Don't get sold out Into These (Trends) - About What Career Development
- Published on: December 8, 2022
- , by The Kirit Patel
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What career development is
Career development is the ongoing process of improving one’s skills as he or she explores and refines their career path. It facilitates a framework for learning and advancing your career, leading to job satisfaction and success in your career and life.
Accordingly, career development includes everything related to career enhancement or moving toward career goals step by step. It starts with career exploration, choosing a job or entering a career, learning new skills, growing, and achieving the highest position. And ultimately achieving job satisfaction, life fulfillment, and getting a feeling of life enhancement.
What is the Need for career development
For employees career development is very important for employees because it leads to a sense of purpose, growth, and satisfaction and takes you towards DreamCareer..
For employers, supporting career development keeps employees engaged, cuts down on attrition, and improves the productivity and profitability of the organization
Making employee development a priority
Certainly it has been known and understood to the management the importance of employee development.
They will agree that they are not spending the necessary time and resources on this activity. In a study by global staffing firm Randstad, 73 percent of employers said fostering employee development is important, but only 49 percent of employees said leadership is adhering to this practice.
Even now, most organizations could be benefited by increasing efforts to establish clear strategies for how talent will be grown from within.
Career paths and ladders can be effective strategic tools for achieving positive organizational outcomes. They can be a means to ensure an organization’s continuing growth and productivity.
Career development path
The overview of the career development path is how one can grow in their career. For example, if you start with this it provides employees with an ongoing mechanism to enhance their skills and knowledge that can lead to mastery of their current jobs or current role, in case of promotions and transfers to new or different positions. Implementing career paths may also have a direct impact on the entire organization by improving morale, career satisfaction, motivation, productivity, and responsiveness in meeting departmental and organizational objectives effectively.
Career choice and career progression were dictated by tradition, socio-economic status, family, and gender.
For most men, career choice—and status within those careers—was determined by what their fathers and other male family members had done before them.
For women, the career choice options were even more limited by convention and social mores. Career progression and career ladders were almost nonexistent.
Both employers and employees operated under an implied contract: Employees would be loyal, and in turn, employers would provide employment until retirement.
But with time changes all the priorities also changed from both perspectives and also it impacted the employee growth path and development program as a whole.
What is a career development program in HRM?
Before we understand what a career development program is in HRM, we should know what is HRM.
What is HRM?
Human resource management (HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying, and managing an organization’s employees. HRM is often referred to simply as human resources (HR).
An HR department is usually responsible for creating, putting into effect, and overseeing policies governing workers and the relationship of the organization with its employees.
To perform all the HRM tasks proficiently management should take responsibility and take some benefits of employees and if management will take care of all the demands and requirements of employees. Employees will take care of the employer and they will work for you till retirement. They will easily meet the targets and they will firmly enjoy all the loyalty of employees.
Career development program in HRM
It supports an organization to provide employees with professional career growth in employees’ movement to a new position or project within the organization.
This supports coaching, mentoring, skills development, networking, and career pathing. Career development is often facilitated by HR functions (such as learning and development, talent management or recruiting) and by HR business partners or managers in the organization.
HR's Role
In recent times, it has been observed that all HR professionals should have new and varied roles to play in developing and implementing career paths.
HR professionals no longer have a captive base of employees with control over their climb up to the top of the hierarchy. HR is no longer able to promise a position on the ladder or a climb to the top. Recognizing that there is a new paradigm for career progression in the 21st century, HR should encourage employees to take control of their own ladders.
Though an organization can provide resources and tools to assist employees in developing their skills and abilities, the organization is no longer the sole option that employees have.
In fact, the challenge to HR is not only to continue to provide career opportunities to employees but also to provide job enhancement and job enlargement opportunities. Training and development should be focused on preparing the employee for a lifetime of employability versus a lifetime of company employment.
But the ambition and drive to follow that path belong to each individual, but the guidance and support needed to navigate the way come from managers. Managers are responsible for incorporating the organization’s definition of success into employee feedback, evaluations, and development plans.
Still, HR plays a vital role in helping managers develop career paths for their employees is another area in which HR professionals can take the lead. HR professionals should help managers view employees not as their exclusive resources but as organizational resources.
When managers will start to think this way, they will be more apt to encourage employees to develop themselves in areas outside their existing departments to the benefit of the entire organization. When employees move up internal career ladders through internal promotions, HR can contribute to the process of moving an employee up the career ladder and reaching career heights.
Establishing fair, workable, and consistently administered promotion policies and procedures. This includes establishing policies for posting—or not posting—available positions and the content and timing of promotion announcements.
Facilitating promotions within their organizations by providing employees with career coaching, helping managers develop clear selection criteria, and cushioning the blow for those not selected for promotion. Boost their motivation level and try to engage them in one or other assignments, so that they will not feel being ignored.
Also, Helping newly promoted employees make a smooth transition.
Helping nonselected candidates continue to strengthen their skills in expectation of future opportunities within the organization.
Although HR professionals have many responsibilities related to designing and implementing career paths and methods for employees to grow and advance, they must also receive guidance in navigating and advancing their own careers.
What is a career development program
Career development programs and related activities offerings assist employees in enhancing their skills in current roles, navigating organizational ladders, gaining personal insights into their strengths and development needs, and sharpening their ability for career advancement when the opportunities will come.
Also, it is the best policy for the development of future talent and future manpower pool. If you really want to enjoy loyalty from the employees, you should have focus on the implementation of good employee professional growth and a career development program and keep improvising day by day.
Developing Traditional Career Paths and Ladders
Corporate-wide initiatives around career planning can be as simple as role-playing with managers on how to discuss career interests or use career mapping with their employees. More complex initiatives involve developing formal career paths for all positions within the organization. Traditional career ladders are based on the assumption that the individual wishes to continue to climb the ladder as long as he or she is able to and that the employer continues to provide opportunities.
Career Mapping
A tool that managers and HR professionals can use during career planning discussions with employees is career mapping. Career maps help employees think strategically about their career paths and how to meet their career goals within the organization rather than leave it to move ahead.
Career mapping involves three steps:
Self-assessment.
A manager engages with the employee to explore his or her knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as past experiences, accomplishments and interests.
Individualized career map. Creating an individualized career map involves identifying other positions within the organization that meet the employee’s interests. The position may be a lateral move into a different job family or a promotion. In either case, the position should capitalize on the employee’s past experiences, interests and motivation while at the same time requiring the employee to develop a certain degree of new knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to give him or her something to work toward and stay engaged.
Exploring other opportunities. The final step in career mapping is to explore other job opportunities within the organization as they become available.
For managers and employees to successfully practice career mapping, HR must develop the necessary resources to facilitate the process.
Traditional career leaders and career advancement strategies
In a traditional career ladder system, the person is hired and, through a combination of experience, education, and opportunity promoted to levels that encompass additional responsibility and concomitant compensation. This progression within an organization continues until the individual leaves the employer for another opportunity, retires, reaches a level at which no further promotional opportunities exist, chooses to decline subsequent promotional opportunities, or is terminated.
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