Over 80% of associates who are in associate-level production roles (call centers, branch/cafes, operations) are in non-promotable job families. Given limited upward mobility, the Catalyst program was developed to retain our internal production associates by providing career path opportunities across Capital One. The mission of Catalyst is to develop a rich pipeline of BIPOC talent into critical job families with a focus on building and retaining future BIPOC leaders at Capital One.
Although intended to better connect amazing Operations and Call Center talent to job-critical professional roles throughout the company, Catalyst draws heavy inspiration from existing campus-based hiring programs that connect college graduates to early-career job experience. Given the success and growth of these programs, Catalyst follows a similar 2-year program framework, broken down into two 1-year rotations across a set of diverse roles paired with extensive coaching, professional development, and mentoring to help strengthen key skills and prepare associates for the next stage in their career.
We started with informal conversations with key stakeholders, associates who’ve gone through other career development programs, and the leads/managers of the campus rotational programs. Their input helped us craft a draft storyline for the Catalyst experience, which we continued to refine with the program team to highlight the most important moments in the participant journey.
The program team had already brainstormed what kind of programming would be made available to Catalyst participants, but they needed a way to marry it to the vision we outlined and coordinate all of the different pieces of the program experience. A service blueprint helped not only further define the participant experience, but also laid out the actions of all the other actors involved, including incoming and outgoing managers, HR, the program team, and development advisors and buddies supporting the associates. The blueprint also captured key dates and important touchpoints relevant to the pilot rollout, further assisting the program team in being able to connect various resources and in-flight work to the experience.
To further assist in onboarding, not just the new cohort, but everyone involved in providing the experience, we assembled a series of guidebooks to pull together everything for participants, their rotation manager, and their advisors neatly into one comprehensive deck. Guidebooks provided an overview of Catalyst, including the vision story and a high-level version of the journey, expectations of the role, a checklist to get started, details on program milestones and programming, and a list of links to additional resources.
Key business outcomes of this project were talent retention, particularly of BIPOC associates, the development of a pipeline of talent to take on critical roles across the company, and also increased diversity and representation of BIPOC associates, especially in more senior non-production roles. Sixteen individuals joined in the first cohort of Catalyst, kicking off in March 2021, with a further seven in the second cohort in March 2022. Catalyst now represents one of a trio of cornerstone social mobility programs at Capital One.
