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Employee Development, Strategy, and Career Pathways

Employee Development, Strategy, and Career Pathways Refinement and Implementation Committee (RIC) 10

Committee Members

Danielle Khoury (Chair), Glen Comiso, Heather Williams, Ronnie Haas, Tom Kochan, and Long Tran (Staff)

Abstract

RIC 10 recommends the immediate creation of a Senior Leadership Advisory Committee to oversee the vision for strengthening career development programs and to make essential resources available. A new Staff Development Working Group will be convened and will report to this Advisory Committee. The charge of the working group will include (a) creating a more comprehensive and integrated approach for career development and learning, to enhance skills and provide pathways to other job opportunities, (b) organizing, expanding, and promoting existing MIT policies and resources for career development, mobility, and advancement, and (c) enhancing learning resources and opportunities to transform existing training content and programs into a new state-of-the-art, development-focused learning approach.

The Institute faces a particular challenge in retaining top experienced and diverse talent. Recent exit interviews and survey data indicate that the leading reasons staff leave MIT are for better career advancement and professional development opportunities. Many departing employees feel that MIT does not demonstrate enough commitment towards their professional development, despite an array of training opportunities, and that opportunities for career advancement at MIT are too limited, as employee development and mentorship are not deeply embedded cultural norms in all DLCs. This feeling is especially common among administrative and support staff, the two categories of staff included in the scope of this report.

As a result, MIT is losing talented employees to organizations that provide more robust employee development. When an experienced employee leaves the Institute, it is a loss of vital institutional knowledge, of MIT's history and practices, and of the time and resources invested over the years to train that particular employee. Additionally, for roles that are highly specialized, are in high demand areas, or are in areas where retirements are looming, these losses have an even stronger impact.

While not noted in the charge to our RIC, we would stress that the rapid changes in technologies and work processes occurring in workplaces today and that are expected to accelerate in the future increase the importance of continuous (lifelong) learning and skill upgrading. This makes it all the more imperative for MIT to transform its policies and practices to encourage and support workforce learning and upskilling.

To tackle this problem, we investigated the numerous ideas related to strengthening employee development as identified in Phase I of the Task Force initiative and crafted recommendations for implementation. We believe these measures will greatly strengthen MIT’s employee development, learning, and career advancement opportunities for administrative and support staff, while also providing opportunities to create structure for the recommendations of RIC 7 Career Support for Postdocs, Research Scientists, and Instructional Staff. As an overall vision, we strongly advocate that MIT undertake a strategic transformation of its current employee development and training policies, practices, and programs and integrate them into a comprehensive and focused state-of-the art career development and learning program. The new approach should empower administrative and support staff to identify and pursue learning opportunities that enhance job-related skills and also provide the skills necessary for advancement, whether within or outside of their current units. Achieving this innovative and ambitious vision will require robust leadership commitment, of both time and resources, and broad collaboration across the Institute in order to effect the necessary change to our existing norms.

Proposed Next Steps

Recognizing our current state and with an eye toward realizing this exciting transformation, we have identified two key “next step” recommendations, which will support the advancement of all of the more detailed recommendations and goals also included in our report.

First, we acknowledge that the key factor to achieving success towards our goals and recommendations is an Institute-wide commitment to strengthening MIT’s employee development programs. To accomplish this, we recommend that MIT senior leadership confirm the Institute’s commitment in this area and make resources available for this endeavor. To begin, we recommend establishing a Senior Leadership Advisory Committee that will help to prioritize and oversee this new initiative. Key members would be Glen Shor, Ramona Allen, and Marty Schmidt or a Provost designee. This Committee should meet at least quarterly to oversee progress towards our goals and should begin meeting in fall 2021 to become familiar with the detailed recommendations included in this report.

Second, we propose creating a working group comprised of select members of the Institute who have expertise in employee development and/or are passionate about strengthening MIT’s employee development programs. This working group will work to achieve the following specific goals to strengthening employee development (please refer to the full RIC 10 report for details and specific recommendations for each of these overarching goals).

  1. Build the foundation for an Institute-wide strategic talent management approach by strengthening the usage of performance development programs and focusing on setting expectations and accountability for managers in this space.
  2. Create an integrated learning platform that lists courses and other online resources that are accessible to all employees and that identifies career pathways to promotional opportunities within the employee’s unit and job family and across the Institute.
  3. Promote existing resources and structures, as MIT has many employee development resources available but these are not always widely known and readily available for leaders, managers, and staff to utilize.
  4. Elevate career development opportunities and pathways through skills-based programs and increased guidance to help staff understand core competencies relevant to their current position and growth opportunities that are available across the Institute.
  5. Enhance learning resources and opportunities in order to transform existing training content and programs into a new state of the art, development-focused learning approach.
  6. Expand mentoring programs from some naturally occurring and/or facilitated mentoring relationships, to wider mentoring programs that can be implemented locally, as well as centrally, in order to support the needs of new employees, new managers, emerging leaders, and staff who are invested in career exploration.

Proposed working group members include Central HR (Ronnie Haas); VPF (Danielle Khoury; Long Tran); VPR (Jeannette Gerzon); Academic and other central units (Magdalena Rieb; a member of Open Learning; other representatives such as a volunteer from AAC-II and a member of the Support Staff Working Group). This group’s work would also begin in fall 2021 in line with the convening of the Senior Leadership Advisory Committee and their first task would be to familiarize senior leadership with the detailed recommendations included in the full version of this report.

Summary of Resource Requests

Apart from the time commitment of existing staff identified in the “next steps” above, we recommend that the follow-on committee for the fall give consideration to additional resources for an “ideal state” in order to execute and maintain the ambitious goals that we have outlined in our detailed report. Resource considerations should/could include:

  • Funding for an external professional service provider who, in partnership with business process owners and technical experts, will: (1) perform a complete assessment of currently available training resources, (2) categorize currently available training resources by area, function, and role, and (3) provide actionable recommendations for MIT to implement a best-in-class training and development program, including the tools, technology, and/or systems to best deliver learning content.
  • Proposed full-time employee (FTE) resource considerations for central HR:
    1. Up to one new full-time FTE, with instructional design expertise who would: (1) collaborate with local subject matter experts and HR teams to create and implement the framework and a visual model across the Institute; (2) inventory, maintain, update, and continuously improve our career pathways; (3) help update and maintain training content that goes along with the career pathways and work with subject matter experts (and the new project manager of learning and development, see below) on this content. [This could potentially be a two-year term position.]
    2. Up to one new full-time FTE, for a highly experienced project manager of learning and development to convene, facilitate, and oversee the development and continued growth of the Institute’s new centralized learning approach. This project manager would have extensive experience in state-of-the-art learning and approaches and would work closely with the new instructional design staff member identified above.
    3. Up to one new full-time FTE to: (1) shore up and increase our ability to provide individual career consultations, conduct workshops, career panels, and programs for staff and managers to build interest in and expand the knowledge of career paths at the Institute; and (2) manage an on-going networking community for peer-to-peer mentoring of staff across functions and roles. Additionally, we propose potentially increasing the existing 80% FTE working in this space up to a 100% FTE.
    4. Up to one new 50% FTE to increase the capacity of MIT’s talent management team in order for them to take a lead in curating, creating, and supporting mentoring programs for staff that meet the needs of new employees, new managers, emerging leaders, and staff invested in career exploration.