Chapter-10 Managing Careers

The main purpose of this chapter is to help you be more effective at managing your employees’ careers. We discuss the employee’s, manager’s, and employer’s roles in career development, and the procedures for managing promotions and transfers. We also discuss enhancing diversity through career management, and, finally, the career management steps an employer can take to foster employee commitment.

THE BASICS OF CAREER MANAGEMENT

We may define career as the “occupational positions a person has had over many years.”

We can define career management as a process for enabling employees to better understand and develop their career skills and intertests, and to use these skills and interests most effectively both within the company and after they leave the firm.

Caree development is the lifelong series of activities (such as workshops) that contribute to a person’s career exploration, establishment, success, and fulfillment.

Career planning is the deliberate process through which someone becomes aware of his or her personal skills, interests, knowledge, motivations, and other characteristics; acquires information about opportunities and choices; identifies career-related goals; and establishes action plans to attain specific goals.

Careers Today

A few years ago, the assumption–the “psychological contract” between employer and employee–was, often, “You be loyal to us, and we’ll take care of you.”

Today, employees know they must take care of themselves. The phychological contract is more like, ”I’ll do my best for you, but I expect you to provide me with the development and learning that will prepare me for the day I must move on, and for having the work-life balance that I desire.”

Career Development Today

This shift in philosophy means that many employers have strengthened the career focus of their human resources activities. Employees expect activities like selection, training, and appraisal to serve their own longer-term career needs.

Traditional Versus Career Development Focus

Human resource planning

T: Analyzes jobs, skills, tasks–present and future. Projects needs. Uses statistical data.

D: Adds information about individual interests, preferences, and the like to replacement plans.

Recruiting and placement

T: Matching organization’s needs with qualified individuals.

D: Matches individual and jobs based on variables including employees’ career interests and aptitudes.

Training and development

T: Provides opportunities for learning skills, information, and attitudes related to job.

D: Provides career path information. Adds individual development plans.

Performance appraisal

T: Rating and/or rewards.

D: Adds development plans and individual goal setting.

Compensation and benefits

T: Rewards for time, productivity, talent, and so on.

D: Adds tuition reimbursement plans, compensation for non-job-related activities such as United Way.

ROLES IN CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Ideally, the employer, employee, and manager all play roles in planning, guiding, and developing the employee’s career.

Roles in Career Development

Individual

• Accept responsibility for your own career.
• Assess your interests, skills, and values.
• Seek out career information and resources.
• Establish goals and career plans.
• Utilize development opportunities.
• Talk with your manager about your career.
• Follow through on realistic career plans.

Manager

• Provide timely and accurate performance feedback.
• Provide development assignments and support.
• Participate in career development discussions with subordinates.
• Support employee development plans.

Employer

• Communicate mission, policies, and procedures.
• Provide training and development opportunities including workshops.
• Provide career information and career programs.
• Offer a variety of career paths.
• Provide career-oriented performance feedback.
• Provide mentoring opportunities to support growth and self-direction.
• Provide employees with individual development plans.
• Provide academic learning assistance programs.

The employee’s Role

While the employer and manager play roles in guiding employee’s careers. For the individual employee, career planning means matching individual strengths and weaknesses with occupational opportunities and threats.

Mentors Studies also suggest that having a mentor–a senior person who can be a sounding board for your career questions and concerns, and provide career-related guidance and assistance–can significantly enhance career satisfaction and success.

• Choose an appropriate potential mentor.
• Don’t be surprised if you’re turned down.
• Make it easier for a potential mentor to agree to your request by making it clear ahead of time what you expect in terms of time and advice.
• Have an agenda.
• Respect the mentor’s time.

The Employer’s Role

“Posting job openings” was the most popular practice. The other top career practices, in descending order, were: formal education; career-oriented performance appraisals; counseling by managers; lateral, developmental moves; counseling by HR; retirement preparation; and succession planning.

Life-Cycle Career Management The employer’s career development responsibilities depend somewhat on how long the employee has been with the firm.

Mentoring Programs More senior professionals and managers team with less experienced progeges with the aim of assisting the proteges to improve their performance and career progress.

Innovative Corporate Career Development Initiatives

include innovative programs like those listed below:

1. Provide each employee with an individual budget.
2. Offer on-site or online career centers.
3. Encourage role reversal.
4. Establish a “corporate campus”.
5. Help organize “career success teams.”
6. Provide career coaches.
7. Provide career planning workshops.
8. Make computerized on- and off-line programs available for improving the organizational career planning process.

Improving Productivity Through HRIS: Career Planning and Development

More employers are integrating their career planning and development systems with their firms’ performance appraisal, succession planning, and training and development informatin systems. For example, Kenexa CareerTracker.

