career planning notes, Lecture notes of Human Resource Management

Download career planning notes and more Lecture notes Human Resource Management in PDF only on Docsity! 1. Career Planning This is an ongoing process through which an individual sets career goals and identifies the means to achieve them, the process by which individuals plan their life’s work. “Career planning is a process of systematically matching career goals and individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfillment.”(schermerhom 2002). “career planning is a deliberation process of becoming aware of self, opportunities constraints, choices and consequences; identifying career- related goals and “career pathing” or programming work, education and related developmental experiences to provide the direction, timing and sequences of steps to attain a specific career goal(Mc Mahon and Merman 1987.  Career planning activities: a. Employees responsibilities: - Self assessment abilities, interest and values - Analyze career options - Decide on development objectives and needs - Communicate development preference to manager - Map out mutually agreeable action plans with manager - Pursue agreed- upon action plans b. Manager’s Responsibility: - Acts as catalyst; sensitize employees to the development planning process -Assess realism of employees expressed objectives and perceived development needs - Counsel employee and develop mutually agreeable plan - Follow up and update employees plan as appropriate c. Organizations Responsibilities: - Provide career planning model, resources, counseling, and information needed for individualized career planning - Provide training in career development planning to managers and employees, and career counseling to managers - Provide skills training programs and on- the-job development experience opportunities There is no right way to approach making decisions about your career; it can be helpful to use a framework that outlines different elements to consider. As a young school leaver, using the traditional model of career planning described below will help to reflect your unique experience and to consider how these influences your next career The traditional model of career planning has four main steps: 1. Self-awareness: this about knowing what you want from a career. Do you want to use certain skills, satisfy certain values, and live in a particular way? In addition it is about what you have to offer an employer in terms of skills, qualifications, and experience. 2.Opportunity awareness: do you have a good awareness of broad range jobs that you may be able to do, and what are these job details? This is about researching different occupations, employers, the job market, and maybe even future study or training opportunities to ensure you understand what is available 3. Decision making. This involves weighing up options against what you know about yourself and different career areas, assessing how realistic your choice may be and making plans to progress. 4. Taking action: this is the practical implementation stage of career planning. it involve identifying suitable job vacancies, making well targeted job applications, preparing for interviews and other selection methods. A career planning process outlined above is not a linear process. When you are thinking about your career, you will be continually learning about yourself and opportunities so you may go forward and backward between these stages. Your ideas will also change over time as your priorities in life change so you may want environments cannot use them either. Workers must anticipate what tools will be needed for success in the future and obtain these skills. These workers must look across company lines to other organizations to determine what skills are transferable, and then go and get them. Essentially, today’s workers must manage their own careers as never before.  Demotion—Demotions have long been associated with failure, but limited promotional opportunities in the future and the fast pace of technological change may make them more legitimate career options.  Career Ladders/ Career Paths/Career Cycles/Career stages Typically, a career involves a growth path which takes an individual to a higher position in the organizational hierarchy over a certain period of time. It is called the career ladder or the career path. Most of the organizations map out various steps in the lifetime of an organization in advance. This is done to proactively assess various job movements, vertical and lateral or cross functional moves. A young person begins with exploration, progressing to becoming established in an organization and occupation, next enters a maintaining period of stable and productive accomplishment, and finally enters a period of decline or transition out of work environment into retirement. However, age and tenure do not fully describe modern career path. A modern and accurate view suggest that career moves through cycles through time, and every person may progress through these stages several times in one career. Career change is triggered by a variety of opportunities and stresses; it is also determined by the person’s personality and tolerance for change. The career routine also determines whether the person becomes aware of his or her choices, once aware the person goes through the stages of information ( much like exploration), sub identify transition and establishment, increased adaptability and self-confidence(much like becoming established) and then the process begins again. Career ladders are part of the information services which in turn is a component of the career development systems. It is a part of the career management process. According to one survey conducted among 182 of the fortune 500 firms, career ladders or career path was considered as one of the effective tools of retention, work motivation and having the communication. The process of chalking the career path is beneficial to both the employees and the organization. From the perspective of the organization, they can preempt future job opportunities for the employees and for answering employee queries about their career progression. Lots of organizations group jobs by job families. They group marketing, HR, Engineering and production etc to draft a picture of prospects for the employee in each group. Example of a Marketing Department Path Director General of Marketing Director of Director of advertising Director of Marketing research public relations Advertising manager Product brand promotion Public relation product Managing manager manager manager marketing Manager Manager For an employee, the career path or the ladder helps him set targets for himself throughout his career; evaluate himself continually and develop new skills required at the time of transition from one position to a higher. The career path carries the timeline, the intermediate goals and the skills and competencies or the qualifications. It thus serves as a guide map. For example, the career path in a sales department may look like this: Executive Business Development ⇒ Senior Executive Business Development ⇒ Assistant Manager ⇒Deputy Manager ⇒ Manager ⇒ Area Sales Manager ⇒ Senior Manager ⇒ Deputy General