Tag: Business Fiannce Bangalore University BBA Notes

Setting up of an e commerce is very tempting and exciting but also carry risks. There are examples of entrepreneurs that have made millions through e-commerce and built successful online business. To name a few: amazon, ebay, alibaba, wallmart, flipkart, myntra etc.

Revenue is the only performance metric

Obviously, you want to make profits and increase revenue but they don’t always indicate the entire well-being of your business. You can still experience low conversions even with an effective online campaign. Unless you set medium-specific metrics and objectives, you cannot exactly tell whether your marketing strategy failed or your site needs a boost. It is common for business people to feel frustrated when their social media marketing campaigns fail to drive sales.

Online store is an easy money-making business

Making money online using e-commerce is easy; is far from reality. Someone claiming to earn INR 100,000 monthly by selling some kind of products to few desperate customers is either concocted or designed to make money by illegal or unethical means. There are many companies who have invested time, knowledge and money to build a viable system which can generate revenue by offering online products.

An e-commerce website is all you need

Do not fall a victim of this misconception. A website is not a complete plan for your business. To start enjoying online sales, you need more than just stocked databases, shopping carts, and payment methods. The truth is a website is only a part of the business plan. This tool needs to work in tandem with other methods for your business to survive the current competitive marketplaces.

Low prices drive online sales

Regardless of the market experience and the size of your business, never try to attract clients with low prices. This is a very archaic selling factor. Of course, you want to give competitive prices and the typical consumer always wants to pay less for more. Nonetheless, other factors come in to determine the final consumer decision e.g. the credibility of your business, shopping experience, customer support, the popularity of your brand, and engaging storefront.

Customer Privacy and Protection is not an important issue

Shoppers at your e-commerce portal will more likely to convert if they feel that their data is safe and secure while shopping on your site. The stores with no such protection (without SSL) are less likely to convert than on stores with SSL. You shall disclose that how you will utilize the data collected from your customers on your website. It is mandatory to publish privacy policy of an e-commerce site.

You need a physical location to host events

This myth should not hold you back. Not every online business requires a physical location. You should be able to promote your products whether you have a physical business address or not. You have probably seen pop-up shops all over testing new products or boosting the sales of the existing products. You should also try come-buzz to benefit your online business. Whether you want to keep the location temporary or permanent, it is all up to you and dependent on your needs.

Online products sell themselves

Some people think that customers are easier to find online and that sales start zooming as soon as the business website is launched. After building the site, you don’t simply sit back and wait for clients to come. A lot of marketing is required for your products or online services to start selling. Just the way you work hard for your commodities to sell in the real-world markets, you must work hard too for online sales to pick.

One Language Support

Most e-stores use one language, especially English. It is wrong to assume that English is understood everywhere if you run an international brand. Recently a research on e-commerce was conducted and it revealed that 30% of online consumers buy products from e-stores which are not designed in their native language. Even if buyers tend to ignore sites with foreign languages, they are sometimes attracted by visually appealing goods.

The sales taxes are complex

Sure, sales taxes are not easy and every country provides its own rules pertaining to filing deadlines, standards, and rates. But it doesn’t have to be like this. All you need is to stay up-to-date on the changing laws by using Avalara. They will take care of your filing hence make your work easier.

The opportunity to give enough product information is limited

Don’t let this misconception confuse you. Online markets do not limit the volume of visual content or product information. Those who hold on to this lie end up offering too little information or too long product descriptions. There is no need to give unnecessary information because it ends up confusing prospective clients who then opt not to buy. Before you create content for your commercial site, think carefully and make the descriptions simple and comprehensible.

Traffic rolls in automatically

This is another big misconception regarding e-commerce. Even the most attractive commercial websites don’t gain automatic traffic. Without proper SEO mechanisms, your site may fail eventually. Online traffic is very different from the traditional one to a physical store. Internet-based marketplaces require serious efforts to drive prospects. Do not expect the prospective buyers to come easily to your site without some incentives. Without good promotional campaigns, you will only get a few visitors.

Dealing with underperforming employees is a challenge every manager or employer has to face once in a while. Unfortunately, many employers fail to realize their employee’s true potential and end up firing them instead. Firing underperforming employees without taking steps to mitigate underperformance has lasting impacts on not only the workers who have been let go, but also the company’s bottom line, effectively wasting a considerable amount of time, money and effort into hiring, onboarding and training an employee.

