Fundamentals of Human Resource Management

Chapter 9: Managing Careers

HRM representatives, to have competent and motivated people to fill the organizations future needs, should be increasingly concerned with matching employee career needs with the organizations requirements. Years ago, career development programs were designed to assist employees in advancing their work lives. HRM provided information and assessments to help employees realize their career goals. Career development help organizations attract and retain talented personnel.
But today, due to the dynamic work environment (downsizing, restructuring, re-engineering, globalization, contingent workers, and so forth), employees become responsible for their careers. It is not the organizations obligation.

The Organizations Responsibility

The organizations responsibility is to build employees selfreliance and to help them maintain their marketability through continual learning.
The essence is to provide support so employees can continually add to their skills, abilities, and knowledge. This support includes:
1. 2. 3. 4.

Communicating clearly the organizations goals and future strategies. Creating growth opportunities. Offering financial assistance. Providing the employees the time to learn.

Career

The term career refers to the sequence of positions that a person has held over his/her life span.
We all have careers. Career success is defined not only objectively, in terms of promotion, but also subjectively, in terms of satisfaction.

Career from Individual versus Organizational Perspective

Organizational Perspective

Career development involves tracking career paths and developing career ladders. HRM seeks information to direct and to monitor the progress of special groups of employees, and to ensure that capable professional, managerial, and technical talents will be available to meet organizational needs. It is called organizational career planning.

Employee Perspective

Individual career development, or career planning, focuses on assisting individuals to identify their major goals and how to achieve them. It addresses each individuals personal work career and other lifestyle issues.

Career Development versus Employee Development

They differ in:

Career development looks at the long-term career effectiveness and success of organizational personnel. Employee development focuses on the work effectiveness or performance in the immediate or intermediate time frames.

They are linked in:

Both should be compatible with an individual's career development in the organization.

Career Development: Value for the Organization

A long-term career focus increases the organizations effectiveness in managing human resources.
Positive results:

Needed talent will be available. The organizations ability to attract and retain talented employees improves. Minorities and women have comparable opportunities for growth and development. Reduced employee frustration. Enhanced cultural diversity. Organizational goodwill.

Career Development: Value for the Individual

Career success is no longer measured in terms of employees income or hierarchal level in the organization. It includes using ones skills and abilities to face expanded challenges, or having greater responsibilities and increased autonomy in ones chosen profession, and interesting and meaningful work. Careers are both external and internal.

External career

It involves properties or qualities of an occupation or an organization. It may also be characterized by career ladders within a particular organization. Individual career encompasses many aspects: accumulation of external symbols of success, definition of occupational types, long-term commitment to a particular occupation, a series of work-related positions and work-related attitudes and behaviors.
Both personal relationships and family concerns are of intrinsic value to employees. It also includes the subjective and internal valuation of success.

Intrinsic career

This differentiate of external from internal is important to the manager who wants to motivate employees.

Mentoring and Coaching

Mentoring or coaching is actively guiding another individual. The effective coach, usually a senior employee, gives guidance through direction, advice, criticism, and suggestions in an attempt to aid the employees growth. In other words, through this support system the coach/mentor shares his/her experience with the protg, providing guidance of how to make it in the organization.

The mentor vouches for the candidate. The mentor answers for the candidate in the highest circles within the organization. The mentor makes appropriate introductions. The mentor advices and guides the candidate on how to effectively move through the system.

The advantage of this technique is learning by doing; there is the opportunity for high interaction and rapid feedback. The disadvantages are: (1) its tendencies to perpetuate the current styles and practices in the organization, and (2) its heavy reliance on the coachs ability to be a good teacher. Coaching of employees can occur at any level and can be most effective when the two individuals have no type of reporting relationship but share other similarities in their perspectives. Coaches can be co-workers or people external to the organization. Coaching is affected by the glass ceiling.

Traditional Career Stages

Exploration

It is a career stage that usually ends in the mid-twenties as one makes the transition from school to work.

Establishment

It is a career stage in which one begins to search for a job and finds a first job. It includes accepting your job, being accepted by peers, learning the job, and gaining first evidence of success or failure in the real world. It is dominated by two problems: finding a niche and making a mark.

Mid-career

It is a career stage marked by continuous improvement in performance, leveling-off in performance, or beginning deterioration in performance. Plateaued mid-career refers to stagnation in ones current job. (They are still highly productive employees, but may be they are not ambitious or aggressive).

Late career

It is a career stage in which individuals are no longer learning about their jobs nor expected to outdo levels of performance from previous years.

Decline (Late stage)

It is the final stage in ones career, usually marked by retirement.

Review exhibit 9-2 page 230. Review exhibit 9-1 page 229.

Career Choices and Preferences

Personality-Job Fit

Enhancing Your Career

Proactive Personality: describing those individuals who are more prone to take actions to influence their environment.
To have a successful career, maintain flexibility, and keep skills and knowledge up-to-date. Successful Career Tips:

Know yourself. Manage your reputation. Build and maintain network contacts. Keep current. Balance your specialist and generalist competencies. Document your achievements. Keep your options open.