for ICs that don’t involve leadership roles.
Not everyone wants to be a leader within a company. By offering senior roles specific for ICs within a career ladder, companies provide additional avenues for advancements to keep senior talent engaged and motivated. CCC did this by adding principal and senior principal titles that follow their level one, two, three, and lead positions across product and engineering.
“We added these roles to give people the opportunity to continue to grow if they didn’t want to become a people leader,” Kewney said. “Because what’s worse than having a manager who doesn’t want to manage?”
6. Develop a communication plan for rolling the system out to employees.
Career ladders often introduce title changes and salary adjustments for existing employees, making it essential to have a strong communication plan when introducing them to the wider company.
CCC began their rollout by printing out individual letters to all 600 workers affected by the new ladders that managers hand-delivered to employees. The letters showed each person’s new title and level, as well as directions on where to locate the career ladder in SharePoint. Then the CTO sent a note championing the changes and what it meant for employees moving forward. Kewney also held training sessions for every team and invited senior leaders to attend.
“Every step of the way, we tried to embed the idea that leadership is driving this change and the value it delivers,” Kewney said.
7. Understand the ladder must change with the company.
Career ladders are not static, Kewney said. As the industry and company changes, so must the trajectories of employees. To guide ladder updates, CCC leverages exit surveys, feedback from career ladder training sessions, engagement surveys and focus groups.
“We view our career ladder as a living, breathing thing,” Kewney said.