Are individual members of your team performing less well than you’d hoped? If so, this proverb can take on great significance. To figure out what’s causing the performance issue, you have to get to the root of the problem.

These types of solutions focus largely on the ability of the person performing the job. Performance, though, is a function of both ability and motivation.

Performance = Ability x Motivation

Where:

• Ability is the person’s aptitude, as well as the training and resources supplied by the organization.
• Motivation is the product of desire and commitment.

Diagnosing Poor Performance

So, before you can fix poor performance, you have to understand its cause. Does it come from lack of ability or low motivation?

Incorrect diagnoses can lead to lots of problems later on. If you believe an employee is not making enough of an effort, you’ll likely put increased pressure on him or her to perform. But if the real issue is ability, then increased pressure may only make the problem worse.

Low ability may be associated with the following:

• Over-difficult tasks.
• Low individual aptitude, skill, and knowledge.
• Evidence of strong effort, despite poor performance.
• Lack of improvement over time.
• Enhancing Ability

There are five main ways to overcome performance problems associated with a lack of ability. Consider using them in this sequence, which starts with the least intrusive:

Resupply

Focus on the resources  provided to do the job. Do employees have what they need to perform well and meet expectations?

• Ask them about additional resources they think they need.
• Listen for points of frustration.
• Note where employees report that support is inadequate.
• Verify the claims with your own investigation. People will often blame external sources for their poor performance before admitting their own fault.

Retrain

Provide additional training  to team members. Explore with them whether they have the actual skills required to do what’s expected. Given the pace of change of technology, it’s easy for people’s skills to become outdated.

This option recognizes the need to retain employees and keep their skills current. There are various types of retraining you can provide:

• Training seminars with in-house or external providers.
• Computer-based training (CBT).
• Simulation exercises.
• Subsidized college or university courses.

Refit

When these first two measures aren’t sufficient, consider refitting the job to the person. Are there parts of the job that can be reassigned?

Analyze the individual components of the work, and try out different combinations of tasks and abilities. This may involve rearranging the jobs of other people as well. Your goal is to retain the employee, meet operational needs, and provide meaningful and rewarding work to everyone involved.

Reassign

When revising or refitting the job doesn’t turn the situation around, look at reassigning the poor performer. Typical job reassignments may decrease the demands of the role by reducing the need for the following:

• Responsibility
• Technical knowledge
• Interpersonal skills

Release

As a final option for lack of ability, you may need to let the employee go . Sometimes there are no opportunities for reassignment, and refitting isn’t appropriate for the organization. In these cases, the best solution for everyone involved is for the employee to find other work. You may need to consider contractual terms and restrictions; however, in the long run, this may be the best decision for your whole team.

Set clear performance goals:

Goal setting is an integral part of creating an environment conducive to learning and can thereby improve performance. Before assigning a project or set of responsibilities it is essential both the employee and the manager align on the expected outcome and set up checkpoints along the way.

Provide performance feedback:

Providing regular feedback on the efforts of your employees helps them realize where they stand in terms of performance expectations. This should be well documented to ensure clarity of expectations for all parties. Make sure the feedback you provide is honest, direct and on time.

Monitor performance regularly

Actively check up on the performance of your troubled employee early and often so you can provide feedback and mitigate potential issues before they arise. This makes the employee feel supported and gives you, the manager, much better insight on gaps in skillset or misalignment of deliverables.

Respect employee’s confidentiality

It is equally important you respect the confidentiality of your employee by never disclosing his or her underperformance in front of their colleagues. Once they lose faith in the organization supporting them, or from their peers, self-doubt sets in and could compound issues further.

Reward incremental positive change

Let your employee know you recognize their strengths and growth. This goes a long way toward re-gaining the confidence they need to manage a way back into meeting the expectations of their role.

Professional ethics are ethics that refer to the moral rules and regulations governing the professional world. In other words, they are the moral values that guide the way corporations or other business makes decisions. Professional ethics are standards or codes of conduct set.by people in a specific profession.

Code of ethics and code of conduct specify the ethical standards that a group (e.g., staff or a professional group) should follow in order to continue as a member of the group. They are generally formally stated and members are required to accept them as part of their membership of the group while accepting employment/membership. Values vary between individuals and across cultures. Hofstede’s four value dimensions help us understand cultural value clashes. Long-term versus short-term values affect many aspects of organizational life. The four key ethical principles are egalitarianism, utilitarianism, individual right, and distributive justice.

