Karlene Meister

How would you like the opportunity to “dial up” your current responsibilities at work or “dial down” to reduce your hours of work? As it turns out, Deloitte & Touche is offering such an opportunity to its workforce through its Mass Career Customization program (MCC).

Cathy Benko, chief talent officer at Deloitte, created this career management program as she doesn’t think flexible work arrangements are effective, and she is skeptical of corporate programs that accommodate mothers. She figured there must be a better way of serving the needs of all employees throughout their careers, not just women. She argues that this MCC is more transparent than flexible work arrangements that are just a point solution that doesn’t address careers over the course of time, and tend to be one-offs.

In 2005, Benko and her team studied exit survey data that revealed lack of flexibility as the number one reason for women leaving the company—and the number two reason for men. All this, despite Deloitte’s 69 different flexible work arrangements ranging from telecommuting to compressed workweeks. People were still leaving because of lack of flexibility. This led Benko to consider how Deloitte could take into account the course of an employee’s career instead of just addressing a current situation.

Here is how the program works. Each employee is given a default profile that can be changed. This profile is divided into four categories—pace of career, workload, location/schedule, and role—in which employees can decide how dialed up or dialed down they want to be. Dialing down can mean scaling back hours, cutting down workload, or working from home. Dialing up is not a promotion. It just means taking on added responsibilities so that employees can have a richer, broader experience, which in turn makes them more marketable.

However, just because an employee applies to dial up or down doesn’t mean they will be approved by their managers. But just having the conversation with employees is helpful, as the manager can then figure out ways to accommodate people for periods of time so they can stay with the firm longer.

So far, the program is successful. In the first year after it was implemented, employee satisfaction with overall career/life fit rose 25 percent. Many of Deloitte’s partners were concerned that the MCC would result in most employees “dialing down”, but actually the opposite has been true. Dial-up requests have outnumbered dial-down requests by a 3-to-2 ratio. Many of Deloitte’s sister firms abroad are implementing or planning to implement the MCC. The program is currently live in the Netherlands and is under consideration in France, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Jordan, and a few other countries.

Skeptics believe that Deloitte will have a hard time selling this program to other companies in this economy, and that most other companies haven’t reached the stage where they are good at offering flexible work arrangements. But Benko said that more than 100 clients have called to learn more about the program, and that she has not come across any organization that thinks it has it down pat.

Benko says that just having the conversation with the employees makes the MCC worth the investment, instead of having 100 different flexible work arrangements.

What are your thoughts on the Mass Career Customization program? Would you consider it for your organization? Do share your thoughts.