At my company we have a different view of employees and their relationship with our company. Most companies see themselves as the primary entity that needs to benefit and employees as cogs that can be interchanged in its processes. After a recent rounds of interviews, one of the VPs of the company and I met with the CEO to follow up on the results of the interviews. The CEO discussed the use of the term “job” when describing working at our company. The CEO went explained that we don’t offer jobs, we offer careers to people. We want all of our employees to see their position in the company as not a job, but as a career.

Is there a difference between a job and a career?

The two terms get used interchangeably when speaking of work, but when you stop and delve into the meaning, there is a great difference between the two. Furthermore, the organizations who can effectively distinguish between the two hold a great key to unlocking employee engagement in the workplace.

I would like to focus on a couple of definitions:

JOB: “the principal activity in your life that you do to earn money; a specific piece of work required to be done as a duty; an object worked on;”

CAREER: “the particular occupation for which you are trained; course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life); the general progression of your working or professional life;”

Do you see a difference between the two? Jobs are short-sided, pre-determined activities, dead-ends (career-wise). Jobs don’t lead an individual to any certain end goal, they simple accomplish a task. Is this how your company treats its employees? Employees are not just machines that perform a certain piece of task when necessary. Employees are a companies biggest asset. Developing employees is the key for companies to sustain increased effectiveness and productivity.

Careers allow for employee development in the long-term. Every company should have career paths for its employees. Some employees may have their own career paths which for certain moments of time intersect with a company’s career path, when this happens, the employee will seek a position with the company. Once that intersection has passed, that employee will, most likely, choose to leave the company and seek another position elsewhere that will allow that individual to continue along their career path. At times, the employee may even choose to alter their career path to math the companies career path and will stay with the company very long term. Other employees may not have a specific career path outlines for themselves and will simply adopt the company’s career path as their own.

Why is it so important for companies to develop career paths? Imagine an employee with no specified career path gets hired by the company. How long will the company keep this individual if he is a good, productive worker? Generally, there won’t be any reason to fire the employee, but companies often find themselves not knowing what to do with an employee that has been with the company long-term in one specific position. Career paths ensure that all employees with the company are developing their skills, talents, and utilizing all available resources so that they can maximize their productivity and effectiveness at their positions. This then allows the employee to be much more valuable and useful in other positions in the future.

For those employees who come with their own career paths, a company career path is equally effective as it allows the company to keep that employee focused in the position he was hired and ensures that while the employee with the company, he is focused on enhancing those talents and skills that will make him most effective in that the current position.

Overall, don’t settle for the short-sided employment goal. Seeing positions as just mere jobs to be filled is short-sided. It’s like the student preocupied with counting down the days before the end of the school year, sure some work is being done, but what is the overall attention and effort? Teaching employees the value of careers and career paths will not only improve the individual worker, but it will also change the image of the company and increase its effectiveness in getting the most from the talent and skills that each employee brings each day to work.