Career growth and employee retention go hand in hand. In fact, according to our 2021 Career Progression Survey, 76% of employees are somewhat or very likely to leave their company if they feel dissatisfied with the opportunities available for career progression. The career lattice — a 360-degree approach to employee development — might just bridge that gap.
Implementing a career lattice can have a positive impact on the internal mobility, employee retention, and diversification of skills within your organization. Here’s how to get it right.
What is a career lattice?
A career lattice is a framework for employee progression and growth that offers more flexibility than the traditional corporate model. It offers employees full flexibility of movement — up, down, diagonal, and sideways — across different roles and departments, meaning there are multiple pathways to nurture professional growth and progression.
A career lattice is characterized by:
- Multidirectional movement across departments, business units, and roles
- Greater skills and knowledge diversification
- Increased career path personalization that recognizes employees’ differing growth needs
- Broader employee skills and experience
“The career lattice expands the traditional ladder to include diagonal job growth, allowing employees to explore and grow their careers by moving across the company, into varied roles that offer competency development,” said Jessica Lim, former HR manager at MyPerfectResume. “This type of career strategy creates a more well-rounded understanding of the company and the industry, and how each department contributes.”
Career Ladder vs. Career Lattice
A career ladder is defined by upward career mobility: Employees start at the bottom and make their way to the top, rung by rung, and role by role.
But employee growth is rarely linear and career success looks different for every individual — so how do you support employees who don't want a leadership role? This is what a career lattice attempts to address.
A career lattice allows employees to move up, diagonally, and sideways, depending on professional development needs, their career plans, and changing needs at an organizational level. This increased flexibility offers employees and organizations multiple routes to develop the new skills and knowledge required to achieve business goals.
See how these two approaches compare in the table below.
Benefits of Career Lattices
When done well, a career lattice supports retention, promotes more effective talent management, enables organizations to proactively plug skills gaps, and ensures continuous development and high performance.
1. Boost employee retention.
When employees have nowhere to grow, they often quit. In a 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association, 91% of respondents said it is somewhat or very important to consistently have opportunities to learn in their jobs. Meanwhile, 2022 data from the Pew Research Center found that 33% of employees who quit a job in 2021 said lack of advancement opportunities was a major factor in their decision.
But not all employees want to move up. Nurturing employee career moves in all directions might just mean that employees who are at risk of churning stay, keeping their deep expertise and skills within your organization for longer.
Hosea Chang, COO at Hayden Los Angeles, has seen this strategy work firsthand: “We’ve been experimenting with the career lattice model for a while and we’ve seen some great results. We were able to hang onto some of our best people this way.”
2. Save on recruitment costs.
When retention is high, recruitment costs are less. But human resources teams can save even more on their hiring budget using a career lattice approach because it naturally promotes internal mobility, supporting employees who aren’t in the market for a more senior position.
Instead of sourcing, hiring, and training a new employee, organizations can draw on their own talent pool and proactively reskill and upskill employees as needs and priorities change. This boosts internal mobility, reduces training costs for new hires, and improves talent management agility.
The net result? A huge saving on recruitment costs.
3. Enable skills transfer across the organization.
In the current market for talent, skills gaps are rife — and they’re widening at speed. Implementing a career lattice as part of your employee development program can help bridge some of these gaps internally because it encourages greater skills transfer across the organization. This is because your organization’s top performers often have adaptive skills — such as communication and project management — that can be applied elsewhere.
“It starts with asking, ‘If this stellar employee has done such a great job in their department, what else can they do?’” Chang said.
Finding out where these skills can be leveraged across your organization means your business can take a more strategic view of talent management and growth.
4. Increase innovation and knowledge-sharing between teams.
In large organizations, knowledge often stays locked within teams. But a lattice approach to career development can open up those invisible information borders by broadening employees’ experiences and fostering cross-functional skills development. This increases exposure to new ideas and ways of doing things — both helpful components for driving innovation and high performance.
