The Career Pathways project came about through work we were doing in the engineering sector for Fonterra. Fonterra is the fifth-largest employer of engineers in New Zealand, and they wanted to show their current and future workforce the possibilities available to them. Fonterra is a complex organisation, and identifying the next step in a career can be tricky in a business of that size. We needed to develop a tool that clearly explained the structure of engineering at Fonterra and presented pathways that show how an engineer’s career could develop within the organisation.

The Career Pathways tool is a simple-to-use website. It asks users where they are in their career journey (from graduate through to management and senior leadership) and then shows the different parts of the business and the roles available at Fonterra. Users can click through the pathways to understand each role and the experience needed to succeed.

There’s also an “Inspiration” section for people who aren’t sure what their next step might be, with examples to help spark ideas. For current Fonterra staff, the goal is to explore options and then take those possibilities to their line manager to discuss development and next steps. For candidates, the tool showcases the breadth of opportunity across Fonterra and how far an engineering career can go within the organisation.

The site was built on a content management system (CMS), which allows us to replicate the Career Pathways experience for other parts of the business. Since the engineering site went live, we’ve replicated the experience for Finance, and we expect to roll it out across other key parts of Fonterra in due course.