Career Development as Strategy: A Practical Guide to Creating Internal Career Centres
March 24, 2026
About the Playbook
Career Development as Strategy is a practical playbook for organizations seeking to make career development more coherent, visible and effective. While many employers invest heavily in learning, mobility, leadership and wellness initiatives, these efforts are often fragmented, making it difficult for leaders to see impact, enable talent movement or connect people growth to business priorities.
This guide introduces internal career centres as workforce infrastructure – a way to intentionally connect existing career, learning and talent efforts into a co-ordinated system that supports mobility, capability-building and adaptability at scale. Designed for real-world conditions, the playbook helps organizations strengthen what they already have, rather than starting from scratch.
| Author(s) | Taryn Blanchard, Sheila Rider and Lisa Taylor |
| Publisher | CERIC |
| ISBN | 978-1-996817-01-8 |
Key topics include:
Why fragmented career and talent efforts limit organizational impact
How internal career centres support mobility, reskilling and workforce adaptability
Assessing organizational readiness before investing in new initiatives or technology
Building an evidence-informed business case, including ROI considerations
Prioritizing actions to improve workforce performance without adding unnecessary complexity
Who this resource is for
This playbook is intended for leaders and practitioners responsible for workforce capability and long-term performance, including:
- Executives and senior leaders overseeing workforce strategy
- HR and talent leaders facing mobility, retention or scaling challenges
- Learning and development professionals seeking stronger alignment with business priorities
- Career development professionals supporting internal growth and mobility
- Post-secondary and workforce partners engaged in employer capacity-building
The frameworks and tools are adaptable across sectors, organization sizes and maturity levels.
How organizations use this playbook – go deeper in the Internal Career Centre Bootcamp
Organizations can use this guide as a standalone resource to clarify thinking, align internal conversations and establish a shared language around career development as strategy. It can also be used as a diagnostic tool to identify gaps, assess readiness and determine where to focus first. For organizations ready to move from insight to action, the playbook provides an entry point for deeper, applied workforce development work.
Watch a short video to hear from bootcamp facilitators and participants from organizations such as Aviso Wealth, Government of Canada. Contact consulting@challengefactory.ca to learn more or join.
Why Talent Gets Stuck (And Why It’s Not a People Problem)
About the Authors
Lisa Taylor
Lisa Taylor has advised national governments, shaped workforce policy, and guided multinational organizations through complex transformation. Her insights appear in The Globe and Mail, Forbes and OECD reports. She is Founder and CEO of Challenge Factory.
Sheila Rider
Sheila Rider is an Associate and Trusted Advisor at Challenge Factory. Formerly a CHRO, she supports career development through strategic workforce design, leadership capability and practical change that enables people to thrive at work.
Taryn Blanchard
Taryn Blanchard is Director, Research and Innovation Strategy at Challenge Factory, bridging research, consulting and AI to turn evidence into practical workforce tools. With a PhD in Anthropology, she translates complexity into human-centred career strategy.
International Centre for Career Development and Public Policy (ICCDPP)
Employers, Employees, Career Conversations: A Core Business Strategy
“This recent publication makes the business case for the establishment of internal career centres, providing a framework for employers and a coherent system to strengthen staff retention and work/job/worker agility, and to deliver measurable business results.
Described as a ‘playbook,’ it’s more like a workbook that explains the key concepts, gives examples of their application, facilitates the reader to examine how to apply them to their particular organization, and reflect and advance. It progresses from awareness raising to action, from piloting to practice, and from creating internal momentum to creating lasting impact. The guide is well written, well presented, easy to follow, has excellent graphics, has a very useful glossary and set of tools in the appendices including a summary of key questions based on each chapter to enhance the learning and development process.
While the establishment and organization of internal careers centres will depend on company size and resources, the principles presented and the tools provided in this practical publication should be of interest and pertinence to any forward-thinking employer, regardless of company size and resources.”
Mark Patterson, Executive Director, Magnet
This is the closest we’ve ever been able to come to getting something like this happening.
Trevor Buttrum, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers (CACEE)
A great blueprint for building the infrastructure to embed career development in workforce strategy.
“Career Development as Strategy: A Practical Guide to Creating Internal Career Centres is a timely and well-crafted resource for business and HR leaders.
Workforce challenges are rarely due to a lack of effort on the part of organizations. In fact many will tout their learning, leadership and development initiatives. Most often, issues stem from a lack of employee and leader awareness, meaningful uptake and alignment across these efforts.
The authors skillfully shift the focus from programs toward positioning an internal career centre as the critical infrastructure and systems-level approach needed to ensure careers are more navigable, supports more tangible, and resources more accessible for all employees. This results in greater traction across existing programs, strengthened internal career mobility, and ultimately higher levels of employee engagement.
What stands out is how grounded this resource is in how organizations actually operate. The frameworks and guiding questions are practical, while also supporting informed strategic decision-making rooted in evidence and ROI.
This is a resource for leaders who are ready to move beyond well-intentioned but fragmented standalone initiatives and take a more deliberate, integrated and impactful approach to workforce strategy.”
FREE webinar Why Career Development Fails in Organizations Without Infrastructure
Join Lisa Taylor and Carli Fink of Challenge Factory on April 20 for a free webinar exploring how to help employers shift from program-based approaches toward building internal career centres.