“Flexibility in career development not only increases employee satisfaction but also benefits your organization by fostering knowledge transfer. When employees switch teams, they can bring fresh perspectives to the table and drive the company forward,” Lim said.
5. Encourage career development and broaden experience.
Not everyone knows exactly what they want to do for a career — and as your employees continue their journey with you, their career goals and aspirations will likely change over time. With the opportunity to move laterally or diagonally, employees gain more exposure to different experiences and ways of using their skills that weren’t an option before.
This enriches your employees’ opportunities for development beyond just the requirements of their role and opens up more options in their long-term career path.
What does a career lattice look like?
A career lattice offers endless possibilities for employees to hone their skills and gain valuable experience across the organization. But because career lattices are so flexible, it can be hard to conceptualize what they look like.
Let’s explore some career lattice examples:
- A software developer with a strong technical background could make a diagonal move into a product manager role, drawing on their expertise in project management and technical background to guide product development.
- In retail, a store manager might make a diagonal move into a sales merchandising management role, drawing on their experience of customer service and shop displays.
- A customer success manager making a lateral move into a content marketing role could bring client knowledge and relationship management skills to build more effective marketing campaigns and content strategies that respond better to pain points.
- In finance, an analyst could move upward into a senior analyst role — or leverage their background to make a lateral move into a risk management role.
Career Lattice Challenges (and How to Overcome Them)
Implementing a career lattice represents a huge shift in the way your organization, managers, and employees view and understand growth and progression. Overcoming these challenges and mindset shifts requires clarity, effective goal-setting, and the right data.
Job architecture feels unclear.
In any organization, having a clear job architecture that lays out job roles, job levels, and your compensation model gives employees much-needed structure and clarity about their potential career path with you.
But in a career lattice, this structure might end up feeling a little…unstructured. Because a career lattice enables much greater flexibility and freedom of movement, employees could find it a little more challenging to understand their current position, how their role fits in, and the competencies and skills needed to progress to the next step.
The solution: Create clear, accessible documentation.
As organizations grow and scale, roles, compensation, and job levels can often become a little disorganized and variable between departments and job titles. Implementing a career lattice is the perfect time to review your job architecture documentation, and create clear, accessible guidelines on what progression will look like moving forward.
Your documentation should cover:
- Current roles, levels, and career paths at your organization
- Skills and competencies for roles and levels
- How compensation and job levels are calculated in the event of an internal move
- Best practices for managers
Paths for progression are less visible.
In a traditional career ladder, growth and progression are easy to conceptualize, because there’s only one direction: up. But in a career lattice, employees have 360-degree movement. New paths are open that were closed before — but this added complexity can mean opportunities are easy to miss, especially when employees are wondering if they should stay in their lane, or get off the promotion expressway entirely.
The solution: Signpost opportunities with career pathing.
To understand their direction of travel, your employees need a big neon sign that tells them where they are currently. But even more critically, they need to understand the destinations available.
Think of it like this: An employee considering a lateral or even downward move into a new department might feel that their progress has plateaued, or even taken a backward step. Outlining the potential for growth with career pathing will help your employees visualize their careers and help them make an informed decision about where they want to be in the future.
Managers might find it hard to lose star talent.
Managers are a critical force in developing a high-performing team because they are at the forefront of nurturing employees’ skills and growth. But when managers spot star potential on their team, it can be hard for them to prioritize employee growth over the team’s needs. Faced with suggesting top talent for a new role or keeping them around, managers may be tempted to choose the latter.
It’s a practice known as “talent hoarding” — and it’s a huge potential stumbling block for internal talent mobility. A 2021 study examining how managers impact internal mobility noted that managers with talent-hoarding tendencies stunt their employees’ leadership development and generally have more turnover.
The solution: Set goals around internal hiring.
In any organization, achieving success means pulling together — and this applies to how talent is managed across the company, too. Setting clear goals around internal hiring, such as aiming to increase the percentage of internal moves each quarter, will help cement it as a strategic priority.