MANAGING PROMOTIONS AND TRANFERS

Promotions and transfers are important parts of most people’s careers. Promotions traditionally refer to advancements to positions of increased responsibility; transfers are reassignments to similar positions in other parts of the firm.

Making Promotion Decisions

Most people look forward to promotions, which usually mean more pay, responsibility, and (often) job satisfaction. Several decisions, therefore, loom large in any firm’s promotion process.

Decision 1: Is Seniority or Competence the Rule? Today’s focus on competitiveness favors competence, as does the fact that promotion based on competence is the superior motivator.

Decision 2: How Should We Measure Competence? Most employers use prior performance as a guide, and assume that the person will do well on the new job. Others use tests or assessment centers to evaluate promotable employees and to identify those with executive potential.

Decision 3: Is the Process Formal or Informal? Many employers establish formal, published promotion policies and procedures.

Decision 4: Vertical, Horizontal, or Other? BP create two parallel career paths, one for managers, and another for “individual contributors” such as high-performing engineers. At BP, individual contributors can move up to nonsupervisory but senior positions, such as “senior engineer.” These jobs have most of the financial rewards attached to management-track positions at that level. Another option si to move the person horizontally.

Handling Transfers

A transfer is a move from one job to another, usually with no change in salary or grade.

ENHANCING DIVERSITY THROUGH CAREER MANAGEMENT

Sources of Bias and Discrimination in Promotion Decisions

Women and people of color still experience relatively less career progress in organizations, and bias and more subtle barriers are often the cause. Similarly, women still don’t make it to the top of the career ladder in numbers proportionate to their numbers in U.S. industry.

Different Career Challenges Women report greater barriers (such as being excluded from informal networks) than do men, and greater difficulty getting development assignments and geographic mobility opportunities.

Taking Steps to Enhance Diversity: Women’s and Minorities’ Prospects

Perhaps the most important thing is to focus on taking the career interests of women and minority employees seriously. Other advisable steps include the following.

Eliminate Institutional Barriers Employers need to identify such practices (required late-night meetings) and make their practices more accommodating.

Improve Networking and Mentoring

Eliminate the Glass Ceiling For women with family responsibilities, not being able to attend could cripple their advancement prospects. Rescheduling late meetings will therefore make a difference for women with child-care responsiblities.

Institute Flexible Schedules and Career Tracks

CAREER MANAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT

The globalization of the world economy has been a boon in many ways. lower prices, better quality, and higher productivity and living standards.

The New Psychological Contract

Employers must think through what they’re going to do to maintain employee commitment, if they are to minimize voluntary departures(自愿离职), and maximize employee effort.

Commitment-Oriented Career Development Efforts

The employer’s career planning and development activities can and should play a central role here.

Career Development Programs most large(and many smaller) employers provide career planning and development services.

Career-Oriented Appraisal Similarly, the annual or semi-annual appraisal provides an excellent opportunity to review career-related issues.

RETIREMENT

Retirement for many employees is a mixed blessing. Retirement planning does not just benefit soon-to-be retirees; it’s also increasingly important for employers. Suggestions include:

• Create a Culture that Honors Experience
• Offer Flexible Work
• Offer Part-Time Work

SUMMARY

1. We may define career as the occupational positions a person has had over many years. Career planning is the deliberate process through which someone becomes aware of personal skills, interests, knowledge, motivations, and other characteristics; acquires information about opportunities and choices; identifies career-related goals; and establishes action plans to attain specific goals.
2. Corporate career development programs used to focus on the employee’s future with that particular firm. Today, the emphasis is more on self-analysis, development, and career management to enable the individual to develop the career plans and skills he or she will need to move on to the next step in his or her career, quite probably with another employer.
3. Employers play an important role in the career management process. Among other things, the employer may provide on-site or online career centers, implement formal mentoring programs, and provide career coaches and/or mentors.
4. Studies suggest that having a mentor can be an important element in furthering an employee’s career. Guidelines here include: Choose an appropriate potential mentor, don’t be surprised if you’re turned down, have an agenda, and respect the mentor’s time.
5. In making promotion decisions, the employer must decide between seniority and competence, a formal or informal system, and ways to measure competence.
6. Enhancing diversity through career management requires some special preparations on the part of the employer. Guarding against intentional or unintentional bias and discrimination in promotion decisions is one issue. For example, blatant or subtle discrimination often explains the relatively low success rate in women moving to the top rungs of organizational career ladders.
7. Career management-related steps to enhance diversity include: Eliminate institutional barriers, improve networking and mentoring, eliminate the glass cieling barriers, and institute flexible schedules.
8. The employer’s career planning and development process can and should play a central role in helping employees crystallize their career goals and thereby increase their commitment to the employer. Career development programs and career-oriented appraisals are two important components in this process.