Was achieving career success one of your new year’s resolutions? If so, you might want to take a closer look at how you might make that happen in the months ahead.  

Rather than promising more dedication in your current role, devising new ways to impress the boss and secure that promotion, you might be better served spending your time outside the office. 

The traditional career ladder is broken. In its place has emerged a set-up more akin to snakes and ladders, but where the snake is no longer the bringer of misfortune. For many professionals, taking a downwards or horizontal slide is a route to another, perhaps better, opportunity. Reaching the “top” quicker than your competitors is no longer the way to win.

Welcome to the portfolio career; an increasingly popular concept by which professional life is composed of multiple concurrent, often diverse roles, rather than being dedicated to a single, all-consuming focus. 

Embracing side hustles

Having multiple projects on the go and flitting between interests might seem, to the seasoned professional, undisciplined or to display a lack of commitment or focus, but recent research from Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey helps to display why that perspective is swiftly becoming outdated. It reveals that 82% of senior executives now acknowledge that following one career path throughout a lifetime is obsolete.  

Not only that, the study suggests that running side-hustles or exploring what some might easily dismiss as “hobbies” might also be highly lucrative. More than 40% of professionals globally reported having multiple income streams, with that percentage climbing steadily year on year. 

It’s a finding replicated by the Gi Group Holding survey The Work Life We Want, as recently reported in I by IMD, which shares that 82% of senior execs agree that the idea of a person following one career path in their lifetime has gone for good.

Calculated risks

But what’s driving this transformation? Like the nature of a portfolio career, the answer is not straightforward nor is it singular. Economic uncertainty, technological enablement, evolving work practices and habits and shifting generational values all play their part in making a jigsaw-approach to professional development more viable.   

For Gen Z and millennials – who will comprise roughly two-thirds of the labour force within the next few years – the portfolio career offers qualities their parents’ generation rarely found in their own professional lives… autonomy and, surprisingly, stability. 

Being the generations that witnessed how loyalty to single employers has been rewarded with redundancies during the 2008 financial crisis and, more recently, furlough then dismissal during the pandemic, building a career that provides a safety net should the rug be ripped from under them is highly sensible.  

The concept is something Christina Wallace, a senior lecturer in entrepreneurial management at Harvard Business School is a fierce advocate for, having quite literally written the book on the subject.

In, The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card, she describes being dedicated to a single full-time job as being “the riskiest move [a professional] can make”. Being diverse in your skills, interests and opportunities can protect professionals from those unforeseen events that can cause a career to collapse overnight. 

“The point of this entire model is flexibility,” Christina told the host of the Talk About Talk podcast last year. “If and when disaster befalls your industry, your geography, your relationship… whatever, you have other irons in the fire that you can access.”  

In the same way that an investor would not throw all of their assets into supporting one cause, she continues, those pursuing a portfolio career have shored up their own survival by spreading their time and skills over a selection of bases. When one collapses, there are other routes to pursue. 

Creating careers from values

Whilst stability is vital for any professional, the core appeal of the portfolio career model is the ability to build a professional life around personal values.  

Deloitte’s research shows that almost 45% of Gen Z and millennials have already left roles not due to poor pay or limited opportunities for progression, but because they lacked purpose. Around 40% also shared that they had rejected assignments or even potential employment opportunities based on personal ethics or beliefs. The freedom to do that comes from not putting all their eggs in one basket. 

It might sound overly idealistic to reject employment for the simple hurdle of not enjoying it, but supporters of the approach see it as incredibly sensible. After all, when you’re not dependent on a single employer for your entire livelihood, you gain leverage to make choices that align with your values, needs and desires. Employees no longer feel the need to retain a role they’re not enthusiastic about to pay their bills or engage in presenteeism to stay in favour with their peers. Instead they can choose to give their time and expertise to causes and projects that offer them more in return, whether financially or spiritually.

Creating a career that allows a professional to pursue income, impact, and identity development simultaneously rather than sequentially is both practical and fulfilling. As Christina’s work highlights, you needn’t wait for retirement to volunteer, or defer passion projects until you’ve “made it” in your primary career. Instead, these streams can coexist, each enriching the others.

For example, a graphic designer might take on lucrative corporate projects whilst dedicating time to pro bono work for environmental charities. An accountant could maintain a stable part-time position whilst building a coaching practice to build financial literacy in underserved communities. 

Doing this also provides the power to step back or even step out if the main hustle just isn’t cutting it anymore. 

Christina isn’t only speaking from an academic perspective, but from personal experience. Alongside her roles lecturing across MBA and Executive Education programmes at Harvard she has also crafted a name for herself both in industry and in the arts. Not only is she a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor, Christina is also a four-time Tony-nominated Broadway producer. Living proof that one can indeed have it all.  

What should employers do?

It’s not surprising that such a model is appealing to a generation raised on remote, flexible study, gig economy roles and unfettered access to the world through increasingly smart digital devices.  

Younger workers also have a wider definition of what constitutes value and success, as confirmed by the Graduate Management Admissions Council’s (GMAC) Gen Z in the GME Pipeline report, which sets out four key career priorities for employers to take note of. These include building community, social purpose and working with flexibility.

Looking forward, research from the World Economic Forum indicates that in 2026, employees will continue to gravitate toward roles that align with flexibility, purpose, autonomy, growth opportunities, and wellbeing.  

Portfolio careers deliver on all five fronts.  

To ensure they can maintain a strong, competitive workforce, organisations need to change tack. Deloitte’s data reveals that one in three Gen Z employees plans to switch jobs within the first half of 2026 – up from one in four in 2024. However, this reality seems to be escaping the majority of employers. Only a third of those surveyed seemed to believe their Gen Z employees to be actively job hunting. It’s an oversight that could cost them dearly. 

