We all have a good idea what applicant tracking, performance management and learning management software does. However, at least to me, it is not as clear what career planning software does.
I spoke to Anne Fulton at Fuel50 about this and one of her first comments was that career development was one of the top three drivers of employee engagement.
That pretty much nails half the reason for my interest in the software; the other half of my interest is driven by the knowledge that career planning is incredibly hard to do. The accounting supervisor may look up at the accounting manager job but if that manager isn’t going anywhere then career development may seem to be an idle dream.
So how does Fuel50 tackle this? I frame it as having two main elements: information about the person and information about jobs.
Information about the person is a series of self-assessments about values, interests and so on. If the assessments are grounded in solid psychology, and are implemented to create a good user experience (UX) then it sets the stage for the person to think clearly and open mindedly about their career.
These insights about an individual are not just important for them, they are important for the boss; they provide a basis for good discussions on how to develop, engage and retain someone.
The second element, information about jobs, depends on what information the organization has or can easily generate about the jobs. This suddenly puts the spotlight on customization; it’s not just about branding the software with your company’s logo, this whole system only works if the assessments are customized so that they can matched against the competencies you already have around your jobs.