8 Reasons You Need a Career Lattice in Your Laboratory

With staffing shortages still a harsh reality for many laboratories, traditional career ladders may no longer be enough to attract new talent and retain ambitious laboratory professionals. Instead, an alternative career lattice approach offers a more flexible professional development option that many staff members may prefer.  

Unlike ladders, which emphasize upward movement within a single role or department, career lattices allow laboratory professionals to move laterally, explore cross-training opportunities, and develop a broad range of transferable skills across departments.  

ASCP recently developed a Career Lattices Job Aid to help laboratory managers understand just how the lattice works, with real-life examples.   

The job aid was created by Elizabeth Margolskee, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Pathology at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Associate Chair for Workforce Resiliency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).  

Dr. Margolskee first became interested in career lattices during the pandemic, when CHOP was experiencing massive staff turnover while opening a new community hospital and running thousands of COVID tests a day. She realized that to attract young talent, they needed to offer a different path for career growth.  

“I started reading about career lattices, which have been around since the 90s in accounting, law firms, technology companies,” she says. “It’s just a new idea in the laboratory space.”   

Dr. Margolskee emphasizes that career lattices aren’t meant to replace career ladders. Rather, the approach can serve as an alternative that may be a better fit for staff who crave flexibility and adaptability. It is almost a mindset that leaders need to adopt or develop – to embrace a more flexible, non-traditional growth trajectory for their staff, their recruits, or even themselves. 

Critical Values spoke with Dr. Margolskee and Brandy Neide, MBA, MLS(ASCP)CM, Director of Operations in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at CHOP, about the top eight reasons why career lattices can be beneficial to your laboratory.   

1. Provide expanded growth opportunities 

Dr. Margolskee and Ms. Neide are passionate about understanding the pressures that laboratory workforces face. Before implementing career lattices at CHOP, they discovered that staff were concerned about not having enough options for upward mobility. 

“It was one of the top complaints about laboratory careers, even though we had a five-step career ladder,” Dr. Margolskee says. “We wondered, ‘What’s the disconnect? Why do people feel like there’s no mobility?’ We came to understand that for some employees, they want to grow in unique ways. They don’t want to follow a cookie-cutter progression. They want to chart their own course.”  

This realization was one of their motivations for promoting the career lattice approach. 

2. Build cross-functional skills that benefit the entire laboratory
Career lattices facilitate building cross-functional skills, relationships and knowledge that ultimately benefit the entire laboratory.  

“We’re taking a holistic view of the person,” Dr. Margolskee says.  

One example that stands out, she says, is a phlebotomy manager.  

“She was a nurse in our neonatal intensive care unit, who then transitioned to a talent acquisition role in HR. We ended up hiring her as our phlebotomy manager,” Dr. Margolskee says. “She has the patient-facing experience and an HR background. Now she’s applying the skills and connections that she gained in those roles to phlebotomy, which is inpatient and outpatient. I think that, in a nutshell, this highlights why the lattice is a benefit to the laboratory.” 

3. Develop allies who “speak lab” in different departments 

If someone who worked in your laboratory laterally moves to a different department, they may serve as a significant ally in the future.  

“We had someone who was in the laboratory and then took a step out,” Dr. Margolskee says. “He worked in supply chain. Now he’s in a leadership position in our community hospitals. When there’s a supply chain issue, we have someone who ‘speaks laboratory,’ who can advocate for the laboratory… And that’s always nice. When you’re speaking the same language, it really helps. You can place allies in these satellite departments and benefit from that.” 

4. Increase staff retention by promoting a work/life balance 

In a world with looming laboratory staffing shortages, finding ways to retain your staff is more important than ever.  

“Everyone is thinking about work-life balance in a different way in 2025,” Dr. Margolskee says. “Lattices support people thinking differently about their career. Instead of lockstep climbing this ladder, they can say, ‘It’s OK for me to take a pause, take a lateral step for a year or two. I can always come back.’”  

Ms. Neide experienced just this with her own career.  

“I know for me personally, as a younger mom, I did a lateral move and switched to a part-time role,” Ms. Neide says. “I also worked an evening shift for a period of time, and then was able to step back over to the ladder that allowed my career to continue to move upwards when the timing was right for my family.”

5. Promote individualized growth 

Career lattices let your staff take on new responsibilities based on their individual skillsets. 

“It builds adaptability, so people have the ability to explore something outside their assigned role within the laboratory,” Dr. Margolskee says. “They can try something on and say, ‘I’m really good at teaching. This is something I want to do more of.’ That can help them see where their next step could be.”  

As a leader, it is up to you to embrace your responsibility to connect with your staff, working to identify their unique strengths and weaknesses. This sets you up to be successful in supporting them in their growth, ensuring positive engagement from your team. This is critical to retention in the “revolving door” environment we work in today. 

“Our managers spend a lot of time getting to know their staff and what they’re good at, what they’re interested in, and trying to match them up with responsibilities that align well with their skills,” Ms. Neide says. “That helps them grow in a way that lets them feel like this is the right place for them.”  

6. Appeal to younger generations when recruiting 

When CHOP was experiencing high staff turnover during the pandemic, they learned that younger generations are interested in forging their own path, rather than doing what’s always been done. 

“Today it’s really hard to grow laboratory professionals who want to work the bench for 40 years,” Dr. Margolskee says. “We are trying to develop ways to attract highly talented young people, keep them for seven or eight years, acknowledge they’re likely to leave and build that into our culture. The lattice supports recruiting high-talent, ambitious people who maybe won’t stay forever, but will make a big impact while they’re here.”  

Having an open, lattice-minded approach can help during recruiting. Use your recruiting conversations and interviews to highlight the additional responsibilities that exist in your lab – beyond-the-bench responsibilities that might appeal to a generation that doesn’t want to be confined or bound by tradition. 

“Our recruiters talk about career growth opportunities as they’re recruiting,” Ms. Neide says. “If there’s an MLS applying down the street where they might have a two-step ladder and they’re applying here, where they’re hearing about potential growth opportunities that are more expansive than that, it’s certainly a recruiting tool.”  

7. Promote a long-term focus 

It can feel like a gut punch when someone leaves your department. But a career lattices approach helps you focus on the long-term results rather than the short-term loss.  

“Wherever they move, they’re taking their knowledge with them and growing it,” Ms. Neide says. “And they might come back knowing more, with more tools and skills they didn’t have before! For managers, it can be tough, but recognize that leaving doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it can be a good thing. And don’t take it personally! People get to grow and some will come back.”  

And even if they don’t come back, they can help your laboratory in their new position.  

“We had an evening shift MLS in the core laboratory who was offered a position as a histocompatibility specialist in our immunogenetics laboratory,” Dr. Margolskee shares. “It was a loss. But a month after he left, he reached out to tell us that we were stroing bone marrow aspirates in a suboptimal way for engraftment studies. It was a reminder that, ‘This is what talent mobility is about.’ He gave us really valuable knowledge that ultimately impacted patients and improved laboratory testing.”  

8. Future-proof your laboratory 

This flexibility can help laboratories evolve more easily in the future.  

“Certainly, our workforce and our operational needs will ever evolve and change,” Ms. Neide says. “And the best thing we can do is keep an open mindset. Be creative.”  

“We’ll always have a career ladder, because we’ll always need to grow more people with deep, deep knowledge,” says Dr. Margolskee. “The career lattice is something you overlay to recognize laboratory professionals who have adaptability, versatility, and can flex into new roles to meet coming challenges. It’s kind of future-proofing your laboratory staff.”