Activating careers at scale: building the skills for self-directed development

For our latest roundtable we were delighted to welcome Ayelet Hod from Teva Pharmaceuticals who helped us answer these questions.

• What does this look like in practice?
• What needs to change to enable true career ownership?
• And is there an approach that is both consistent and flexible across diverse business units?

She shared her perspective on the rollout of their Shape Your Career programme using their “Design Once – Deploy Everywhere” strategy.

Ayelet described how the programme to build career capability has been adopted within Medis, Teva’s fully backed B2B out-licensing platform for generic pharmaceuticals. She reflected on how different business units have adapted Shape Your Career to suit their unique contexts and priorities, while maintaining quality, consistency and strategic alignment.

Designing a consistent and flexible career experience

A key issue was how to make career ownership meaningful for employees, moving beyond good intentions and into practical, scalable action. At Teva, this meant that career ownership had to begin with a clear and consistent view and across a number of different experiences. Rather than relying on fragmented initiatives, the organisation therefore used a holistic approach built around three core principles:

• Know yourself. Supported by assessment tools, coaching programmes and career consultancy.
• Enrich yourself. Delivered through learning, upskilling, reskilling and mentoring initiatives.
• Experienced. Achieved via stretch assignments, mobility opportunities and real work exposure.

Within Tevis, Medis has a presence in 70 markets and relationships with 236 customers. One of its five goals is to empower its people to thrive “by fostering a culture of continuous learning, purposeful career development, and holistic growth – enabling every individual to unlock their full potential personally and professionally.”

What would this look like in practice?

Shape & TWIST

The key to activating careers at scale came through the Shape Your Career programme and TWIST Talent Marketplace, with Shape Your Career effectively building the mindset, while TWIST activated the experience. Together, they formed the organisation’s first full-scale, year-long development engine, designed to provide employees with career management skills to excel in their current role and prepare for their future.

It is important to say that this programme is designed as an ongoing journey, rather than a one-off intervention. It is made up of meaningful experiences that build skills and confidence over time.

The programme had four stages:

• Programme Launch & Awareness. This introduces today’s career landscape, the 7 Career Skills, and Teva’s career principles.
• Core Development Journey. A structured, year‑long employee journey implemented consistently, including the Career Pulse
• TWIST Talent Marketplace Rollout. TWIST is an AI‑based internal talent marketplace for employees – matching people to development opportunities.
• Leadership and Management enablement. Leaders and managers are crucial enablers of the programmes for their employees and integrating initiatives into the Medis culture.

The “Design Once, Deploy Everywhere” model ensured that core principles and tools remained consistent for Teva, while allowing business units like Medis to adapt delivery to their specific needs. This balance proved critical in enabling self-directed careers at scale.

As a result, career development has moved from concept into everyday effective practice. There is a more empowered culture, with employees encouraged to proactively identify opportunities, build their connections and take responsibility for self-directed development, underpinned by a clear framework and accessible tools.

Our view

This excellent presentation highlighted both the opportunity and the complexity of activating self-directed careers at scale. Many organisations invest in tools, platforms and frameworks, but the real challenge lies in using these for behaviour change for individuals and managers.

Those organisations that achieve this will have a clear focus on their career philosophy, the skills required in today’s markets, the visibility of career opportunities and the buy-in of managers across the organisation.

From our perspective at The Career Innovation Company, organisations often fall into several traps when seeking self-directed careers at scale. These include an over-reliance on:

• Telling people to own their career without helping to build their capability.
• Launching a marketplace, without being ready to back it with practical support.
• Expecting individuals to take ownership, without systemic changes.

The great example set by Teva shows that avoiding these traps requires more than a programme. It needs clearly defined career capabilities, consistent levels of support and the confidence of individuals to navigate careers. When all these elements come together, organisations are far better positioned to activate self-directed careers at scale.