Fairness and Justice

As human resource professionals, we are ethically responsible for promoting and fostering fairness and justice for all employees and their organizations. To create and sustain an environment that encourages all individuals and the organization to reach their fullest potential in a positive and productive manner.

Professional Responsibility

As HR professionals, we are responsible for adding value to the organizations we serve and contributing to the ethical success of those organizations. We accept professional responsibility for our individual decisions and actions. We are also advocates for the profession by engaging in activities that enhance its credibility and value.

• To build respect, credibility and strategic importance for the HR profession within our organizations, the business community, and the communities in which we work.
• To assist the organizations we serve in achieving their objectives and goals.
• To inform and educate current and future practitioners, the organizations we serve, and the general public about principles and practices that help the profession.
• To positively influence workplace and recruitment practices.
• To encourage professional decision-making and responsibility.
• To encourage social responsibility.

Conflicts of interest

As HR professionals, we must maintain a high level of trust with our stakeholders. We must protect the interests of our stakeholders as well as our professional integrity and should not engage in activities that create actual, apparent, or potential conflicts of interest.

To avoid activities that are in conflict or may appear to be in conflict with any of the provisions of this Code of Ethical and Professional Standards in Human Resource Management or with one’s responsibilities and duties as a member of the human resource profession and/or as an employee of any organization.

Use of Information

HR professionals consider and protect the rights of individuals, especially in the acquisition and dissemination of information while ensuring truthful communications and facilitating informed decision-making.

To build trust among all organization constituents by maximizing the open exchange of information, while eliminating anxieties about inappropriate and/or inaccurate acquisition and sharing of information.

Ethical Leadership

HR professionals are expected to exhibit individual leadership as a role model for maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct.

• To set the standard and be an example for others.
• To earn individual respect and increase our credibility with those we serve.

Professional Development

As professionals we must strive to meet the highest standards of competence and commit to strengthen our competencies on a continuous basis.

• To expand our knowledge of human resource management to further our understanding of how our organizations function.
• To advance our understanding of how organizations work (“the business of the business”).

There are different schools of thought that differ in their toughts on role of ethics or ethics in human resource development. One group of thought leaders believes that since in business, markets govern the organizational interests and these interests are met through people, the latter are therefore at the highest risk. They believe that markets claim profits in the name of stakeholders and unless we have protocols, standards and procedures the same will develop into a demon monopolizing markets and crushing human capital; HR ethics are become mandatory.

Human resources is a major part of our business society. They handle so many aspects of business and have many responsibilities to the point where the workload is nigh comparable. Among the many tasks that human resources managers deal with are: handling ethical issues, dealing with employee remuneration, managing employee’s performance, developing a job analysis, developing a job design, training employees, planning out the workforce, handling employee benefits and compensation, hiring new employees, as well as terminating employees. Handling ethical disputes and issues mostly involves dealing with discrimination or harassment charges. Remuneration deals with how well an employee should be paid for their position.

There is another group of ethicists inspired by neo-liberalism who believe that there are no business ethics apart from realization of higher profits through utilization of human resources. They argue that by utilizing human resources optimally, there is more value creation for the shareholders, organization and the society and since employees are part of the society or organization, they are indirectly benefited.

Employment Issues

Human resource practitioners face bigger dilemmas in employee hiring. One dilemma stem from the pressure of hiring someone who has been recommended by a friend, someone from your family or a top executive.

Yet another dilemma arises when you have already hired someone and he/she is later found to have presented fake documents. Two cases may arise and both are critical. In the first case the person has been trained and the position is critical. In the second case the person has been highly appreciated for his work during his short stint or he/she has a unique blend of skills with the right kind of attitude. Both the situations are sufficiently dilemmatic to leave even a seasoned HR campaigner in a fix.

Race, gender and Disability

In many organisations till recently the employees were differentiated on the basis of their race, gender, origin and their disability. Not anymore ever since the evolution of laws and a regulatory framework that has standardised employee behaviours towards each other. In good organisations the only differentiating factor is performance! In addition the power of filing litigation has made put organisations on the back foot. Managers are trained for aligning behaviour and avoiding discriminatory practices.

