Case Study: Career Counselling Skills

How Mastering HR Career Counselling Skills Results in a Thriving Workplace

When your HR team has strong career counselling skills you can actively foster employee growth and satisfaction. Discover the effectiveness of this approach through the case study presented below.

The Need

The client sought to build an HR team with the skills to ‘triage’ career development conversations, and connect high-potential talent with mentors, sponsors and coaches effectively. The goal was to impact retention, engagement and also to ensure the right internal talent was being connected with key role openings. Across a large organization HR needed to play a more active role in prompting and encouraging internal promotions, and getting the right career development resources aligned to key talent.

The Insight

Human resources (HR) professionals are typically knowledgeable about career-related matters, including talent management, career development, and organizational structures. However, the extent of their understanding and expertise can vary based on their training, experience, and ongoing professional development. Specifically, as the world of work is changing quickly, some HR struggle to stay up to date on the micro and macro factors impacting career decision making, and even need more specific training to understand job functions and internal careers pathways. This isn’t unusual, and training to bring the HR team into alignment on these topics can be important.

It's important to note that HR professionals play a crucial role in creating and maintaining a supportive work environment, fostering career growth opportunities, and implementing policies and programs that promote employee development. They work closely with managers, employees, and leaders to align individual goals with organizational objectives and facilitate career progression. For many HR, continuously fine tuning their understanding of when to apply coaching versus mentoring or training, and how to work closely with key talent on career planning, is an ongoing learning journey.

While HR professionals may not possess the same level of expertise as specialized career coaches or dedicated counsellors, they contribute to employees' career journeys within the context of their organizational roles. They need to know the companies talent frameworks and career pathways and leaderships philosophy about “what talent looks like” insight out, so they can play the critical role of partnering with individuals not just during formal review cycles, but in the de-structured moments when career insights happen.

The Solution

BOLDLY's career counselling workshops for HR were designed to impact coaching culture, ensuring HR could identify coaching needs, but also tailor career conversations to their own job families. Our course is 75% off the shelf and 25% customized to the organization's key roles and business strategy. We’ve partnered with some of APAC’s premier brands to understand their internal careers landscapes, map career pathways and ensure these are relayed to the whole HR organisation in a way that calibrates how careers are managed across business units and geographies.

The Result

1. HR and the broader leadership team have developed comprehensive career development conversations, supporting key talent.
2. Initial reporting demonstrates a clear year-on-year impact on retention and engagement, particularly post-COVID.
3. All HR within this client have undertaken the comprehensive training and been aligned subsequently to high potential talent within their business units for ongoing career counseling conversations.
4. The organisation was able to demonstrate alignment between their career counselling, coaching culture, mentoring and training initiatives to showcase a comprehensive strategy for engagement and staff development, utilizing internal HR resources effectively and impacting internal skills.

If you're interested in learning more about how BOLDLY can help your organisation, we invite you to explore our website or write to us at connect@boldly.app.