The Mass Career Customization Framework | Mass Career Customization | Human Capital

The mass career customization (MCC) framework provides a structured approach for organizations and their people to identify options, make choices, and agree on tradeoffs to ensure that value is created for the business and for the individual.

The MCC framework articulates a definite, not infinite, set of options along the four core dimensions of a career—Pace, Workload, Location/Schedule, and Role—and the tradeoffs associated with each at any point in time and over time. The four dimensions are interdependent; a change in one may very well impact and require adjustments in one or more of the others.

Pace reflects how quickly an individual is slated to progress, relative to their peer group, to increasing levels of responsibility. The two endpoints are “accelerated” and “decelerated,” with varying gradations in between. Depending on the business, an average Pace is depicted as either three or four dots.
Workload addresses the quantity of work performed, typically measured in hours per day or year. “Full” and “reduced” are the endpoints on the continuum. A 50 percent workload, for example, would be reflected with three dots.
Location/Schedule captures how the work is accomplished—the combination of where and/or when work is performed. The continuum ranges from “not restricted” to “restricted” at the other. For example, an individual may telecommute two days a week when the norm is to work in the office or his travel may be significantly less than his peers.
Role combines elements of position, job description, and responsibilities. Starting at the lower end of the continuum, Role ranges from individual contributor to team leader to manager along up to senior leader. Role typically reflects your span of management during each stage rather than your level within the organization.

Employees and their managers partner to customize careers by selecting the option along each of the four dimensions that most closely matches the employees’ career objectives, keeping in mind their life circumstances and the needs of the business at any given point in time. Each employee registers these choices on an MCC profile, as illustrated in the image.

The profile above describes one point in time in a typical employee’s career. The setting in the Pace dimension is near the center, indicating a mid-range track toward promotion. The employee is working full-time with no restrictions, meaning he or she travels whenever necessary and without any limit on work location. Accordingly, Workload is set at “Full,” and Location/Schedule is set at “Not Restricted.” The setting for Role, four nodes from the top of the continuum, signals he or she is a mid-level manager.

The MCC profile can be adjusted over time; that is, it allows employees to adjust their activities along the four dimensions to optimize their career paths at varying life stages (what we refer to as “dialing up or down”). The goal is to calibrate the settings to the desired mix as each individual’s personal and career situations evolve.

Our research has shown that the vast majority of employees in any organization will have a profile much like the one in the image above at any point in time. However, over time many deviate from this common level of contribution for some amount of time, illustrating a sine wave-like rhythm of rising and falling phases.


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