Privacy Issues

Any person working with any organisation is an individual and has a personal side to his existence which he demands should be respected and not intruded. The employee wants the organisation to protect his/her personal life. This personal life may encompass things like his religious, political and social beliefs etc. However certain situations may arise that mandate snooping behaviours on the part of the employer. For example, mail scanning is one of the activities used to track the activities of an employee who is believed to be engaged in activities that are not in the larger benefit of the organisation.

Similarly there are ethical issues in HR that pertain to health and safety, restructuring and layoffs and employee responsibilities. There is still a debate going on whether such activities are ethically permitted or not. Layoffs, for example, are no more considered as unethical as they were thought of in the past.

Cash and Compensation Plans

There are ethical issues pertaining to the salaries, executive perquisites and the annual incentive plans etc. The HR manager is often under pressure to raise the band of base salaries. There is increased pressure upon the HR function to pay out more incentives to the top management and the justification for the same is put as the need to retain the latter. Further ethical issues crop in HR when long term compensation and incentive plans are designed in consultation with the CEO or an external consultant. While deciding upon the payout there is pressure on favouring the interests of the top management in comparison to that of other employees and stakeholders.

‘Management Ethics’ is related to social responsiveness of a firm. It is “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad, or right and wrong, or with moral duty and obligation. It is a standard of behaviour that guides individual managers in their works”.

“It is the set of moral principles that governs the actions of an individual or a group.”

Ethics deals with whether to perform certain kinds of action or not in line with what is acceptable to the society as a whole and therefore, ethics is the process of deciding as to what is good for human beings and also of rational thinking aimed at establishing ‘what values to hold and when to hold them’?

The key principles of ethical performance management are as follows:

• This system is designed to make transparency in its operation and all the parties involved in performance management system respect each other’s needs, values, and preoccupations.
• An ethical performance management system directs its employees to respect the core values of the organization. Because the ethics practiced by the organization is in conjunction with its environment. On the other side, the organization respects its employees and provide good working environment so that they will generate the result as per the potential.
• It emphasizes individual responsibility for personal decision making, behaviour, and action rather than collective responsibility.
• This seeks to build or change culture to a state in which the vision of the organization includes its employees, its customers, and the society at large. The values and norms of organization support employee’s decision making, behaviour, and actions consistent with an ‘ethical’ vision.
• This system put emphasis on employees respecting and actively considering the ethical concerns and issues of all stakeholders, rather than focusing merely on shareholders alone.
• This system provides fair and free environment to its employees so that employees can get the opportunity to scrutinize the basis upon which the important decisions were made.

Steps for ethics:

• Develop a code, and make ethical performance a strategic priority. A relevant code of ethics, conduct or similar policy that sets clear objectives, standards and expectations is a key requirement for ethical performance. A code needs to be supported by a focus on ethical performance in wider decision making.
• Engage, communicate and train your staff. Engage staff and other stakeholders such as suppliers, investors, regulators and consumer communities, through effective and informative communication. Good, regular and consistent communication and training will help to embed an ethical culture.
• Set the tone from the top. Senior management teams must show leadership and be seen to live the organization’s ethical values. Only once that happens can employees get in step and ensure the whole organisation lives those values.
• Provide support routes for staff. Organisations need to develop clear routes for reporting suspected fraud and violation of company policies on ethical behaviour. Too many organisations are weak in this regard and must adopt a zero-tolerance approach.
• Measure effectiveness of your ethics programme. To ensure best practice, organisations need both to measure their ethical performance and to foster open discussion.

Code of ethics

Transferring Information

The human resource professionals should ensure truthfulness of communication. It should be in respect of performance feedback and counselling and help top leadership in taking informed personnel decision.

Fairness and Justice

For employee’s work achievements and their contribution in improving organizational competence and performance, there should be fairness and justice in respect of rewards and recognitions.

Human resource professionals are ethically responsible for promoting fairness and justice in the organization and they must enable a culture where ethical behaviour and action is a key performance criterion.

Developing Standards

Human resource professionals must strive to meet the highest standards of competence and ethics. The purpose is to keep abreast of organizational strategy, mission, and objectives on a continuous and consistent basis.

They must drive ethics training of top managers and employees on a wide scale. They have to educate them on the significance of ethics in attaining high-performance standards. The HR professionals shall transmit ethics to employees, managers, and external stakeholders through performance management system.

