Career Development & Capability Framework Consultancy
People rarely leave because there is no career path. They leave because nobody could tell them what it was. When progression criteria live in a manager’s head rather than on a page, promotion starts to feel political, ambitious people stop asking, and the quickest route up becomes the route out.
The same gap shows up on the other side of the table. Ask most leadership teams whether they hold the skills their three-year plan requires and you get an opinion, not an answer. Career development and organisational capability answer one question from two directions: what can your people do now, and what will they need to do next?
Those two questions belong together. What someone delivers today is the best evidence you have of what they could do next, and potential that never shows up in a person’s actual work is not development; it is a list of names. We build career development that starts from the evidence of real performance and ends up back in the day job.
Let’s Talk Talent turns that into something usable: career frameworks, levelling matrices, capability frameworks, skills taxonomies and progression criteria your managers can explain without reaching for a policy document. Around 30 years of global practitioner experience underpins the work and in 2025 we were named HR Consultancy of the Year and L&D Supplier of the Year at the Personnel Today Awards.
How Let’s Talk Talent Can Help Your Team
Careers & Capability Services
Every engagement starts with your business context, not a template framework. We want the growth plan, the operating model, where you struggle to hire and what your leaders believe “good” looks like. Career architecture built without that conversation describes a company you no longer are. Our wider HR and organisational development consultancy shows how this pillar connects to everything else.
From there, the work is modular and blended. Some organisations need the full picture: job architecture, levels, capability framework, skills map and progression criteria. Others need one strand done properly, such as a career framework for a single job family. We deliver through diagnostics, facilitated design sessions, workshops, bootcamps, coaching, and 360-degree feedback, in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format. Everything is co-created, so your team can run and update it once we leave.
Frameworks are easier to use when they are not sitting in a PDF. With our technology partner Oursayso, we have built a mobile-first platform that creates all these tools together in one place from our capability frameworks, career pathways, and our career conversation coaching cards in the hands of managers and employees, wherever the conversation happens. It is called myrole.co.
Career Frameworks & Progression Pathways
Making “how do I get promoted here?” a question with a written answer.
A career framework sets out the levels in your organisation, the roles at each level, and the skills, behaviours and impact expected to move between them. We build them, job family by job family, so a designer, an engineer and a client services lead each see a route that fits their real work.
The artefacts are concrete. A levelling matrix describing each stage in plain language. Progression criteria that name evidence rather than vibes. Parallel technical and management tracks, so your best specialists need not become mediocre managers to earn more.
We also design the process around the framework: how promotion cases are made, who calibrates them, and what a person is told when the answer is not yet. Where you already run reviews, we make sure the two systems agree rather than sending mixed messages. This is where careers and performance management meet.
- Job architecture, job families and level design
- Levelling matrices with plain-English descriptors for each stage
- Progression criteria and evidence standards for promotion
- Dual technical and management career tracks
- Promotion calibration process and manager guidance
Best for: scaling businesses where promotion decisions feel inconsistent, organisations losing mid-level talent to competitors with clearer ladders, and HR teams asked to explain how pay and progression connect.
Capability Frameworks & Skills Gap Analysis
Knowing what your people can do, and what your strategy needs them to do.
A capability framework names the skills, knowledge and behaviours your organisation needs to deliver its plan, and describes what each looks like at increasing levels of maturity. Some organisations call it a competency framework. The label matters less than whether managers recognise themselves in it.
Underneath it sits the evidence. We run skills audits and skills gap analyses to establish the capabilities you hold today, build a skills taxonomy so the same skill isn’t called four different things across four systems, and set that against what your strategy requires. The output is a short, honest list of gaps, each with a build, buy or borrow decision attached.
We use assessment where objectivity helps: live and online 360-degree feedback, plus psychometrics such as Hogan, Saville Wave, KFLA, the GC Index, DISC and Insights. Talent maps and, where useful, a 9-box grid are one input among several rather than a verdict on a person.
The aim is to inform individual development plans, not to sort people into boxes. Gaps that need closing at scale feed into your learning and development strategy.
- Capability and competency framework design, with behavioural indicators by level
- Skills taxonomy and common skills language across HR systems
- Skills gap analysis against your growth or transformation plan
- Talent mapping, calibration sessions and bench reviews
- Individual development plans linked to real progression criteria
Best for: organisations entering a new market or technology and unsure whether the skills exist internally; businesses whose learning spend is tied to no defined capability; and HR teams building an evidence-based workforce plan.
Career Conversations, Coaching & Internal Mobility
Giving ambition somewhere to go before it goes elsewhere.
Frameworks do not develop anybody. Conversations do. Most managers avoid career conversations because they fear making a promise they cannot keep, so we teach a different approach: be honest about what is possible, be curious about what the person wants, and be specific about the next step. That is a learnable skill, and what our manager workshops build.
