Managing a growth journey isn’t easy.
Whether personally managing your growth journey or helping to build the futures of those in your employ as a leader, it takes a lot of planning and ongoing focus.
Mike Groesser, Vice President of Learning at Fidelity, probably spoke for a lot of us at Fuel50’s FuelX Talent Mobility Virtual Conference, when he talked about the need for reskilling and upskilling to be ready for the future of work:
“Like most of you, I’ve come to the realization over the last few years that the skills that got me here aren’t going to keep me here or take me to the next place. There are things that I need to do, but part of the realization I had was this — what are those skills? And what are those other opportunities? What are the future roles that I’m not even thinking of yet today? Or where would I go?
What if I make the wrong choice? … (and) what if I grow in the wrong direction or miss an opportunity that I could’ve really taken? Those are some pretty stressful things to think about, and it can cause undue pressure on what’s already a pretty stressful time right now for all of us.”
It’s all about adopting a “growth mindset”
What Mike Groesser was talking about, in his presentation on A Data-Driven Approach to Career Growth, was the growth mindset that was conceived and defined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck as “the belief that a person’s capacities and talents can be improved over time.”
Prof. Dweck explained this in a Harvard Business Review article where she said:
“Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning. When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive far greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation. “
It is that feeling of empowerment and commitment that Mike Groesser and his team at Fidelity were focused on developing when they connected with Fuel50.
But first, Fidelity had to change a long-standing company tradition.
As Groesser described it,
“We have traditionally been very manager led — the manager knows all, the manager directs all, and your manager determines where you go. But now we’re moving to more of a talent marketplace where the associate drives things. … in order to create that kind of culture, to create that kind of environment — a talent marketplace — we started to zero in on career pathing, better support, effective technology, and more useful measurement of things. Those were some of the key drivers. …”
The importance of “career vitality”
Fidelity has organizational values centered around “career vitality”. When it comes to building a career in their organization, career vitality takes on three forms — new roles, new experiences, and new skills.
“Some people don’t necessarily want to move roles,” Groesser said, “but they do want to work on different types of work. Maybe they don’t want to advance into a management position, but they want to develop new skills that make them more valuable to the company. All of those are welcome, and all of those should be appreciated. So that was part of the context that we walked into — how do we create an experience where career vitality is more than just a term that we talk about but is actually an experience that people have at Fidelity?”
Groesser and his team found that to create an effective talent marketplace for Fidelity associates, they needed to zero in on better career pathing, effective technology, and more meaningful measurement of things.
A key concept that came out of this was “supercharging” your skills. By better understanding the skills you have today and the skills required for tomorrow, you can figure out where the gaps are and what you need to do to close them.
Fuel50’s AI-driven opportunity marketplace is at the core of Fidelity’s career vitality strategy. Groesser made the case that the personalized recommendations that flow from the Fuel50 talent marketplace are precisely what the company needs to make its 47,000+ associates feel more personally engaged in their future growth journey.
Democratizing the talent experience
Mike Groesser had many more insights into how Fidelity is building better internal talent mobility and workforce agility — and you can see his entire FuelX presentation here — but he closed his presentation with this important point:
“How much better does it feel if I’m able to use a platform like this and find out things about myself, but then also get proactive recommendations? … And then you get that exact right recommendation that says, ‘Hey, this is the next step. Or, this is the video you might want to watch.’ …
Our goal is the more we can learn and understand this, the better we can create an associate experience that helps empower them as they’re self-guiding their career — so they don’t feel alone and so they don’t feel stressed by it. … (and) we know that creating a plan can help with that a lot. …
Our goal in all of this going forward is how can we maximize what we’ve already learned about career advice, about providing associates with an ecosystem that they can show their skills and discover opportunities in? How much better could that be if we can encourage people to use it and see the value that they get out of it, and create an experience for everybody?”
Yes, managing a growth journey isn’t easy. But, with a hyper-personalized AI opportunity marketplace, your people are enabled to own their future and, perhaps for the first time, can start smart-matching to opportunities, jobs, projects, vacancies, learning experiences, mentors, and more.
Internal talent mobility is essential in this new era of work, and a talent marketplace solution is required to apply this talent operating model in a sustainable and scalable way. In this playbook, we explore why organizations need to invest in an internal talent marketplace.