While managers may feel reluctant to part with key talent, offering referral bonuses or other incentives may ease the sting and help it embed more successfully as part of your performance management process.
Employees lack the data to make informed decisions about the next move.
Without data, employee progression is like sailing a ship without a compass. Employees have a general direction of travel but don’t know how to get there. This lack of clarity can lead to frustration and stalling growth — which could eventually lead to turnover if not managed effectively.
Taking a data-driven approach to the performance management process can help employees — and their managers — weigh key strengths and determine where their skills and time are best spent to move the organization forward.
The solution: Take a data-driven approach to performance management and growth processes.
Implementing a performance management platform like Lattice can help employees — and managers — keep track of this data. Lattice helps employees and managers track performance management and developmental needs in one platform, with performance reviews, goals, and notes from one-on-ones. This ensures employees have all the data they need to track their progression over time.
How to Support Internal Mobility
Prioritizing internal mobility relies on creating an environment where employees feel supported to explore different roles within their organization. This depends on creating access, nurturing ongoing skills development, and embedding career progression into your culture. Here are four steps for getting this right.
1. Secure executive buy-in.
Any large-scale organizational change needs to be led from the top. When implementing a new employee development program, securing buy-in from senior leaders ensures that it’s viewed as a strategic priority, and increases the likelihood of strong adoption across the rest of the organization.
“Executives need to identify talent development and career growth as a strategic imperative,” said Cory Colton, executive coach and senior director of the Institute for Leadership Effectiveness at Carilion Clinic. “The business should partner in, or take lead on, the structure for the career lattice. It should be tied to the overall strategy of the company and help it move forward toward growth and sustainability.”
2. Advertise job openings internally.
In a career lattice, encouraging internal mobility within your organization is a priority. That starts with making things as easy and as visible as possible.
Advertising openings early and often is key. Sharing a simplified version of the job description that focuses on skills — rather than role or title — can help employees feel more confident about applying. Organizations can highlight upcoming roles by creating a dashboard or internal careers site for opportunities, as well as highlighting them in all-hands meetings and via company messaging channels. At a team level, managers are well-placed to flag new opportunities in team meetings and one-on-ones.
3. Assess suitability for the role.
Once the internal applications start to roll in, it’s time to assess employees’ suitability. HR teams must work with the existing manager and potential hiring manager to evaluate the employee’s performance and skills alongside the role’s key competencies.
Just like in any hiring process, communication and transparency are key — so keeping employees in the loop at every stage will ensure trust in a fair, consistent process. If an internal interview is required, make sure employees are fully briefed on how they’ll be evaluated and what to expect.
4. Give employees the tools to evaluate their skills and development opportunities.
Regardless of the outcome in any potential role change, it’s critical to ensure that employees have clear next steps to understand their developmental needs and future career journey.
If an employee doesn’t end up qualifying for an internal move, consider other ways you can support them in their growth, such as including them in project teams to help hone skills in a chosen area, mentoring and coaching, or implementing temporary or part-time secondments to other departments. Integrating these support structures with a data-driven performance management process will mean employees have the information to progress long-term.
Empower your workforce with Lattice.
People aren’t one-dimensional — and nurturing their growth long-term requires an employee development program that’s as multifaceted as they are. “People are going to look for new passions and development areas during their careers. Why not give them the possibility to develop their passions within your organization?” Lim said.
Research shows this pays off: A 2021 study found that employees who are moved laterally are more likely to be promoted and see a larger wage increase than those who aren’t. Plus, implementing a career lattice doesn’t just benefit your employees — it could also make your organization more competitive long-term by boosting retention, performance, and diversity of skills.
Getting the right processes and mindset in place are critical to achieving this successfully. But organizations — and employees — also need the data to make the best possible choices for development and growth.
This is where Lattice can help. Lattice’s solution for HR leaders helps organizations proactively identify their top performers, highlight skills gaps, and nurture growth so that employees can reach their full potential — whatever their career aspirations. Find out more by booking a demo.
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