HR Responsibility

In organizations, the HR professionals are responsible for adding value to by developing HR functions. They are also responsible for maintaining the balance between performance improvement and ethical behaviour in the organization.

The HR professionals shall act as ethics custodians and train and develop human resources for dealing effectively with relationship issues of morality, integrity, and honesty with other stakeholders particularly customer, suppliers, and society at large.

Ethical Leadership

In making performance management a truly business-aligned, transparent, and credible management endeavor, human resource professionals must exhibit individual leadership. They should act as ethics communicator to improve the situation for their organizations.

Conflict Management

They must safeguard the interest of all stakeholders to eliminate the conflict arising between manager-employees, employer-employee and employees-organization on certain issues related to rewards and recognition etc.

The organizations are defining a comprehensive ethics and compliance program which includes six components:

• Clearly defined and Written standards of ethical workplace conduct.
• Orientation or training on ethical workplace conduct.
• A specific office, telephone line, e-mail address or website where employees can get advice about ethics related issues.
• Means for an employee to anonymously report violations of ethics standards.
• Evaluation of ethical conduct as part of regular performance appraisals.
• Disciplinary action against employees who commit ethics violations.

Benefit

Creating Credibility: An organization that is believed to be driven by moral values is respected in the society even by those who may have no information about the working and the businesses or an organization. Infosys, for example is perceived as an organization for good corporate governance and social responsibility initiatives. This perception is held far and wide even by those who do not even know what business the organization is into.

Satisfying Basic Human Needs: Being fair, honest and ethical is one the basic human needs. Every employee desires to be such himself and to work for an organization that is fair and ethical in its practices.

Uniting People and Leadership: An organization driven by values is revered by its employees also. They are the common thread that brings the employees and the decision makers on a common platform. This goes a long way in aligning behaviors within the organization towards achievement of one common goal or mission.

Long Term Gains: Organizations guided by ethics and values are profitable in the long run, though in the short run they may seem to lose money. Tata group, one of the largest business conglomerates in India was seen on the verge of decline at the beginning of 1990’s, which soon turned out to be otherwise. The same company’s Tata NANO car was predicted as a failure, and failed to do well but the same is picking up fast now.

Improving Decision Making: A man’s destiny is the sum total of all the decisions that he/she takes in course of his life. The same holds true for organizations. Decisions are driven by values. For example an organization that does not value competition will be fierce in its operations aiming to wipe out its competitors and establish a monopoly in the market.

Securing the Society: Often ethics succeeds law in safeguarding the society. The law machinery is often found acting as a mute spectator, unable to save the society and the environment. Technology, for example is growing at such a fast pace that the by the time law comes up with a regulation we have a newer technology with new threats replacing the older one. Lawyers and public interest litigations may not help a great deal but ethics can.

Provide Protection for Employees

Most employees will want to do the right thing especially if they work for a company that has high moral and ethical standards. It can be difficult for anyone to report unethical behavior that they witness in other people at the company. Shy or introverted employees may find it particularly challenging to report unethical behavior. Almost anyone would feel intimidated if they felt the need to report the unethical behavior of one of their superiors or someone in a senior management position.

Offer Formal Ethics Training

A formal ethics training program sends a strong message about a company’s ethical stance. Seminars, workshops, and other ethical training programs reinforce the organization’s standards of conduct and clarify the types of behaviors that the company deems permissible or out of bounds. Situational examples help to address how to handle possible ethical dilemmas. Workshops can help employees to work on their problem-solving skills. Trainings may include consultations from peers or mentors.

Top Management Leads Ethics by Example

One of the most noticeable ways that companies can demonstrate their commitment to creating an ethical organizational culture is to ensure that top managers and leaders lead by example. Employees look to the behavior of top management as an example of the type of behavior that the company finds acceptable in the workplace. Actions speak louder than words, so when top executives display ethical behavior, it sends a positive message to employees. Senior leaders need to be mindful of the fact that they’re being watched and be sure to practice what they preach.

Research backs up the notion of leading by example. Psychologist, Al Bandura is known for his research on observational learning. Bandura’s stages of observational learning are:

• Attention
• Retention
• Reproduction
• Motivation

Reinforce Behavior You Want, and Don’t Reinforce Behavior You Don’t Want

Corporate culture always begins at the top. Managers should be evaluated on their ethical behavior as part of their annual performance appraisals. Their appraisals should include specific questions about how their decisions measure up against the code of ethics. Top executives should also be evaluated on the means they take to achieve their ethical goals as well as how the means lead to the ends.

