A New Approach to Career Paths: Career Latticing – What Is It? Part 1
Have you ever wondered how to avoid having to climb a ladder for career progression? Career latticing can help you meet your goals and still progress as a research administrator. This is Part 1 of a 2-part series and will focus on the definition of career latticing versus a career ladder.
Have you ever been asked why you aren’t “moving up” in your career while taking on new opportunities? It seems that, for many managers and employees, the expectation that a career change should mean that you are seeking a higher managerial role with increased responsibilities. I have learned that understanding how a person is learning and wants to contribute to an organization is invaluable. Most of us are not working with the same career path process. It comes down to how people learn, job satisfaction, opportunities for learning, and the ability to be flexible with personal goals, lifestyles, and needs.
Career latticing is a term I have come to embrace, not just for myself but for my colleagues along the way. Rather than the common career ladder approach to a career where we can see ourselves moving up a narrow structure to get to the top, career latticing offers us a different approach to career growth, opportunities, and job satisfaction.
What is the difference between a career ladder and career lattice?
Career ladders are often stepped approaches where we move up to grow our careers, usually meaning promotions and more pay and often with supervisory roles added in. A career ladder is defined by the Society of Human Resource Management as the “progression of jobs within an organization’s specific occupational fields ranked from highest to lowest based on level of responsibility and pay.”1
Career lattice is an approach that is more flexible, still leading to progression, while we use our “skills and experience in a variety of ways.”2 The Academy to Innovate HR (AHIR) defines career lattice as “a way of enabling career mobility from a 360-degree perspective. In this career progression framework, employees can move vertically, horizontally, and diagonally within and outside of their organization.”3
A career lattice approach to your career can involve moving to other areas of your profession, either within or outside of your current department or organization. This approach gives you flexibility in how you move through your career. Rather than up a descriptive ladder to a certain position, you can go up, lateral, and sometimes back to form the framework of your individual path. The idea is that you can use current skills, blending them with others, to learn more about your profession without necessarily having to take on all the expectations of promotions and additional responsibilities.
I look at my own career and not every position change I have made has been moving me “up” a traditional career ladder. I have been in research for over 25 years and learned a treasure chest of skills and background that has always helped me in my next roles. Early in my career with an academic institution, I was moving through a traditional career ladder.
Later, I found myself moving through various positions with the intent of learning as much as I could about research administration to find my place and thrive where I landed. I remained mostly involved with an academic institution, finding opportunities that met my current life needs as well as giving me challenges where I could learn more about the field.
What are the benefits and pitfalls of taking on a career lattice approach?
While there are benefits to an employee, a manager, and the organization, there are often pitfalls that make career latticing tricky.
We will discuss these in the next Catalyst.
- Developing Employee Career Paths and Ladders, Society of Human Resource Management
- Career Ladders & Career Lattices: Developing Them at Your Company
- Career Lattice: How to Shift from Traditional Career, Academy to Innovate HR
Authored by Tonya Edvalson, MHA, CCRP, CHRC, Policy and Projects Analyst
UCLA
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