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A variety of career components exist for use in organizations. HR managers should be familiar with these components for designing career development systems. It develops enriched and more capable employees.
tools and techniques of the career development system
It has been a tremendous change largely because career opportunities and paths are less structured and predictable.
What are the Techniques for the Career Development of Employees?
These are discussed below classified under various categories:
These self-assessment tools or activities provide a systematic way to identify capabilities and career preferences.
After self-assessment, individuals may share their feelings with others in career workshops.
Most workshops use experimental excursions in groups too, to educate individuals on how to prepare and follow through on their career strategies.
Workshops are beneficial in helping employees gain self-awareness and insight and learn more about career opportunities in the organization.
Career workbooks consist of questions and exercises designed to guide individuals to figure out their strengths and weakness, jobs and career opportunities, and necessary steps for reaching their goals.
The workbook illustrates the career path and job qualifications for jobs along with the career ladders.
Individual career counseling is to helps employees discuss their career goals in one on one counseling sessions.
Generally, career counseling is provided by the following taffs members:
A supervisor or line manager.
These are one on one discussions between the employee and organizational representatives.
Such counseling sessions can range from brief, informal talks to the annual performance evaluation discussion.
The career counseling process can be viewed in three stages:
Opening and Probing -This stage establishes rapport and determines the employee’s goal for the counseling session.
Undesratninfd and Focusing – This includes providing assistance in self-assessment and establishing career goals and strategies.
Programming – This stage provides support for implementing the career strategy.
For effective counseling active listening must be practiced and positive feedback must be provided to employees.
Related: What causes low morale in the workplace?
Information services are used by organizations to alert employees to employment opportunities at all levels.
These also may be used to keep ongoing records of employees’ skills, knowledge, work experiences, and preferences.
These records are valuable for pointing out possible candidates for a job opening in the company.
The following systems are used for compiling and communicating career-related information.
1. Job Posting Sytems
Job posting systems are commonly used by companies to inform employees about openings in the organization using Websites, bulletin boards, newsletters, computer systems (e-mail), and other company publications.
They serve as informational and motivational tools.
They imply that the organization is more interested in selecting employees from within the company than outside the organization.
Skill inventories are company files of data on employees’ skills, abilities, experiences, and education that are often computerized.
They may contain comprehensive records of employees’ work histories, qualifications, education degrees, major fields of study, accomplishments, training completed, skills and knowledge ratings, career objectives, geographical preferences, and anticipated retirement dates.
Related: How do you develop an effective training strategy?
Skill inventories are created to help organizations know the characteristics of their workforce so they can effectively utilize employees’ skills.
They also reveal shortages of critical skills, which is useful for indicating training needs.
3. Career Ladders and Career Paths
Organizations usually map out steps (job positions) that employees might follow over time.
These steps are used to document possible patterns of job movement, career paths and ladders are helpful for answering employees’ questions about career progression and future job opportunities in the organization.
Typically, the description of a carer path or ladders illustrates a career plan complete with the final goal, intermediate steps, and timetable for reaching the goal.
4. Career Resources Centers
This center consists of a small library set up to distribute career development material such as reference books, learning guides, videos, and self-study tapes.
Universities are well known for having career centers where students can obtain company brochures and videos and career books and gain access to computers to research films on the internet.
Organizational Potential Assessment Process
Assessment programs consist of methods for evaluating employees’ potential for growth and development in the organization.
Organizations want to ensure that there are individuals available who are ready to fill key positions when these positions become vacant.
To this end, many organizations evaluate the potential or promotability of managerial, professional, and technical employees.
This is judged as high potential employees can then be groomed for these positions.
Some important methods under this category are as follows:
Potential ratings are similar to employee performance evaluations. An employee manager or supervisor typically performs them.
They measure multiple dimensions and include a summary or overall rating of the employee’s potential for advancement.
Potential ratings focus on the future rather than the past or present.
Here the rater judges whether an employee is likely to be successful in jobs requiring skills he may not currently use.
In an assessment center, small groups of employees perform a variety of exercises while being evaluated by a group of trained assessors.
These centers can be used as part of the employee selection process, but these can also be used to assess the potential for advancement.
These centers conduct various exercises including simulations, role plays, group discussions, tests, and interviews.
