by The major focus of career planning should be on assisting the employees in achieving a better match between personal goals and the opportunities that are realistically available in the organisation.
Career planning is an effort to pinpoint and highlight those areas that offer psychological success instead of vertical growth. Career planning is not an event or end in itself, but a continuous process of developing human resources for achieving optimum results.
Pyramidal Model:
First and the most influential model is the Pyramidal Model of organisations and of careers. In this model, authority, status and pay all increase as the individual moves up the pyramid. As professionals first moved into industrial and government organisations, this was the sole career model they encountered.
Many professionals with advanced degrees become prime candidates for management positions. But many professionals were dismayed to find that the ability and willingness to manage seemed almost the sole criteria for advancement, recognition or reward in their organisations.
Similarly, many organisations found that the pyramid model failed to take important realities into account. Too often, they found themselves promoting a key technical specialist to a management position because it was the only way to reward him.
More and more firms began to set up special new pay and promotion schemes such as the dual ladder for their professional employees in order to recognise the critical contributions they could make as individuals.
These criticisms have not subsided. Instead, they have persisted and indeed increased in recent years.
Obsolescence Model
After the initial stage was over, a new problem arose. As the number of professionals with 20-25 years’ experience grew, a new model of professional careers began to emerge. The low performance ratings of many of these senior employees led to the use of the metaphor of obsolescence.
The picture projected by the metaphor was that of a rapidly changing technology in which the skills of the older professionals were rapidly outdated and in which recent professionals who had mastered the latest tools and techniques were at a premium.
This model carries with it an implied solution to the problem. When it is assumed that professionals become obsolete like machines, the obvious solution is to update or reeducate professionals and to restore them to the state they were in when they came out of management schools, on top of the newest and most sophisticated techniques.
All this money and effort spent on training of obsolete employees’ rests on a questionable model. It has not been concluded that these training courses improve performance.
Japanese Career Model
The Japanese model emphasises life time employment and promotions based on seniority. The Japanese have realised the importance of a stable workforce long back (immediately after World War II) and have consciously put legal restrictions on terminations.
The extensive use of automation and robotics in work place also contributed to the practice of life time employment in Japan. One reason for the widespread use of such advanced technology is that employees know that they will not lose their jobs.
Extensive training is also offered to workers so that they do-not leave the company. Despite life time employment, Japanese companies do have a mechanism for discharge, namely, early retirement. Early retirement is given to workers even in their late 40s-if necessary, of course, backed by attractive severance pay and benefits.
