Case Study on future-proofing career paths: AtkinsRéalis

Konskie, Poland - December 25, 2024: AtkinsRealis Group Inc company logo displayed on mobile phone

Career structures are changing. At the same time, the ability to find a sense of fulfilment and purpose at work are increasingly being recognised as central to employee wellbeing.

There’s not only the continuing shift to flatter, less hierarchical structures, but there’s also the advent of AI that is, already, hugely changing the way people do their jobs.

But what does this all mean for employers?

It means that, to keep staff engaged, happy and productive at work, it might mean rethinking traditional career paths – not only to facilitate employees finding more fulfilling roles and keeping themselves relevant, but also to best deploy skills across an organisation. We’ve written here about how to cater for employees who don’t want to manage people and here about how to go about restructuring.

In this article, we case study a company – engineering firm AtkinsRéalis – which is ahead of the curve on this trend. We talk to Jo Rigby, Senior Director, Global Lead Performance, Talent and Careers, Human Resources, about her strategy and vision. The company is progressive in the way it thinks about skills deployment, is using AI to support career progression and wants its employees to think of life-long careers there ‘without boundaries’.

What have you noticed about the way career paths are changing?

We’re noticing that it’s increasingly beneficial to shift from the traditional model, based around jobs, organising work in terms of the skills needed to perform it. 

Confining work to standardised tasks in a functional job hinders some of today’s most critical organisational objectives: agility, growth, and innovation, as well as diversity, inclusion, and equity. And the ability to offer a positive employee experience for people. 

So, we’re freeing people from being defined by their jobs. Instead employees are seen as whole individuals, with skills and capabilities, that can be fluidly deployed to work, matching evolving business priorities, as well as employee career interests.

And job satisfaction is obviously linked with Health and Wellbeing, as well as productivity?

That’s right. So what we’re doing is opening people’s minds to other possibilities. 

How are you doing that? 

One of the ways we are addressing this is, we are taking those with critical transferable skills  and inviting them to work in a different market. 

Take the example of our engineers working in the Transportation Market in the UK; given the government spend investment challenges, we need to think differently about talent optimisation. 

We are inviting employees to consider markets they might not have thought of, like defense. This sector is rocketing, as is nuclear. We call this the ‘Gateway’ model.

We also have regions that are rocketing in terms of wealth and work, like the Middle East. You can apply the Gateway model here too.

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We’re trying to take employees who, ordinarily and historically, would have stayed in ‘their lane’ in the transportation market and encourage them to take a look somewhere else so they can take those critical skills of engineering with them.

And you’re using AI to help you identify these opportunities across your company to transfer skills, is that right?

Yes. We’re using AI to help our people based on the skills they have now, and what they might need for the future. They input their skills into our platform ‘Opportunity Marketplace’ and it makes suggestions on jobs, learning or mentoring, often inspiring the employee on actions that they wouldn’t have ordinarily thought of. This opens their minds to other possibilities to contribute to the business and grow their career.   

How do you get someone, for example, who has never considered defense or nuclear to entertain this idea?

We talk about skills transfer, upskilling and reskilling to enable our people to perform at their best, and keep themselves relevant, as well as have a fulfilling and varied career. 

The problem with a lot of linear structures is that people get fed up because they have to wait for the person senior to them to move on, in order to progress. Does this method get round that?

Essentially, yes. The trouble with those linear career paths is that employees feel like they’re hitting a ceiling and not able to move on in their lane. So a lot of our messaging is around the skills you bring to a role, and where you find your fulfillment, your purpose and your sense of belonging. We call it ‘careers without boundaries’.

Historically progress mainly was about moving up in a linear way, but younger employees in particular are saying to me ‘why can’t I do a sideways role and move to something interesting and new?’ They are interested in the learning and growth and, most importantly, the variety and choice they have available to them. 

What are the challenges?

One is that we still have a long way to go in terms of helping our people understand how they can take control of their own career. We have a really strong philosophy that you drive your own career and change starts with the employee, and we expect them to have regular check-ins about this throughout the year.

Having said this, we still see in some of our exit data comments like ‘I didn’t get the career I wanted here’. So we recognise there is more work to do.  Careers are unique and personal. What we’re focused on is building capability to ensure more of a coaching approach through questioning and listening to enable conversations to get to the heart of what really matters to our people as well as them being at their best and making a difference in their contribution to the business – these two things come hand in hand with one another.  

What about AI – are you having to manage people’s career worries about AI taking their jobs?

In the last year we’ve been educating our people on Microsoft’s AI tool Copilot. It’s called ‘co’ pilot for a reason; it’s working with you, helping you do what you do in a much more efficient way.

I had someone say to me in quite a bashful way ‘oh, I used AI’ as if it were a dirty word. There’s a fear or stigma attached to it, so our challenge is how do we support people to go forward with it and maximise the benefits?

This is where skills really come into play for me because it’s all about having the relevant skills and ensuring you’re either up-skilling or re-skilling – and doing this quickly.

Do you see any differences between your younger employers and older generations on any of these issues?

What I see is that younger generations really want variety and meaningful work. And, they really want to make a difference and don’t want to do run-of-the-mill work. 

This is so different to my personal career experience, when I was younger, I welcomed all the work I was fortunate to experience, for me back then it was work. I see real positives in todays’ younger generations being braver to challenge and challenge hard in order for them to be sure the work they experience will make a difference. 

We invest heavily in developing people who come to us in their early careers and we emphasise, as they arrive, the need for a growth mindset to enable their future so they can adapt and work in places with our clients wherever they are in the world.

We are steering towards a working world that is changing the way work is designed, organised and executed at the same time employees want more choice and flexibility – a world we are embracing  

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