Establishing Career Tracks for the Least-Advantaged Workers: How Your Company Wins by Making Advancement Accessible to All

By: Jody Heymann

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Synopsis: One of the most significant yet ironically least common ways of ensuring good working conditions for your lowest-level employees is to provide them with advancement opportunities. While near constant attention is devoted to the career paths of employees with a higher education, few companies pay similar attention to those with limited formal education. This chapter, culled from interviews with workers at all levels of the corporate ladder on six continents, will show you that creating effective career trajectories without strict ceilings can enable your company to select, train, and promote employees who already know how to make your business model work. The authors describe how other innovative companies have implemented effective systems for ensuring that internal-advancement opportunities permeate all levels of the organization and maximize the expertise that warehouse employees and line workers bring to management. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 6 of "Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce."