Turning Talk into Action: How Alight Equips Managers to Guide Employee Career Ownership

The engagement surveys revealed a consistent theme: employees were eager to grow within the company, passionate about building their futures there. The organization had assembled impressive resources — 1,100 diverse roles, a mentoring program, learning management systems, and quarterly performance reviews designed for development conversations. All the pieces were in place. Yet employees kept expressing the same need: they wanted more visibility into growth opportunities beyond their immediate teams. They believed in the promise of owning their careers but needed a clear path forward.

This was the reality at Alight Solutions, a leading cloud-based human capital technology and services provider. As a company helping the world's largest organizations navigate HR transformation, Alight recognized the chance to model career development excellence within their own walls. "We were hearing that our colleagues were looking for more ways to grow their career at Alight," explained Julie Eagy, Talent Acquisition Manager at Alight, who supports all talent acquisition tools and technologies. With over 11 years at Alight across various talent roles, Eagy saw the potential to connect all these existing resources into something powerful.

"They were interested in staying and growing at Alight," Eagy recalled from the engagement feedback. With all those roles across the organization ready to be mapped and connected, ready to be mapped and connected, the team embarked on an ambitious journey with the help of Phenom's applied AI in the form of Phenom Talent Marketplace and Phenom Career Pathing. The result: career ownership evolved from an aspiration to an enabled reality across the entire organization.

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Building the Foundation with Applied AI

"One of the first things that really drew us to the Phenom tool was the AI that is built into it," Eagy explained. "Since we didn't have a job architecture already built, we definitely needed some help to get us up to that point."

To leverage the tools to their full potential, Alight embarked on a nine-month implementation journey to lay the essential foundational work required. "Most of that was on our side, just because our data was all over the place," Eagy acknowledged. The team had to make critical decisions about role structures, clean data within their Workday applicant track system (ATS), and build all 1,100 role descriptions from scratch. Every progression needed validation — determining which moves made sense for Alight's organization and which should be blocked or deprioritized.

Rather than rushing to launch, Alight took a measured approach. "We had a very small group that we called our initial testing group — HR folks, talent acquisition folks," Eagy explained. They expanded gradually to smaller business organizations, gathering feedback about usage patterns, challenges, and needed improvements. "We went back to the drawing board with the Phenom team and corrected some of those things before we rolled it out to the entire organization."

Early Impact and Manager Demand

Just one month after the enterprise-wide launch, Alight started seeing promising indicators. "We are definitely seeing an increase in not only participation and profile creation in our internal mobility tool, but also in creating career paths," Eagy noted. "Every week we see those numbers tick up."

The career pathing solution now shows employees not just their next potential move, but future moves as well — complete with skills requirements, learning opportunities from the integrated LMS, and mentoring connections. Employees can finally see beyond their immediate teams, understanding what skills they needed and where to develop them.

But perhaps the most telling response came from an unexpected source: the managers themselves. The ask?  “As a manager, how can I use these tools and career pathing to really help my team?"

This organic demand from managers validated what Alight had suspected — giving employees career visibility was only half the equation. Managers needed their own view into team capabilities, skill gaps, and development progress to truly enable career ownership. "People Manager fits right into that," Eagy explained, referring to Phenom People Manager and the next phase of Alight's career development journey.

Equipping Managers To Navigate a Skills-Based Future

With the People Manager implementation underway, Alight is positioning itself to complete their ultimate vision. "Our managers will have more visibility into skill gaps on their team. They can help provide their team with additional training or separate projects to help them bridge any of those skill gaps," Eagy explained.

The change goes deeper than just providing better tools — it's about fundamentally changing how performance conversations work. "We want to start incorporating not only what have you done, but what can you do in the future and how, as a manager, how can I help you get there?" Eagy emphasized. This shift from backwards-looking evaluations to forward-looking development discussions represents a complete reimagining of the quarterly review process.

The bigger picture driving these changes connects to workforce readiness for an AI-powered future. "We're moving towards more of a skills-based organization," Eagy noted. "Are we prepared for the next two, three, 10 years down the road, and do we have the right workforce, and do they have the right skills?" By building this infrastructure now, Alight is ensuring they can adapt to whatever technological shifts emerge.

For organizations considering a similar journey, Eagy offered hard-won wisdom. "You need to make sure that you have that executive leadership buy-in to make those decisions and make them quickly. Make sure that your leadership team understands what this tool is and what it can do." She also emphasized the importance of thoughtful communication planning: "We found that in different pockets, it might mean different things. So we have to adjust our communications around that and make sure that everyone understands what the tool is."

Throughout the journey, the partnership approach proved invaluable. "Phenom has been a great partner through this entire journey, not only with career pathing, but prior to that and helping us think about things a bit differently," Eagy reflected. "Sometimes we get very siloed in our thinking — ‘no, this is how we do it.’ So, really helping us make a switch in some cases."

Alight's Vision: Manager-Enabled Growth

As Alight continues its journey with the People Manager implementation, they're not just adding another tool — they're completing a vision where every performance review becomes a development opportunity, every manager becomes a career enabler, and every employee can navigate their future with clarity. In an era where talent retention depends on growth opportunities, Alight has built the foundation to deliver on that expectation.

For organizations whose own engagement surveys reveal similar disconnects between career promises and career reality, Alight's experience offers both a roadmap and a reality check. The journey requires significant investment in data, decisions, and change management. The payoff? A workforce that stays and thrives because they can finally see their path forward.

Ready to enable manager-driven career development? Download the Workforce Intelligence Guide for proven strategies, rollout plans, and stakeholder buy-in tactics — everything managers need to guide growth.