Once again, research supports ethical principles. The principle of operant conditioning, by B.F. Skinner, represents that it’s possible to reinforce the behavior you want to see in others. The principle of operant conditioning also shows that companies shouldn’t reinforce behavior they don’t want to see in others.

People who act ethically should be noticeably rewarded for their behavior and those who fail to act and behave ethically should have consequences for unethical behavior. Rather than fire good employees who demonstrate a single ethics violation, the company may choose to provide correct feedback for the behavior along with a short probationary period. Correction should be conducted in the spirit of collaboration and education rather than punishment or chastisement.

Communicate Clear Expectations of Good Ethics

Companies that create and disseminate an official code of ethics send a clear message of the expectations for their employees. A code of ethics or code of conduct clearly outlines the organization’s primary values and ethical rules that they expect everyone to follow. The code should indicate that it applies to attire, attitudes, and behavior. Cultural norms and expectations are also inferred and are easily detected by observing the environment.

While it’s good to have a written record of the code of ethics, means nothing if top management fails to model ethical behavior. Employees are observant. They take note of whether the company is adhering to the ethical principles that it set or whether they are merely paying lip service.

Managers role to Develop

Inter-organizational: Most discussions of organizational culture focus on internal relationships. Still, employees are keenly conscious of how a company treats suppliers, customers, competitors, and civil society stakeholders, so building and maintaining stakeholder trust will improve organizational culture. Moreover, companies need to ensure that their values and mission statements amount to more than words on a website. Business success and core values are not contradictory concepts. That said, building an ethical culture sometimes means walking away from lucrative opportunities. Companies can be sure their employees will notice.

Intergroup: The quality of relationships among groups is critical to consider in any attempt to build an ethical culture. Celebrating a team whose high performance may stem from questionable conduct gives it power and a mystique that is difficult to challenge, and this can undermine values across the organization. Teams working in sustainability or compliance often need to scrape for power and resources; when members are attached to matrixed working groups, accountability can get watered down.

Group: Socialization into group memberships and relationships is a core aspect of human culture. At work, the key determinant tends to be an employee’s group or team. As organizations become more geographically diffuse and loosely aligned, it becomes harder to set and define consistent organizational culture. Focusing on team conditions can empower middle managers to feel responsible for changing culture and group dynamics to foster more effective ways of working. While clarity in roles and tasks is key to a successful team, so is psychological safety. If employees feel secure in taking risks and expressing themselves, teams will be more creative, successful, and ethical.

Interpersonal: Organizations can also focus on how employees interact across the hierarchy. Abuse of power and authority is a key factor that degrades organizational culture. When decisions around promotions and rewards seem unfair and political, employees disregard organizational statements about values and begin pursuing their own agendas. Building an ethical culture from an interpersonal perspective requires meaningful protections that empower all employees and stakeholders, even the least powerful, to raise concerns and express grievances. Meanwhile, leaders must recognize the outsized role they play in setting culture and driving adherence to ethics, and they must learn to exercise influence carefully.

Individual: How individual employees are measured and rewarded is a key factor that sustains or undermines ethical culture. In the face of pressure to meet growth targets by any means necessary a belief that the ends justify the means unethical behavior is to be expected. Therefore, the rewards system is an excellent place to start. And diversity and inclusion initiatives enable individual employees to bring their whole selves to work: Employees who feel it unnecessary to hide aspects of their social identity to fit into the dominant culture will experience less conflict between personal and organizational values and will express themselves more confidently making them more inclined to raise concerns about ethics.

A career development plan is future-focused and details what you as an employee would like to learn and contribute. A word of caution here, career development plans are not created in a vacuum. It is essential for employees to take into account departmental and organizational needs, objectives and goals when creating their career plans.

Personal and professional growth are important factors for keeping your career moving in a direction with which you are satisfied. Prior to setting up a meeting to discuss your plan with your manager or supervisor you will want to engage in self-assessment so that you will be able to clearly define and articulate your goals and developmental needs.

