Last week I had a call with a new client about a workshop they're looking for us to run as part of one of their latest staff initiatives. This is an organisation that is really trying to listen to its employees: a message that is coming through loud and clear is staff's desire for more support around career development.
As part of our discussion we talked about the breadth of ways staff can gain career development and the importance of recognising that you don't have to move up the career ladder or have a change in job title to 'develop your career'.
That set me thinking... how can we be doing more to help people understand that message in a meaningful way; in a way that enables them to do something different?
It can be easy for senior management to encourage people to 'take secondments', 'move sideways' and 'start side projects', but unless those openings are created and signposted it can be hard for staff to work out what those opportunities could be or how to find them.
It seems to me that job crafting is a brilliant tool for giving people that practical understanding of what they can be doing personally to develop their career.
The advantage of the job crafting process is that it focuses people on where they are at currently and gives them a clear structure for thinking through where they would like to get to.
Often job crafting is used with someone trying to make changes to their current role to gain more job satisfaction, higher levels of wellbeing or improve performance.
But the process can work equally well for helping people to work out what they need to be doing differently to develop their career.
The wonderful thing about the job crafting process is that it provides flexibility within a framework. It allows people to be aspirational but then facilitates them to work out manageable, tangible next steps which can be used to create a practical career development plan.