In my role as a User Experience Director, I embarked on a mission to redefine career progression at my company, understanding that not all growth involves climbing the ladder of people management.

After listening to my team’s desire for alternative paths to advancement, I initiated a project to explore new avenues for career development. Collaborating with colleagues and drawing inspiration from industry leaders like Spotify, we crafted a vision for roles such as “Staff Designer” that allowed for deep strategic involvement without managerial responsibilities.

 To ensure buy-in and smooth implementation, we engaged key stakeholders early, including human resources, finance, and design operations. Addressing concerns about measurement and clarity, we navigated the challenge of quantifying progress beyond traditional metrics like “time in the chair,” striving for simplicity and transparency in our approach.

Our journey led us to reject complex evaluation systems in favor of a clear and accessible framework that values skills, maturity, and contribution, setting a new standard for career growth within our organization.

Plan Overview and My Role in It:

• Along with a peer Director, we wrote every single job description to reflect current industry standards and capabilities as well as account for the new extended individual contributor track.

• For the first two levels (Junior and Midlevel Designers) the focus is on learning, acquiring basic skills and being on a path to advance to the next level.

• At the Senior Level there is no expectation to necessarily move beyond this level.

  • This was a huge shift culturally as in the past the focus on advancement was primarily on becoming a people-manager.

• From the senior level and above, I developed a plan where employees can “try-on” other specialties. This program allows a designer to shadow someone to see if a different role or specialty is right for them.

• In many cases this allowed us to retain good employees who found that their interest or career path was not aligned with their current role.

• To facilitate this I had to co-ordinate with leaders in several other departments including product, technology, journey management and research.

Measurement:

• To govern this entire imitative we developed the “Impact” process. Impact measures how much an employee is contributing to the company. It looks at three key attributes: Consistency, Velocity and Value.

• To determine impact we look at a few simple factors:

  • Self-review

  • Stakeholder/Peer reviews

  • Manager Review

  • “Boast board” (employee self-tracks important events and milestones)

Results:

• A pilot program was launched within the organization after mid-year reviews and overall results were extremely positive with 100% of participants responding that they felt the company was aligned with their personal career goals and felt empowered to have input and control over their advancement.

• The “try-on” program continues to be extremely popular and is being rolled out to a second pilot group beginning 2nd Quarter 2024.