Designing careers is one thing – but getting people to engage with them is another.
Many organisations have career frameworks. Over time, many have invested heavily in defining pathways, building job architectures and introducing learning platforms. These structures bring clarity and consistency, notwithstanding the disappearance of more traditional career paths.
However, as our recent Roundtable highlighted, they don’t always translate into action.
Participants described a familiar pattern. Despite having strong frameworks in place, career ownership is still not consistently visible in how people think or behave day to day. Here at The Career Innovation Company, we believe that the gap is not in the design itself, but in the way that design is experienced.
Part of the challenge is that frameworks can unintentionally reinforce traditional views of careers. Where progression is still interpreted mainly as upward movement, employees can feel limited, particularly in environments where vertical opportunities are constrained.
This points towards a deeper issue: designing careers is not the same as activating them.
This was illustrated clearly in the example shared by our guest provocateur Ayelet Hod from Teva Pharmaceuticals. Instead of focusing solely on structure, an emphasis was put on enabling people to engage with their careers in practice – building self-awareness, developing the skills to navigate opportunities and creating ways to act on them.
This shifted career development from something defined by the organisation, to something genuinely experienced by the individual.
This step is often missing. Frameworks describe how careers should work, but without the capability to use them, they remain theoretical.
The role of managers in the gap between design and experience is crucial. While organisations encourage individuals to take ownership, it is they who shape the way careers are experienced on a day-to-day basis. Where they are equipped to support development, employees are more likely to explore options and move forward. Where they are not, even the best designed systems can struggle to gain traction.
Visibility of opportunity is also a critical factor. Encouraging people to take ownership assumes they can clearly see where to go. In many organisations, however, opportunities remain fragmented and unclear. Without that visibility, career ownership becomes an expectation without a pathway.
These reflections point to a shift in emphasis. Career frameworks remain important, but they are only one part of the equation.
Activating career ownership requires organisations to go further – building capability, enabling managers and making opportunities visible. This way, development becomes part of how work happens rather than something separate.
Without it, even the well-designed frameworks risk remaining “well-designed”.
So, ask yourself this: are your career frameworks enabling action, or just describing it?