For employees, we run career workshops that help people articulate what they want, understand the framework, and build a development plan they own. For senior and high-potential people, we offer one-to-one and group career coaching, often paired with a 360 so the plan starts from evidence rather than self-perception.
Then we make the routes real. Internal mobility work covers how vacancies are shared, how sideways moves are valued, and how managers are rewarded rather than penalised for developing people out of their teams. High-potential and talent development programmes sit here too.
- Manager workshops on career conversations and development planning
- Employee career workshops, career mapping and self-assessment tools
- One-to-one and group career coaching for senior and emerging talent
- Internal mobility, secondments, stretch assignments and talent marketplaces
- High-potential and talent development programme design
Best for: organisations where exit interviews cite lack of progression, businesses restructuring who want to redeploy rather than lose good people, and managers never trained to develop anyone.competing for scarce skills against much larger names.
What is Career Development?
Career development is the structured process by which an organisation helps its people grow their skills, experience and responsibility over time, and makes the routes for doing so visible. It combines the framework that defines progression, the conversations that guide it, and the learning and experience that make it possible.
In practice, career development covers career frameworks and levelling, progression criteria, individual development plans, career conversations, coaching and mentoring, internal mobility, and the learning that closes the gap. It applies to lateral growth as much as promotion. Not everyone wants the next level up; most people want to be getting better at something.
Career development is not the same as training, and it is not an annual form. A development plan without a defined destination is a wish list, and a career framework nobody has explained is a document. Nor does it sit apart from its sibling discipline. What someone delivers now is the best evidence available of what they could do next, and the development you invest in only pays back when it changes how the job gets done. That is why we build career development and performance management to share the same language and the same evidence, so each one feeds the other rather than running as two unrelated processes.
What is a capability framework?
A capability framework is a structured description of the skills, knowledge and behaviours an organisation needs, set out at defined levels of proficiency so people can see what “good” looks like at each stage. It gives recruitment, development, progression and workforce planning a single shared vocabulary.
A good capability framework is short enough to be read and specific enough to be used. Ours typically names six to ten organisational capabilities, each with observable behavioural indicators at each level, plus role-specific technical skills organised in a skills taxonomy. That is what makes a genuine skills gap analysis possible.
What is a skills gap analysis?
A skills gap analysis compares the capability your strategy requires against the capability you hold today, so you know exactly where to act. It works in three steps: define what the strategy needs, audit what exists, and decide whether to build, buy, or borrow to fill each gap.
The audit draws on manager and self-assessments, skills data, and, where objectivity matters, 360-degree feedback, all set against a skills taxonomy so the same skill is not named differently across systems. The output is a short, prioritised list of gaps, not a lengthy audit report.
Why Career Development & Capability Building Matter to Your Business
Ambition stays in the building
When people see the next step and what it takes to reach it, fewer go looking for that clarity elsewhere
Managers stop dodging the conversation
A framework gives managers something honest to point at, turning an awkward chat into a useful one.
Promotion stops feeling political
Published criteria and calibrated decisions replace the suspicion that advancement depends on who noticed you.
Skills gaps surface before they bite
Skills gap analysis tells you which capabilities your strategy needs and whether you hold them, while there is time to act.
Cheaper, faster, better hiring
Internal mobility fills roles with people who already know your business, cutting recruitment cost and time to productivity.
A leadership bench that exists
Talent maps and development plans turn succession planning from a list of names into a pipeline with progress behind it.
Internal Mobility: Making It Easier to Move Inside Than to Leave
Most organisations make it easier for a good person to change company than to change job. Internal vacancies appear on a portal nobody checks. Managers quietly block moves to protect headcount. A sideways step is treated as a demotion. So the ambitious employee applies elsewhere, and you replace them at full market rate with someone who needs six months to learn what they already knew.
Internal mobility reverses that. It means publishing roles internally first, defining what a lateral move is worth, deliberately brokering secondments and stretch assignments, and holding managers accountable for developing people outside their teams rather than hoarding them. Some organisations formalise this as a talent marketplace. Most simply need permission and a process.
The business case is straightforward. Internal moves are cheaper than external hires, faster to productivity, and they retain institutional knowledge you have already paid for. They also signal that this is a place you can grow without leaving. We build mobility into the career framework itself, so movement is designed in, not tolerated.
Our Clients
We work with organisations that take their people seriously, from global media names to research institutions, charities and fast-growing specialists. Clients include CT Catapult, ACCA, Centralis, Kennedys Law, Vitaflo, Bauer Media, Synetics Solutions and King’s College London.
Careers & Capability FAQs
What is career development?
