formulate an alternative strategy to deal with the same. Some of the strategies adopted by several organisations include the following:
(a) Changes in career system by creating new career paths, new incentives, new rewards by redesigning jobs for lateral movement.
(b) Change in the employee’s hopes and aspirations by creating new needs, new goals and new aspirations.
(c) Seek new basis of integration through problem solving, negotiations, compromises, etc.
Fig. 9.2: Career Planning Process
Individual needs and aspirations Personal counselling and Assessment Individual development Formal Training and development programmes Synthesizing Organizational needs and opportunities Personal planning and career information
Complementing Placementon career path
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Career Planning and Development
After initiating these strategies, it is also necessary to review the same every now and then. Such a review will enable the organisation to know whether the plans are contributing to effective utilization of human resources by matching employee aspirations to job needs. This will also help the employee know in which direction he/she is moving and what kind of skills he needs to face the emerging and challanging organisational situations.
Alpin and Gester 5 have suggested a framework of career planning process aimed at integrating
the individual and organistional needs. This is presented in Figure 9.2.
9.4 CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Strictly speaking, career plans are of no use without career development programmes. As men- tioned earlier, career development consists of actions undertaken by the individual employee and the organisation to meet career aspirations and job requirements. For this, a properly designed career developement programme needs to involve the following main actions:
Career Need Assessment
In fact, career is highly personal and extremely important element of one’s life. Hence, there is a need for selection of a right career for oneself. It is important but is not so easy. Just as there is considerable confusion among many university students studying management like you as to proper choice of major subject, so is in case of many employees as to the type of work that would suit them best. Here lies the role of human resource manager to assist the employee in his/her career decision making process by providing as much information as possible about the employee to the employee. There are a number of evaluation instruments available to test aptitude, abilities, attitudes, etc. to have a fair idea of the career needs of people. For example, life planning workbooks can be used to help employees develop and select their career goals6. While doing so, employees are asked to consider
whether they value prestige, independence, money or security, or whether they prefer to lead follow approach of life.
In recent years, formal assessement workshops have become quite popular where small groups of employees are subjected to psychological testing, simulation exercises and depth interviewing. These are conducted by the experts/specialists who assist employees make decisions about their career goals. The objective of these assessment workshops is not that of selecting future promotees, but rather to help employees do their own career planning.
Career Opportunities
Realizing that employees have definite career needs, it becomes obligatory on the part of organisation to chart specific career paths and make the same known to the employees. As pointed out earlier in Chapter 5, job analysis and job design provide the fundamental information required to chart career paths in an organisation. Having charted the career paths or career opportunities, it is important to publish them in a booklet form which can be made available to the employees. The availability of such information will help employees plan their own career movement and progression.
Need-Opportunity Alignment
When employees have assessed their career needs and have become aware of organisational career opportunities, the next step in the career development programme is one of alignment 7. For
this, organisation needs to design such developmental programmes as will help the employees align their career needs with organisational opportunities. Various developmental programmes such as performance appraisal, management by objectives (MBO), career counselling, job rotation, etc., can be used for ensuring an effective alignment of employee’s career needs with career opportunities available in the organisation. The developmental programmes are seen as relevant not only for today’s job, but for the future job also.
In case, appropriate career opportunities are not available for some employees in the organisation, they may be assisted by the organisation in finding suitable positions outside. Doing so is useful because otherwise such employees will fall prey to dissatisfaction which benefits none.
What makes career development effective?: The effectiveness of a career development programme
depends on the following8:
(a) Employees believe that their supervisors care for their career development.
(b) There is awareness about the individual strengths and weaknesses and an appreciation of organisational constraints.
(c) Career plans are developed with necessary support system to provide a fair and equal opportunity to all concerned within and among different job families.
In order to take advantage of career development, it needs to be properly managed. Hence, one last mention about ‘career management’ seems pertinent before we close this chapter.
9.5 CAREER MANAGEMENT
Career managment involves both organisational actions and individual initiatives with an objec- tive to strike a balance between needs and opportunities given the changes therein whether foreseen or not. A career management includes both individual career planning and organisational initiatives to have a balance between career goals and organisational needs. As a matter of fact, the two strategies complement and reinforce each other in the process. To put simply, individual employees will not be willing to respond to opportunities provided by the organisation if they have not planned well their career progression. Reverse will also be true. In the absence of organisational opportunities, efforts made for individual career planning will not be effective.
Bernardin and Russel9 have developed a model to integrate organisational opportunities with
career goals or needs of employees. This is shown in Figure 9.3.
Fig. 9.3: The Career Management Model
9.6 SUMMARY
This summary is organised by learning the objectives given on page ...97: