“A dual-career ladder (DCL) is a set of one or more non-supervisory jobs in a job series which receive higher pay than traditional non-supervisory jobs because they require the performance of higher level and more complex duties and possession of advanced, specialized skills not generally required of similar non-supervisory jobs,” according to the Louisiana Department of State Civil Service. “The DCL concept was created and adopted to provide another route for advancement for employees exhibiting or possessing particular technical skills and/or education above and beyond the norm of the typical career series.
“Dual-career ladder jobs exist in scientific, medical, information technology and engineering fields, and typically exhibit one or more of the following characteristics:
- Require substantial technical or professional training and expertise beyond the basic level.
- Are known for rapid innovation.
- Possess the potential for employees to receive national credentials or licensure.”
However, in order for a dual-career ladder to be taken seriously, the same standards for promotion on the management track must be applied to the promotions offered on the technical, scientific and professional advancement track.
If you have a dual-career ladder and, for example, your management track has a very aggressive, very specific process that needs to be adhered to in order to achieve the identified goals and for people to see value in it, and you do not apply that same rigorous evaluation to the technical, scientific or professional track, then those tracks aren’t going to be taken as seriously as the management track.
Let’s face it, employees aren’t stupid. They see something and they think, “OK, what’s valuable and what’s not?” and if they see an inequality in those dual-career paths, they’re going to automatically read into it and think that one path is more valuable than the other path. It’s kind of like perceived favoritism, so the paths really need to be equitable.
Thoughts on the Dual-Career Ladder
I think of dual-career ladders as an opportunity employees have to choose a career-path alternative to the traditional management path while still growing with their company and providing valuable services to the organization.
For the longest time, the management career track was really the only way to make advances with a company, unless you were in the education field and were tenured. Nowadays, we have a lot of workers out there and not everyone can be a manager.
If employees don’t have the ability to move up at your company—for example, some employees might not make effective managers or might not want to be managers—you may lose them. However, if you provide a career track on a professional, scientific or technical basis that allows employees to still do their work without having to enter into a management position, you really retain a good resource from whom your organization can benefit.
Two Most Common Mistakes Employers Make
The most common mistake employers make with dual-career ladders is that they don’t really give a lot of value to the non-management roles in the company. This is probably the biggest concern because, as I mentioned above, employees aren’t stupid. They can sense when there’s real value to something, such as a professional or technical dual-career ladder, and when there’s no value, but the company is trying to act like there is.
An under-valued dual-career ladder can easily be identified by employees. For example, if a supervisor tells one of his or her employees that an alternative career path is a great opportunity. If the employee investigates this avenue and discovers that the “great career path” doesn’t provide him or her with the growth, career control, positional respect or any other benefits that should exist with a dual-career ladder that is truly valued by the company, the employee will see that the “real” value to the company is still the traditional management track. When employees see a lack of value in what they’re being offered, they will conclude that their services are not valued by the organization, which may result in lower morale.
Another common mistake employers make when creating a real dual-career path for professional, technical or scientific groups, they don’t match the compensation appropriately. One of the ways you can create value in a career path—in addition to the path itself and how it’s created—is by matching compensation to the traditional management career track. If an organization does not compensate professional, technical or scientific dual-career ladders equally with the management path, it risks diluting the value of those career paths.
A lot of times employers look at these newly defined career paths and think, “Well, it’s not a management track, and these employees aren’t managing other employees, so we can’t pay them as much as we’d pay a manager.” This is a silly thought. These dual-career ladder employees—even though they aren’t managers—are still doing something of value for you and your organization, and if the career ladder is constructed properly, the job’s value should hold the same weight as the corresponding management position.
In my next Insight, I’ll give the steps an employer can take if they want to set up an effective dual-career ladder program for its employees.