Covid has inspired the biggest ‘career moment’ in a generation…
By: Nigel Borowski
Tags: Covid 19, Careers, Reset, Hybrid, Talent

Now we need the ‘trigger’ to realise the benefits!

Back in the autumn of 2016, I wrote an article ‘Accelerating Talent Success for Millennials and beyond…’ which set out a people-centred approach to career success. In the article we introduced the concept of ‘Career Moments’

What are ‘career moments’?

In our daily working lives we do not think about our career constantly. In fact, given the magnitude of the decisions we make about our career, some would argue that we do not spend anywhere near enough time thinking about it. There are times though when our career does come to the forefront of our minds, we call these ‘career moments’. Typically they may have been forced upon us as we are starting out in our first job or are between roles or assignments, or a conscious choice if our current work or job is not to our liking, or we are attracted by new opportunities.

Covid has created more of these career moments in the past 12–16 months. People have had the chance to reflect on their working lives, and many are now initiating a conscious, meaningful step in response. If we are not careful, during these ‘career moments’ our natural human instincts can take us off track. Our bias towards short-term gratification (Present bias), inflating the good and downplaying the bad (Optimism bias), our tendency to copy others when we cannot make an informed decision (Social Default bias) and fear of failure or of holding on to what we’ve already put time and effort into (Loss aversion) can lead to faulty decision making. By raising awareness of our behaviours and biases in these moments, people can be guided and prompted to make better decisions that will lead them to long-term career success.

Recent research by Peakon (based on 10 million employee survey responses) shows that during lockdown aspects of employee engagement improved as people appreciated remote working (up 10%), their physical work environment (up 6%) and their company’s care for their mental wellbeing (up 5%). Their views on personal professional growth did not improve though (down 0.5%).

So, how do we create more agile careers?

Looking back to our pre-Covid thinking, we observed four things that organisations do that achieve sustainable personal growth:

1. Put people in control of their own career and learning

Remove ambiguity, enable people to take control and responsibility for their career and learning.

2. Equip them with the skills to be self-directed

Provide them with the opportunity to develop their own self-awareness and ability to develop their own vision of success.

3. Provide them with a toolkit and support

Support mass adoption by providing a consistent approach through a toolkit to support implementation.

4. Make the experience enjoyable and fulfilling.

Motivate people to overcome the inevitable challenges and create an environment where everyone supports each other to succeed.

Whilst Covid has clearly impacted how we work and connect with others, many of these trends were already emerging, the pandemic has simply accelerated them. We see the positives in this, with the potential for benefits to come sooner.

Covid has stimulated the desire for change — probably the biggest ‘career moment’ in a generation! To realise these positive benefits needs a shift to self-directed mindsets and behaviours. This calls for a deliberate RESET to trigger them. Individuals have reflected and done their thinking, now teams need to RESET and move this into action by finding a way of working that enables people to contribute, and organisations to provide the toolkit and support.

We’re looking forward to exploring the great hybrid reset with you. Join the discussion in the Tribe now.