As you begin your self-assessment, keep in mind , The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.? Take some time to reflect on the following factors:

What could you do to increase your satisfaction, and decrease factors that are not sources of satisfaction? Steps to increase your satisfaction could be as simple as rearranging your office to get out of the draft caused by the heating and air conditioning system, or as complex as researching, crafting and presenting a job sharing proposal. What would make you a happier, more productive employee?

What ideas do you have for enhancing your current efficiency and effectiveness? This might include learning how to perform functions that other team members perform in case they are out of the office. Also take into account, ways you could train other team members to enhance their effectiveness and/or knowledge base.

When creating your plan, consider:

1. Results from a 360? assessment instrument which gives you feedback from not only your manager, but also from your peers, subordinates and customers
2. Your previous performance appraisals
3. Future trends which will be impacting the payroll profession and skills/knowledge needed to adapt to and thrive in the forthcoming environment
4. Customer feedback and letters of appreciation
5. What one thing more than anything else is holding you back? Work out a strategy for overcoming that roadblock/obstacle.

Develop both a short-term and a long-term career development plan. The timeframes for such plans vary from individual to individual. For some, short-term means the steps they will take over the next three to six months while for others short-term might mean completing a degree or certification that takes much longer than six months so they could reach their long-term goal of obtaining a promotion.

Your development plan is a road map for plotting your career future. Don?t leave your future to happenstance. The magic begins when you set goals. A switch is turned on, the current begins to flow, and the power to accomplish becomes yours. Career development planning is for individuals as well as the organization

Career development planning procedures are always based on what the organization needs. But they have to recognize that organizational needs will not be satisfied if individual needs are neglected. Career development planning has to be concerned with the management of diversity.

Career development plans must therefore recognize that:

• Members of the organization should receive recognition as individuals with unique needs, wants, and abilities;
• Individuals are more motivated by an organization that responds to their aspirations and needs;
• Individuals can grow, change and seek new directions if they are given the right opportunities, encouragement and guidance.

Career development planning techniques

Career planning uses all the information generated by the succession plans, performance, and potential assessments and self-assessments to develop programs and procedures which are designed to implement career management policies, achieve succession planning objectives and generally improve motivation, commitment and performance. The procedures used are those concerned with:

• Personal development planning .
• Training and management development.
• Mentoring
• Career counseling

In addition, career development planning procedures may cater for the rising stars by ‘fast tracking’ them, that is, deliberately accelerating promotion and giving them opportunities to display and enlarge their talents. But these procedures should pay just as much, if not more, attention to those managers who are following the middle route of steady, albeit unspectacular, progression.

Personal development planning

Personal development planning is carried out by individuals with guidance, encouragement and help from their managers/HRM as required. A personal development plan sets out the actions people propose to take to learn and to develop themselves. They take responsibility for formulating and implementing the plan, but they receive support from the organization and their managers in doing so. The purpose is to provide a ‘self-organized learning framework’.

Career Counseling

Performance management processes, should provide for counseling sessions between individuals and their managers. These sessions should give the former the opportunity to discuss their aspirations and the latter the chance to comment on them helpfully and, at a later stage, to put forward specific career development proposals to be fed into the overall career management programs.

 Management Development

The formal approaches to management development include:

Development on the job through coaching, counseling, monitoring and feedback by managers on a continuous basis associated with the use of performance management processes to identify and satisfy development needs, and with mentoring;

Development through work experience, which includes job rotation, job enlargement, taking part in project teams or task groups, ‘action learning’, and secondment outside the organization;

Formal training by means of internal or external courses;

Structured self-development by following self-managed learning programs agreed as a personal development plan or learning contract with the manager or a management development adviser these may include guidance reading or the deliberate extension of knowledge or acquisition of new skills on the job.

Mentoring

Mentoring is the process of using specially selected and trained individuals to provide guidance and advice which will help to develop the careers of the ‘proteges’ Allocated to them.

Mentoring is aimed at complementing learning on the job, which must always be the best way of acquiring the particular skills and knowledge the job holder needs. Mentoring also complements formal training by providing those who benefit from it with individual guidance from experienced managers who are ‘wise in the ways of the organization’.

Mentors provide for the person or persons allocated to them:

Advice in drawing up self-development programs or learning contracts; general help with learning programs; guidance on how to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to do a new job; advice on dealing with any administrative, technical or people problems individuals meet.