So what should employers do? The most forward-thinking organisations are rapidly reconsidering what employment contracts, terms and conditions should look like, with a few key considerations; 

1) Flexibility

Today, flexible working is about more than location. Research from the World Economic Forum found that 56% of employees value control over working hours more than location flexibility.

In response, some employers are experimenting with four-day or compressed work weeks, project-based contracts, or even ramping up the number of part-time positions they offer, as well as committing to advancement opportunities for all staff, no matter the hours they put in. Such measures offer talented portfolio professionals the best of both worlds; retaining a well-paying reliable job and the space to explore other revenue streams.

2) Boomerang-Friendly Cultures

Boomerang-Friendly Cultures: Understanding that talented staff will, inevitably leave at some stage, smart employers are ensuring that the prospect of returning to a job role or to the organisation in general can remain an attractive option. After all, if a portfolio professional’s circumstances changes – if the start-up fails, or personal circumstances shift – these organisations benefit from having maintained the relationship.

In reality, this means a commitment to staying connected with alumni, offering project-based work to former employees and, most importantly, eliminating the stigma around returning. If the exit interview was designed to highlight any issues that the company can address for new incoming staff, perhaps it can be used to also better understand what changes or considerations might help convince ex staff to return.

3) Transparency

Another key quality for Gen Z noted by GMAC and other similar surveys is a need for employers to be transparent. Clear communication about career paths, compensation structures, and organisational priorities and values can help to make a workplace feel like a more attractive option to a portfolio careerist’s other competing offers.

This means everything from publishing salary ranges and promotion policies and criteria to involving employees in strategic discussions about company direction, regardless of their seniority. When young professionals can see exactly how their work contributes to organisational objectives and exactly what advancement looks like, they’re more likely to stay engaged, even if they maintain external pursuits.

4) Development Programmes

Training opportunities for staff should steer away from shaping staff to fit or follow a linear progression but instead to harness skills that can work across functions and departments, accepting that whilst such educational opportunities might also help set someone up to go it alone elsewhere, the opportunities afforded by the employer present a compelling reason for staff to stay.

Navigating change, enhancing transferrable skills and gaining the capability to make the triple-jump of role, industry and location has been the forte of countless management programmes at business schools around the world, with a vision to future-proof graduates to succeed however the wind blows. Employers should take the same approach.

Partnering with executive education providers to build custom programmes can be a way to accomplish such aims.

Building a portfolio that gets you what you want

So how does one actually construct a thriving portfolio career? One that enhances career control, enjoyment and growth whilst ensuring a steady income each month. 

Christina’s book sets out four pillars by which to structure a mindset for a successful portfolio career. 

Her approach models that of a pitch a fledgeling start-up founder might make to investors. Rather than getting ahead of yourself to think of the benefits and features, we must start with addressing the core reason for switching from a linear career path to one made up of many parts. Simply put; what problem are you aiming to solve? In considering this, you begin to solidify your identity as a professional. 

Pillar one, identity, involves considering interests and skills that currently aren’t things to be monetised, or where professionals hold a qualification or experience, but something whilst they hold a belief or passion in.  

This perspective allows professionals to break out of linear career thinking, highlighting a collection of interests and areas that identify with their values, rather than choosing between them, and considering how they might want to bring these into their professional lives. 

Pillar two considers optionality – or, to rephrase, realising that professionals are and can do more than just one thing. Building on pillar one it exists to readjust how professionals think in terms of their professional progression.  

Education and career structures are often set up to funnel people into one industry, one skillset or focus rather than spreading their interests. Even the fundamental question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” nudges people to only follow one path. When professionals become dissatisfied with this path the optionality pillar provides the support to pivot away and choose another route forward. 

Crucially it reframes the concept of failure. Changing path, even after dedicating significant time and effort to the one a professional is already on is not a wasted effort, instead it’s provided vital understanding on what they might want to do next, and how. 

Pillar three explores diversification. Different from the previous pillar, this area also prompts the exploration of practical tools, education and training that can be tailored for a range of different professional goals.  

It also prompts professionals to put these ideas into action – picking up a side-hustle alongside a core role, for example, or taking a few fledgeling steps in a new area to test the waters. 

Lastly, pillar four comes back to flexibility. What good is a career of your own making if you can’t make it work for you? Those whose careers are fixed to one industry, employer or responsibility might find themselves stuck in times of turbulence – professional or otherwise. With a focus on building flexibility, professionals have an option to step back or ramp up work in other areas when one revenue source dries up or when they wish to better balance work with personal commitments.  

Defining Success and knowing when to step back

Unlike traditional careers with clear promotion hierarchies, portfolio careers require professionals to set their own definitions of success. Whether reaching a certain income threshold, gaining a foot in the door across specific industries or work types, or the ability to spend three months abroad each year – each accomplishment should be valued for what it is, and celebrated. 

In becoming a master of their own fates, those that follow a portfolio career approach must also be disciplined enough to recognise when to step back from projects that are not working, or to limit hours spent on passion projects to avoid burnout. 

Similarly, the guideposts for more general career success still apply, engaging with a solid network, having a solid grasp of finances, making effective use of new tech and tools to ensure effective time management, and regularly reviewing progress.  

Practically, like the self-employed, benefits such as pensions, professional development annual leave and health cover must also be taken into consideration. 

The portfolio career is not for the faint-hearted, but approached correctly it presents almost limitless opportunity. More than simply having a side hustle, it represents a fundamental reimagining of how we structure professional identity, manage risk, and define success.  

As we settle into 2026, the evidence suggests this shift is accelerating, particularly among younger workers who are rewriting the rulebook on career development. The question for managers is not whether this trend exists, but whether their organisations have systems in place to navigate it.

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