Manager ⇒General Manager ⇒ Vice President and so forth. At each level, an employee may be required to spend a certain amount of time and give a certain level of productivity. Unless the individual performs brilliantly the time frame is not compromised upon. In a research survey it was found out that, those organization that picked up incredibly young professionals from top business schools and escalated them to senior positions failed miserably despite their rich skills and qualifications! It is thus necessary to spend certain time at each level, which prepares you for the next. Employees who outperform others are placed on fast track development tracks where they are provided training inputs so that they can move up the ladder and assume leadership positions soon. For such cases multiple or dual career paths have come up in the recent years! This is especially true for scientists and engineers who lacked managerial skills and were regarded as misfits for leadership or managerial positions, not anymore. Nowadays organizations have dual career paths so that a person in a technical position can move up through any of the desired paths. It therefore appears that career paths and ladders are good contributors to the career development system within organizations. Apart from the above- mentioned benefits they also act as agents of motivation by helping the employees remain focused.  Elements of Career Planning Programs Though programs differ, four distinct elements of career planning programs emerge. They include (1) individual assessments of abilities, interests, career needs, and goals; (2) organizational assessments of employee abilities and potential; (3) communication of information concerning career options and opportunities with the organization; and (4) career counseling to set realistic goals and plan for their attainment. Each of these elements is discussed in greater detail below. 1. Individual Assessments Most working people go through career stages and it has been found that individual’s needs and expectations change as the individual moves through these stages.  Exploration Stage: This is the stage where an individual builds expectations about his career. Some of them are realistic and some are not. But the fact is that these could be a result of the individual's ambitions.  Establishment Stage: This could be at the stage where the individual gets his first job, gets accepted by his peers, learns in this job, and also gains the first tangible evidence of success or failure. The establishment/advancement stage tends to occur between ages 25 and 44. In this stage, the individual has made his or her career choice and is concerned with achievement, performance, and advancement. This stage is marked by high employee productivity and career growth, as the individual is motivated to succeed in the organization and in his or her chosen occupation. Opportunities for job challenge and use of special competencies are desired in this stage. The employee strives for creativity and innovation through new job assignments. Employees also need a certain degree of autonomy in this stage so that they can experience feelings of individual achievement and personal success.  Mid-Career Stage: The individual's performance levels either continue to improve, or levels, or even deteriorates.  Late Career: This is regarded as a pleasant phase, where one is allowed to relax and play the role of an elderly statesman in the organization.  Decline: The stage, where the individual is heading towards retirement  Nature of Career Planning The following are the silent features of career planning:  A Process: Career planning is a process of developing human resources rather than an event.  Upward movement: It involve upward movement in the organizational hierarchy, or special assignments, project work which require abilities to handle recurring problems, human relations issued and so on.  Mutuality of Interest: The individual's interest is served as his needs and aspirations are met to a great extent and the organization’s interest is served as each of its human resources is provided an opportunity to develop and contribute to the organizational goals and objectives to the optimum of its ability and confidence.  Dynamic: Career planning is dynamic in nature due to an ever changing environment.  Objectives of Career Planning Career Planning seeks to meet the following objectives:  To provide and maintain appropriate manpower resources in the organization by offering careers, not jobs.  To provide environment for the effectiveness, efficiency and growth of its employees and motivating them to contribute effectively towards achieving the objectives of the organization.  To map out careers of various categories of employees suitable to their ability, and their willingness to be 'trained and developed for higher positions.  To have a stable workforce by reducing absenteeism and employee turnover.  To cater for the immediate and future human resources’ need of the organization on a timely basis.  To increase the utilization of managerial reserves within organization.  Steps in Career Planning Process Step 1: Self-Assessment The first and foremost step in career planning is to know and assess you. You need to collect information about yourself while deciding about a particular career option. You must analyze your interests, abilities, aptitudes, desired lifestyle, and personal traits and then study the relationship between the career opted for and self. Step 2: Goal setting. Set your goals according to your academic qualification, work experience, priorities and expectations in life. Once your goal is identified, then you determine the feasible ways and objectives how to realize it. Step 3: Academic/Career Options Narrow your general occupational direction to a particular one by an informatory decision making process. Analyze the career option by keeping in mind your present educational qualification and what more academic degrees you need to acquire for it. Step 4: Plan of Action Recognize those industries and particular companies where you want to get into. Make the plan a detailed one so that you can determine for how many years you are going to work in a company in order to achieve maximum success, and then switch to another. Decide where you would like to see yourself after five years and in which position. Step 5: Catch Hold of Opportunities, Opportunity comes but once. So, whenever you get any opportunity to prove yourself and get into your desired career, try to convert it in every way for suiting your purpose. Remember, a successful professional is also quite opportunistic in his moves, examining every opening to turn to his favor.  Advice on Career Planning 1. Try not to waste much time and wait too long between careers planning sessions. 2. Don't ever judge and analyze yourself, like your likes and dislikes, abilities, etc. by listening to what people around you say. Be your best judge. 3. Be open to constructive criticisms. Career planning is a very important step that needs to be considered in totality. If need be, you should not be hesitant to take the help of professional guidance and find out the best career planning for yourself.