Examples of Career Initiatives:

1) Managers as Career Counselors

• These initiatives bring several unique advantages to the career counseling role. Managers:
• Can make realistic appraisals of organizational opportunities
• Can use information from past performance evaluation to make realistic suggestions concerning career planning
• Have experienced similar career decisions and can be empathetic toward the employee

2) A Job Posting System

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

Job Posting System is the arrangement wherein a company privately posts a list of open positions (which include the job requirements as well as their descriptions) in order for the current employees who aspire to shift to different functional areas or positions may apply.

3) Career Resource Centers

• A career resource center returns the responsibility of career development to the employee.
• The center offers self-directed, self-paced learning, and provides resources without creating dependence on the organization.
• Career development works only if employees accept responsibility for their own careers.
• One of the fundamental goals of career development is to help facilitate career decision making, which helps to develop career exploration and evaluation competencies.
• The primary services provided at career resource centers are: educational information, career planning, and personal growth, and job-finding skills.

4) Mentoring Activities

• The primary purpose of a mentoring system is to introduce people to the inner network of the organization, which may assist them in their career advancement.
• Mentoring systems help clarify the ambiguous expectations of the organization, provide objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of new employees, and provide a sounding board for participants.

Mentoring activities make use of the same skills and models of listening, questioning, reframing and clarifying connected with coaching. Conventionally, however, mentoring in the workplace has managed to describe a relationship wherein a well-experienced co-worker utilizes his/her own greater know-how and deeper understanding of the job or workplace in order to sustain the growth of an inexperienced colleague.

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.

Career development has close links with the development of human resources. Where the career development leads to improvement and personal improvement afforded by individuals and organizations to choose a destination and a career path to achieve that goal. Career development is not only referring to regulation but also on the ability of individuals and organizations the ability to develop a career employee. But in reality, many are quite crucial issues arise, particularly in local government organization. As an illustration is hiring policy in structural positions and personnel transfers in an area that is still a lot of colored political overtones and a variety of interests both political elite and elite interests of the executive.

• Willingness to change performed job or employer

Sometimes it is necessary to change job position, department or employers for promotion or job career development. In the event that employer does not allow career progress, employee has only one option- to search new job and change employer.

• Personality of employee

Employee’s personality and motivation is necessary prerequisite for working on certain job positions. Personality of employee and superior ideas about personality profile for concrete job is one of key factor with the direct affect to career development.

• Self-assessment

Explains that the self-assessment is a process of self-study, or the first step to be done someone in career planning is a self-assessment. Realistic self-assessment can help a person to avoid mistakes that could affect the overall progress of his career.

• Education, completed training and courses

Adequate education, completed courses and training programs are one of basic factor with direct influence for career and for promotion in organizational structure.

In some companies it is very difficult for employee without university degree to decide achieve advancement to major work and employee with university degree has obvious advantage career development.

• Mapping Career

Individual career mapping is a process to describe the career prospects of an employee, including an explanation of the level of employee readiness to assume certain positions.

• Behavior and self-presentation

The behavior and the superior view of employee is sometimes more important than job performance. Employ must consider the career goals and for these goals and for proposed job position must modify self-presentation and behavior in company.

• Job performance and evaluation of superior

Job performance and result attained at word should be one of the key factors with influence for career and for advancement in within organizational structure.

But in company games they are not only job performance a work results as factor affecting career development. Equally important and many times more important is the superior view and evaluations of job performance. And superiors decide about career progress of their subordinates.

• Performed job position

Performed job position must be in accordance with career goals. If employee wants to build specialist career in research area, he must find adequate job place in adequate company, which allow him correct job and career development.

• Career Counseling

The importance of career development, it is a labor organization or institution should provide for a career counselor for employees. Career counseling services provide an opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn the skills, strengths, and potential for various types of the work, and choose a job that suits the purpose and personality of employees. Based on the above description, the relationship and the influence of self-assessment, career mapping, identification of the business achieve career goals, personal development, performance appraisal, career-related education, career information and career counseling for employee career development can be described through the following frameworks

• Company situation

Situation at company has significant influence for employee career. The employee can have all prerequisites and assumptions for promotion, but situation at company does not allow career development. Reasons for these conditions could be different, for examples: well-qualified and well-evaluated persons on required job positions or economic situations of company or market. In these states of affair is almost impossible to reach of promotion.