These exercises measure relevant skills and aptitudes for given positions. The assessors are typically managers.
The assessors write a detailed report on each assessee and usually make an overall judgment about the assesses promotability.
Diagnostic tests and other inventories may be used for self-assessment or with career counseling.
They consist of written tests and questionaries that help individuals determine their vocational interests, personality types, work attitudes, and other personal characteristics that may reveal their career needs and preferences.
Forecasts are used by the organization to make early identification of individuals with exceptionally high career potential.
Once individuals are identified, they are given relevant development experiences to groom, them for higher positions.
Succession planning involves having senior executives periodically review their top executives and those in the next lower level to determine several backups for each senior position.
This is important because it often takes years of grooming to develop effective senior managers.
Organizations need to create pools of candidates with high leadership potential.
Formal succession planning involves an examination of strategic plans and HR forecasts and a review of the data on all potential candidates.
The objective is to identify employees with potential and increase managerial depth as well as promotion from within the company.
Developmental programs consist of skills assessment and training programs that organizations may use to develop their employees for future positions.
What are the components of career development?
Development programs can be internal and run by the human resource staff or be offered externally in the form of seminars and workshops.
These are as follows:
Mentoring is important from both a life development and a career development perspective.
Mentoring is a developmentally printed relationship between senior and junior members.
It generally involves advising, role modeling, sharing contacts, and giving general support.
The mentor provides the employee with career support by opening doors, teaching the ropes of the organization, creating potential opportunities to demonstrate competence, enhancing visibility, and ensuring that the is challenging work.
Employee coaching consists of ongoing, sometimes spontaneous, meetings between managers and their employees to discuss the employee’s career goals and development.
Working with employees to chart and implement their career goals enhances productivity and can spur management’s own advancement.
Job rotation involves assigning employees to various jobs so that they acquire a wide base of skills.
Broadened job experience can give workers more flexibility to choose a career path. Employees increase their experience base through cross-national training.
In addition, to offering more career options for the employee, job rotation results in a more broadly trained and skilled workforce for the employer.
Job rotation is a good way to introduce variety into an employee’s career.
In addition, it provides the employee with a chance to learn and use new skills and to better understand different organizational functions.
It can also serve to help the employee build networks within the organization, and be better prepared for future promotion opportunities when they become available.
4. Tuition Assitance Programmes
The organization offers tuition assistance programs to support its employee’s education and development.
Tuition and other costs of educational programs such as seminars, workshops, and continuing education programs may be entirely or partially covered depending upon the adequate performance in the programs.
Career Programmes for Special Target Groups
Career development programs often are put into effect to meet the unique needs of particular employees.
The following groups are targeted for career development:
1. Fast Track Employee
Organizations often identify stars or individuals with high career potential and place them on a fast track for upward moves in the company.
The identification and development of these employees require organizations to exert extra recruitment efforts and to monitor the career progress of these employees frequently.
Organizations must provide considerable feedback, training, and counseling, as well as offer quicker job changes and more challenging job assignments, particularly during the employee’s first few years on the job.
Outplacement programs assist terminated employees in making the transition to new employment.
Generally, outplacement programs involve individual counseling sessions with external or internal counselors where individuals are able to share their feelings.
In addition, workshops may be used to show individuals how to become successful job seekers by teaching them how to identify their skills and abilities, develop resumes, and interview prospective employers.
Due to a large number of organization restructurings and downsizing, many employees stay attached to them as their employers would like.
They stay in the job because of their investment, psychological preservation, and perception that there are few career opportunities.
4. Supervisors and Career Counseling
Supervisors are increasingly being called upon to play a greater role in managing the career progress of their employees.
They may serve as a coach, advisor, performance appraiser, and referral agent.
To be effective in these roles, they should be trained as career coaches and mentors to help subordinates develop and implement their career plans in one on one counseling sessions.
Executive coaching has recently arisen as a popular method for the career and leadership development of managers.
Coaching has become popular because it does not require much of a disruption to the executive schedule, and it provides individualized, targeted, flexible, just-in-time development for executives on the run.
Many career development programs are conducted for the following groups:
Women, minorities, and employees with disabilities.
Employed spouses and parents.
Thus, career development is necessary to assist employees in career opportunities in the organization and match employees’ needs and goals with the business firm.