Why Your Agency Needs Career Ladders
When it comes to keeping teams and internal processes organized, many business owners and leaders feel stuck in the weeds. From managing work roles and expectations, to making sure historical knowledge gets passed on, business owners have a lot on their plate.
If this resonates, I have good news. There's a strategic tool you can use that can help you get the internal structure you need to uplevel your leadership team and empower them to take on daily challenges with confidence. This tool is called a career ladder, and it's likely the organizational piece your agency has been missing.
Implementing a career ladder within your agency doesn't just provide a pathway for professional growth of your team; it's a strategic tool that can have a huge impact on the overall success and stability of the organization.
In this blog post, we'll explore the reasons why implementing career ladders is essential for any agency looking to foster a motivated workforce, ensure consistent performance standards, and build a sustainable future. From enhancing employee engagement to aligning individual aspirations with organizational goals, career ladders can transform the dynamics of any workplace.
What’s a Career Ladder?
A career ladder is a tool that provides a structured outline of the growth path for each particular role in your organization. This is organized in a format starting at entry level, and then lists progressively higher positions of that role that can be obtained within that organization. It will clearly outline the differences of each role and include key information such as title, role description, overarching goal of the role, level qualifier, years of experience, and salary band.
Fundamentally, the ladder will look something like this:
Why a Career Ladder is Important
When starting my career, I had two job offers: one as an Ophthalmic Technician at a well known children’s hospital, and the other as an Administrative Assistant at a software startup. The hospital offered limited growth, while the startup had more opportunities for advancement.
In the end, I chose the Administrative Assistant role. As someone who was hungry for career growth and an opportunity to become an expert in a particular role, this felt like a great opportunity that would grow into something more.
This brings me to #1 on my list of why having a career ladder is important:
Attract Top Candidates - Having a clear path for employees to progress in their careers will help your agency attract the top candidates ready for growth. The majority of people entering into any role within a new company want to know that there’s room for growth beyond the role they enter at.
Retain Top Candidates - When you hire talented team members, you want to make sure they stick around. Career ladders are a crucial retention tool providing a sense of clarity and motivation for employees who want to put in the work to grow within their role.
Clarity Around Workflows - A career ladder enables you to identify who on the team possesses a particular skill and their authority level. This allows teams to move quickly and effectively through workflows (and make improvements to outdated ones) without having to question who’s responsible for what.
Promotes a Healthy Culture Around Growth - Providing a clear structure around ways employees can advance removes the stress that can arise when there is little clarity around a person’s career. For individuals, this promotes a healthier mindset around advancing to the next step in their career.
Forces a Discussion Around Organizational Structure - Creating clear job responsibilities and role progressions ultimately forces leaders to have the all-important conversation around Organizational Structure. In my experience in agency operations, this is one of the foundational pieces in creating highly successful and profitable agencies.
Key to Building an Effective Career Ladder
If you’re going to utilize a career ladder, here are some key pieces of information I recommend including:
1. Title
When it comes to "titles" on your career ladder, if you’re a mid-size to larger agency, be sure to utilize levels for roles if you want to capture “promotions” that are in between the normal “entry level”, “mid-level”, “senior” roles. Remember not to list any roles that you know will never become available within your agency.
For example: At a mid-size agency you might have the following roles for UX Research - UX Researcher I, UX Researcher II, UX Researcher III, Senior UX Researcher, Lead UX Researcher, and Principle UX Researcher.
2. Role Description
For each of the titles, you want to make sure there's a high-level description of the role and its main responsibilities. This will help define and clarify the difference between the roles, as well as how they relate to and support one another.
For example: The role description for a Senior UX Researcher at a large agency might be: Responsible for delivering business and customer outcomes by identifying high impact research opportunities, executing appropriate research methodologies, and driving product impact with insights and data.
3. Goal
Now that you have the title and role description established, it's time to summarize the vision or long-term goals of that role. What do you hope a person in that role will accomplish? How do they support the overall goals of the agency?
For example: For a Senior UX Researcher at a mid-size agency, some goals could sound like: Lead research studies from start to finish including study design, conducting research, analysis & synthesis, and findings & implications deliverable; gain an understanding of the business as a whole and how the design department impacts the agency's goals; if working toward a Lead title, is starting to hone the skill as a leader in the organization.
4. Level Qualifier
The level qualifier field will include some of the qualifications that differentiate this level of the role from the one preceding it. In other words, what can this level do that the level before it could not do?
For example: Some level qualifiers for a Senior UX Researcher may be: a proven track record of generating actionable insights that results in measurable product improvements; is able to lead research and design with no oversight.
5. Years of Experience
This may seem unimportant, but I’ve found that adding the “general” years of experience it takes to get to this level sets realistic expectations for people. To determine this figure for each role, consider market standard as well as previous employees in that role; who is performing that role best, and how many years of previous experience did they have? Use that as a general lightpost for crafting a realistic range.
6. Salary Band
The salary band is the minimum and maximum salary amount that someone in a given role will earn. This field can vary by role, location, and agency.
Here’s what the career ladder would look like filled in for two consecutive levels:
Other Tips to Maximize Company Success with Career Ladders
A career ladder is only as good as the person and people using it. So, to make sure your agency is getting the most from your newly-created career ladder, there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind. These tips will help ensure your career ladder is optimized, clear, and aligned with your agency's overall goals.
Tips to maximize your company's success:
Make sure your career ladder aligns with your company's goals. If there's a role included that doesn't contribute to the long–term growth strategy, examine it and adjust accordingly.
Be sure your career ladder is tailored to your specific agency. Include specific titles, roles, and hierarchy. You don't want anything included in your career ladder that isn't relevant for your specific structure, either now or in the future.
Establish processes (such as the employee review process) to include utilizing the ladders. Capture when and how employees and their managers should be utilizing the ladder for maximum effect.
Ensure your people managers are having conversations with their direct reports in regard to their careers and are utilizing the career ladders in their 1:1 chats.
Career Ladders Are Just One Piece of the Puzzle
Ultimately, having effective career ladders is just one critical aspect of an agency's growth and success. Multiple elements, such as having an organizational structure in place, having insights into your financials and metrics, and solid workflows and documentation, are necessary to reach those long-term goals.
Having all these elements in place, including career ladders, enables your agency to continue "climbing" upward, pun intended.
To continue on, I recommend reading How to Define Your Agency's Organizational Structure next. This will equip you with the tools needed to organize, sharpen, and grow your internal systems for maximum success.
