Career Planning and Development

A career may be defined as ‘a sequence of jobs that constitute what a person does for a living’.

According to Schermerborn, Hunt, and Osborn, ‘Career planning is a process of systematically matching career goals and individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfillment’.

Career planning is the process of enhancing an employee’s future value. A career plan is an individual’s choice of occupation, organization and career path.

Career planning encourages individuals to explore and gather information, which enables them to syn­thesize, gain competencies, make decisions, set goals and take action. It is a crucial phase of human resource development that helps the employees in making strategy for work-life balance.

Features of Career Planning and Career Development

• It is an ongoing process.
• It helps individuals develop skills required to fulfill different career roles.
• It strengthens work-related activities in the organization.
• It defines life, career, abilities, and interests of the employees.
• It can also give professional directions, as they relate to career goals.

Objectives of Career Planning and Development

The major objectives of career planning are as follows:

• To identify positive characteristics of the employees.
• To develop awareness about each employee’s uniqueness.
• To respect feelings of other employees.
• To attract talented employees to the organization.
• To train employees towards team-building skills.
• To create healthy ways of dealing with conflicts, emotions, and stress.

Benefits of career planning and development

• Career planning ensures a constant supply of promotable employees.
• It helps in improving the loyalty of employees.
• Career planning encourages an employee’s growth and development.
• It discourages the negative attitude of superiors who are interested in suppressing the growth of the subordinates.
• It ensures that senior management knows about the calibre and capacity of the employees who can move upwards.
• It can always create a team of employees prepared enough to meet any contingency.
• Career planning reduces labour turnover.
• Every organization prepares succession planning towards which career planning is the first step.

Organizational Initiatives in Career Planning and Development

1. Job Posting System

It is an organized process that allows employees to apply for open positions within the organization. They can respond to announcements and postings and then be considered along with the external candidates.

2. Mentoring Activities

Mentoring systems can clarify the ambiguous expectations of the organisation, provide objective assessment of the strengths and weakness of the employees and provide a sounding board for participants.

3. Career Resource Centers

The center offers self directed, self paced learning and provides resources without creating dependence on the organization

4. Managers as Career Counselors

Managers can make realistic appraisals of organizational opportunities. They can use information from the past performance evaluation to make realistic suggestions concerning career planning.

5. Career development workshop

It is designed to encourage employees to take responsibilities for their careers.

6. Human Resource Planning and forecasting

From the analysis and needs, priorities can be determined and human resource can be allocated to satisfy the existing future needs through career management.

7. Performance Appraisal

It is a tool for HRD which can be used to guide and direct future growth opportunities for employees. This aids in the development of an employee’s career as well as enhance communications and understanding.

8. Career Path

It is a sequencing of work experiences, usually different job assignments, in order to provide employees with the opportunity to participate in many aspects of a professional area. For e.g. in order for a salesperson to move up the ladder to regional manager, it is important that the employee understands all aspects of the job.

Individual Initiatives in Career Planning and Development

1. Career Planning

An individual employee should be mature enough to plan his/her career in a systematic way looking at the current performance and future interests.

2. Career Awareness

It is the responsibility of an employee to keep himself updated about the latest development happening in the specific area of his work. This is possible through taking membership from the related bodies, subscribing to relevant magazines, attending seminars and conferences.

3. Career Resource Center Utilization

It is one of the way that an employee can plan and develop the career. This center guides and counsels in the right direction helping to take unbiased decisions.

4. Interests Values and Competency Analysis

Awareness about the individual area of interest and analysis of current level of competency helps an employee to understand better with regards to his potential career path.

5. Internal mobility of employees

Job rotation, promotion, transfer to different department can help an employee to gain better career exposure which will enhance the growth prospect in the organization.

Steps in Career Planning and Development Process

Step 1: Self Assessment

Knowing about the strengths and weakness about own helps an employee to check the various areas of exploring the career.

Step 2: Career Skills Assessment

Based on the individual strength, right fit for the right career is possible to sustain in the job for lifetime.

Step 3: Setting the career objective

The career skills assessment leads to set the desired career objective.

Step 4: Career Development Plan

Depending on the career objective the development plan is structured and further broken to sub division of plans

Step 5: Implement the plan

The clearer the development plan is, the easier it is for the employee to implement the same since the goal becomes clearer which helps to achieve the plan.

Step 6: Looking for Continuous growth

After achieving every step, review is a must based on which further growth in the career path is made possible.