Eminel Cooper went to college straight out of high school, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do—bouncing from architecture to nursing, with other majors in between. She ended up dropping out and working as a retail associate at Macy’s while she figured things out.

Now she’s studying accounting at Southern New Hampshire University with education benefits from Macy’s, and she hopes to land a corporate job at the company in New York when she finishes her degree next year. What changed is Eminel finally figured out what she’s good at, what she likes, and how that translates to the world of careers.

It’s a concept called occupational identity that is essential for career mobility—but gets far too little attention. Imagine if that weren’t the case.

In K12 and college circles, there’s a growing recognition that education can’t lead to economic opportunity if students haven’t developed a clear occupational identity. That means they need to have space to discover what they are good at and like to do, and they need to be exposed to a wide range of careers.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has supported a multi-year effort to better understand how young people form occupational identity and the role it plays in decisions about education and career. The research is clear that both the discovery and exposure processes are critical. And this need doesn’t end just because someone reaches adulthood.

Companies and educators are paying a lot more attention to skills, and there’s a growing recognition of the role networks and social capital play in advancement—but occupational identity is often the missing link in career mobility.

Skills, social capital, and occupational identity are all central to career mobility

At my company, Guild Education, our coaches work with tens of thousands of worker-learners each year—adults with a whole host of jobs, from all walks of life, and with their own particular goals. In other words, they’re all very different people. And yet, a large number of them come to us wanting to be an HR benefits specialist—because they simply don’t have any idea about other corporate roles in their company.

This struggle with occupational identity is one part of a two-pronged problem causing headaches in our labor market: Employers don’t know what they have in their employees (stay tuned for a forthcoming column on that), and employees don’t know what they’re capable of. These lead to “talent shortages” where there may just be a big misunderstanding.

To address it, we need a much greater focus on occupational identity for adults. And companies have a high degree of control over what jobs and what individuals are made most visible. They need to think much harder about how they are cultivating occupational identity among their recruits and employees—especially if they are serious about diversifying the talent pool and creating greater career mobility.

From the literature on K12, we know that media—and other popular representations of work—have a big influence on occupational identity. In one study of women and minority scientists, for example, many mentioned that the character of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek shaped their idea of what was possible for them.

Popular representations of various jobs—and of who does those jobs—may be no less salient for adults. If frontline workers don’t see software engineers, financial analysts, marketing specialists, mid-level managers, and the like in communications from their company, how are they expected to know those jobs are an option?

Hospitals and healthcare companies like Bon Secours Mercy Health and UCHealth give us an example of what’s possible. They tend to have a wide range of workers—from medical assistants and phlebotomists on the frontline of care to clinical leaders and hospital administrators and executives—all in the same building or at least the same zip code. And, as a result, we find that their workers have a much clearer picture of what jobs they might do.

But short of moving everyone into the same building—the opposite of work-from-home—there’s plenty employers can do. They can:

• Redesign on-boarding and internal communications to include a focus on career pathways and highlight the stories of employees who have transitioned from the frontlines to another role. Even seasoned employees should get coaching and content that help them learn about possible pathways.
• Intentionally create communities that allow people to connect with peers that have transitioned to new roles and highlight their successes.
• Work with education and skilling programs—or design their own—that have occupational identity formation as part of the curriculum. (People need enough of a sense of where they want to go to pick a program, but even within a given field, there are a lot of different ways they can go.)
• Create projects and other experiences that allow people to try on different roles in the course of their normal work.

Intentional programming can influence occupational identity. As companies look to build strong talent pipelines—and cultures of opportunity—they must create well-trod pathways from the frontline roles to beyond. Occupational identity is a barrier, one that is especially acute for women and people of color.

Employers can make a huge difference by helping people, like Eminel, better understand their strengths and interests, and the professional opportunities that align with those. It’s not just good to do—it’s essential for growing talent and building a thriving organization. In other words, it is a core part of doing business.