Fostering a “Career Progression” Work Ethic Among Employees to Win the Talent War

We have focused on career progression and the importance of understanding such progressions for both Recruiters and Workforce Planners.  We begin with a story.  In 1954, Oliver Smithies, a world-renowned geneticist, made a striking discovery of how to separate individual fragments of DNA and components of human blood.  Oliver Smithies named this process “gel electrophoresis” famously discovered during his Saturday Morning Experiments – a safe zone he designed to work without the constraints of a typical workday.  Yet, the discovery he made during that Saturday morning is immense.  Throughout his life, Oliver conducted these experiments and documented his thoughts in well over 150 notebooks.  This notebook is a treasure for many biology students.  Such accomplishments happen when you do not treat your job as a mere set of tasks and treat it as a career.  How can companies create this type of work ethic among employees to lead the competitive race?