Benefits of a Career Ladder – Should Your Business Use Them?

Small businesses and teams often struggle to provide their employees with avenues for advancement. They typically don’t need a complex corporate hierarchy with senior leadership roles and middle managers, so promotional opportunities may be scarce. The lack of mobility is usually a worthwhile tradeoff for employees who prefer to work in a smaller-sized company. But not always. The absence of opportunities for advancement is a big reason employees cite for leaving a job. Fortunately, there is a straightforward way to create meaningful mobility within a job that doesn’t necessarily add any layers to the organizational structure. It’s called a job ladder or career ladder.

A career ladder is a way of thinking about and designing a job as a set of duties for the here and now and as a pathway along which someone in the role could progress over time. Jobs designed this way typically have three to five tiers, depending on the current and anticipated needs of the organization. Each tier comes with a different or additional set of responsibilities and expectations – and has its own pay range.

By creating a ladder for your jobs, you provide employees with tangible goals and rewards for developing their knowledge, skills, and abilities and staying with your organization. If done right, career ladders can also help protect your organization from discrimination claims because they establish objective and transparent benchmarks to justify promotions and pay increases.

Are Career Ladders Right for Your Jobs?

Career ladders don’t make sense for every job. If the work and the competencies needed to do it will remain substantially the same over time, and you won’t be able to afford regular pay raises, career ladders might be of little use. However, career ladders can be a great tool if you expect the person doing the job to develop in the role, eventually taking on new responsibilities and ownership while requiring less day-to-day oversight.

For the record, advancing up a career ladder doesn’t have to end in a management position. You can have career ladders that begin and end with nonsupervisory duties, ladders that add management at a certain step, and ladders in which employees begin as managers.

Creating a Career Ladder

The particulars of a career ladder will depend on the nature of the job and its growth potential. A high-skill job with little potential for change over time might have only three tiers based on whether the individual is new to the role, experienced in it, or has been in the position for many years. A job with more room for growth might start at an entry or intermediate level.

For each level, add a descriptor or number to the job title (e.g., Associate or Senior Marketing Specialist, or Sales Associate II) and an overview of the job’s responsibilities, its deliverables, its core competencies, the degree to which its work is supervised, and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to do it.

The higher the job level, the more you’d expect from someone doing that job. A Copyeditor I might be in an entry-level position responsible for proofreading content for typos and deviations from the team style guide. A Copyeditor II might also be expected to catch typos and errors of style while also being responsible for improving the quality of the writing. A Copyeditor III might do all this to varying degrees while also being responsible for checking the work of other copyeditors and helping develop the team style guide.

Deciding what to include at each level can be daunting. We recommend starting the process by exploring the following questions:

• How will each current role need to evolve to meet the future needs of the organization? Think about the competencies and job duties that will be important for success in two, five, and ten years.
• What additional knowledge, skills, and abilities would your current employees like to develop? You probably won’t be able to grant their every wish. Still, by collaborating with employees on the evolution of their jobs, you get on-the-ground insight you might have overlooked and a better chance of buy-in from your employees.
• What tasks are managers currently doing that could be delegated to their direct reports in the future?
• What gaps currently exist that could be filled by employees receiving training or other professional development?
• What hopes or expectations do you and your managers have for employee self-sufficiency? While an entry-level role might require constant oversight of work, you’d expect someone in a role to need less day-to-day supervision over time. That expectation can be captured in a career ladder.
• What changes would you make if you were going to rehire for the role or hire a second person?

Don’t worry about getting the details of each job tier right on the first try. You can always make changes in the future. Your career ladders will need to evolve as your organization does. The important thing is that your organization and your people are leveling up together in ways that serve you both.

Would a Career Ladder Help Your Business?

It’s hard to know what your business needs to do to improve retention and attract new employees. Surveying your staff is a start, but employees often hesitate to be completely open when talking to their managers or HR rep. However, a non-biased, third-party cultural review could be the solution to getting you the feedback you need. GTM’s HR experts will gather feedback on your organization’s strengths, opportunities for improvement, and recommendations for continued future success. Fill out the brief form below to learn more.