Career development is the structured process by which an organisation helps people grow their skills, experience and responsibility, and makes the routes for doing so visible. It brings together career frameworks, progression criteria, career conversations, coaching and learning. Let’s Talk Talent builds career development that managers can actually explain, connecting a written framework to individual development plans and to the learning and development programmes that enable progression.
What is a capability framework and why would we need one?
A capability framework is a structured description of the skills, knowledge and behaviours your organisation needs, set out at defined levels of proficiency. You need one because without it, recruitment, development, progression and workforce planning all use different vocabulary. Let’s Talk Talent designs capability frameworks with observable behavioural indicators at each level, then links them to a skills taxonomy so a skills gap analysis measures against something real.
How does career development relate to performance management?
Career development and performance management are separate conversations that should be reading from the same page. What someone delivers now is the best evidence you have of what they could do next, and the development you invest in only pays back when it shows up in the day job. Run apart, they contradict each other: a review says one thing, a development plan says another, and neither changes the work. Let’s Talk Talent builds both from the same framework and the same evidence, so each one feeds the other. Our performance management consultancy covers that work from the delivery side.
How does a skills gap analysis work?
A skills gap analysis works in three steps: define the capabilities your strategy requires, audit what you have today, and then decide whether to build, buy, or borrow for each gap. The audit uses manager assessments, self-assessments, skills data, and, where objectivity matters, 360-degree feedback. Let’s Talk Talent turns that into a short, prioritised list feeding your HR and people strategy.
Who is this work for?
This work is for HR Directors, People Leads, Heads of Talent and L&D Leads who own progression and skills, and for the line managers who make it real. Employees benefit directly through career workshops and development planning. Let’s Talk Talent designs for all three audiences at once, because a framework only the HR team understands changes nothing. Start with a conversation about your context.
Do you use the 9-box grid?
We use the 9-box grid where it helps, and treat it as one input among several rather than a verdict on a person. It is useful for structuring a talent conversation and spotting where development attention is missing. It is unhelpful when a box becomes a label. Let’s Talk Talent pairs it with 360 feedback and manager insight, as in our live 360 assessments with Halcyon.ai.
How long does it take to build a career framework?
A career framework for a single job family, or a focused skills gap analysis, typically takes 6 to 10 weeks. An organisation-wide career and capability framework usually runs 3 to 6 months, with embedding continuing afterwards. Let’s Talk Talent phases delivery so early job families launch while later ones are still in design. Read more about how we work.
Can this work for hybrid, remote and global teams?
Yes. Career frameworks travel well because they describe skills and impact rather than presence, which matters most for distributed teams. We deliver design sessions, manager workshops, and career coaching in person, virtually, and in hybrid formats, and we build frameworks that hold across multiple countries while allowing for local nuance. Let’s Talk Talent has around 30 years of global experience doing exactly this, including through organisational change and transformation.
How do you measure whether career development is working?
We agree measures before the work starts. The usual set includes internal fill rate, promotion and lateral move volumes, regretted attrition in critical roles, the proportion of employees with a current development plan, and manager confidence in holding career conversations. Let’s Talk Talent reports on a short list your board will recognise, reviewed at agreed intervals rather than once at the end.
How can Let’s Talk Talent help, and what support continues afterwards?
Let’s Talk Talent can build the whole career and capability architecture with you, or fix the single piece holding you back, then stay involved for as long as it is useful. Ongoing support includes annual framework reviews, refresher workshops for new managers, coaching for individuals, and team-level work through our people and team development pillar. Every engagement is scoped and quoted after a discovery conversation.
Ready to Give Your People a Straight Answer About Their Future?
Tell us where the progression is breaking down and what your plan needs people to do. We will tell you honestly what a sensible piece of work looks like. The first conversation is free.
Case Studies
Empowering career growth amid organisational change for a global mass media conglomerate career pathways and development conversations rebuilt while the organisation around them was redesigned, giving people a future to hold onto.
Developing a scalable management and leadership capability at ManyPets a defined capability standard for managers that grew with the business instead of being outgrown by it.
Live 360 assessments with Halcyon.ai structured feedback that gave senior people an evidenced starting point for their development plans
More client work sits in our case study library.
Career Development & Capability Resources
We publish practical guidance for HR teams, managers and business leaders, written by the practitioners who deliver the consultancy work. If you are building career pathways or working out where your skills gaps sit, start here.
The power of three: how managers, mentors and coaches drive career growth why one person cannot be everything to a developing employee.
How do I stretch my team to expand their capability? growing capability through the work itself rather than another course.
Why company succession planning could save your business the risk of an unmapped bench, and how career frameworks feed the pipeline.
11 key changes in talent management over the past decade how expectations of careers, skills and progression have shifted.
Everything else lives in our learning and insight hub.