Best Practice #12: Move Toward Mass Career Customization
Most organizations offer flexible work arrangements as accommodations and exceptions to the "norm" of full-time work. Yet the American workforce has changed significantly in the past generation: only 17% of today’s households have a breadwinner husband and stay-at-home wife — down from 63% a few generations ago.
This means that the old-fashioned assumption that committed professionals will be available for work virtually 24/7, because they have someone else taking care of the home front is no longer realistic. Today's corporations are recognizing that this outdated model no longer fits the wants and needs of today's workforce.
Leading the way in this important paradigm shift away from the traditional lockstep ladder is the highly individualized "Mass Career Customization" (MCC) model now being pioneered by Deloitte and Touche USA LLP. Mass Career Customization is built on the assumption that talented individuals will, for a wide variety of reasons, want to change the pace of their careers several times during the course of their working lives. MCC allows professionals to tailor their careers, changing both their role and their pace - without jeopardizing their long-term career prospects.
Mass Career Customization allows all employees-in partnership with their employer-to create a customized career path. The idea, borrowing from the business approach of "mass product customization," is to approach a career path as a "lattice" rather than a "ladder," and to change from a "one-size-fits-all" to a "custom-made" approach. The model changes from a one-dimensional model with flexibility as the exception, and makes individually customized careers the norm throughout the organization.
In some ways, Deloitte's MCC model is similar to PAR's Balanced Hours Model, which also emphasizes creating individually tailored arrangements that meet both the law firm's business objectives and the attorney's personal and professional development needs.
The MCC model, however, is not a substitute for an effective program to control the stigma frequently associated with working alternative schedules. To Deloitte's credit, 74% of the participants in their MCC pilot program were men — a good sign that their program is not stigmatized. Learn more about the Mass Career Customization model developed by Deloitte.
PAR is compiling a list of legal employers that are implementing a mass career customization model. If your organization is doing so, please let us know by emailing us at bestpractices at pardc dot org. We'd love to learn about your successes and from your mistakes, and perhaps together we can come up with solutions to overcome challenges associated with implementing mass career customization.
