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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corporations are recognizing that this outdated model no longer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. To learn more
about the Mass Career Customization model developed by Deloitte,
click here.
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.
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