Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today's Nontraditional Workforce
by Cathleen Benko and Anne Cicero Weisberg

Hardcover, 240pp
Harvard Business School Press
ISBN-13: 9781422110331
Pub. Date: September 2007

B&N online price: $23.96
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SYNOPSIS
In their recent book, authors and Deloitte talent strategists Cathy Benko and Anne C. Weisberg argue that not everyone is on board in recognizing that there is a "structural workforce shift" at hand, that "the workplace must respond in kind" and that "now is the time and place to sustainably address this challenge."

Mass Career Customization is centered on the powerful insight that career options in today's economy need to accommodate the rising and falling phases of employee engagement as it changes over time. The remarkable process unveiled in this book offers choices involving four important dimensions of career progression: role, pace, location/schedule and workload.

As the working population shrinks, maintaining industry advantage will depend largely on keeping employees engaged and connected. Mass career customization provides a framework for organizational adaptability that will do just that.

U.S. News and World Report
"Mass Career Customization personalizes employees' careers to fit their lifestyles."

November HR Magazine
"Forget the corporate ladder. Employees at all levels are increasingly on a 'corporate lattice' that lets them move up, sideways and even down as needed. . ."

Workforce Management: Books@Work
"In their book detailing the program, Benko and Weissberg provide very clear examples of how mass career customization can be implemented, complete with visuals of how an employee's profile may change throughout his or her career.

It is incredibly easy to understand, but also very metric-based, making this program not just another soft flex-work offering. It is new, however. Deloitte is just now rolling out the program to all 38,000 U.S. employees, so evidence of its ultimate success remains to be seen.

But so far the pilot offers some promising results. Of the 7,700 employees who participated in the pilot, 30 percent showed interest in dialing up or dialing down; 13 percent ended up applying to do so and 9 percent got approved."

Full Books@Work review here

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Cathleen Benko is Vice Chairman and Deloitte's Chief Talent Officer. Anne Weisberg is a Director specializing in talent diversity for the Deloitte U.S. Firms.

More about the book at Deloitte.com and MassCareerCustomization.com