New playbook helps employers make career development a core workforce strategy

A new playbook now available from CERIC offers employers a practical way to make career development more coherent, visible and effective. Career Development as Strategy: A Practical Guide to Internal Career Centres, developed by Challenge Factory, shows how organizations can strengthen retention, internal mobility and workforce adaptability by treating career development as essential infrastructure rather than a standalone program. 

Funded by CERIC and supported by the Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers (CACEE), the playbook builds on insights from the project Empowering Organizations Through Career Development. It responds to a persistent challenge facing employers: while many organizations invest heavily in learning, leadership, mobility and wellness initiatives, these efforts are often fragmented, making it difficult to see impact, enable talent movement or connect people growth to business priorities. 

From programs to infrastructure 

Rather than introducing another program or platform, Career Development as Strategy reframes career development as workforce infrastructure. It introduces the internal career centre as a co-ordinated system that intentionally connects existing career, learning and talent initiatives to support mobility, reskilling and capability – building at scale. 

The playbook helps organizations: 

• Assess readiness before investing in new initiatives or technology 
• Identify gaps and prioritize actions without adding unnecessary complexity 
• Support mobility, reskilling and workforce adaptability 
• Build an evidence-informed business case, including ROI considerations 
• Align people growth with long-term workforce and business goals 

This playbook is intended for leaders and practitioners responsible for workforce capability and performance, including executives overseeing workforce strategy, HR and talent leaders, learning and development professionals, career development practitioners and post-secondary and workforce partners engaged in employer capacity-building. The frameworks and tools are adaptable across sectors, organization sizes and levels of maturity. 

Go deeper: Internal Career Centre Bootcamp 

Organizations can use the playbook as a standalone resource to clarify thinking, align internal conversations and establish a shared language around career development as strategy. For those ready to move from insight to action, as part of the project, Challenge Factory also offers the Internal Career Centre Bootcamp, an applied learning experience that helps organizations design, test and operationalize internal career centres using a systems-based approach. 

To support the launch, CERIC will host a free webinar on April 20 titled Beyond Programs: Why Career Development Fails in Organizations Without Infrastructure. Delivered by Challenge Factory, the session introduces a systems-level lens for understanding why career development initiatives often stall and how internal career centres can embed career development into everyday workforce and business planning. The session is designed for career development professionals seeking to strengthen their advisory role with employers and move from delivering activities to influencing organizational systems. 

Career Development as Strategy: A Practical Guide to Internal Career Centres is available as a free download on the CERIC website, and in print on Amazon starting at $24.95. A bulk discount of 30% is available on orders of 10 or more by contacting sales@ceric.ca.