Tag: Modern Marketing Bangalore University BBA Notes

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.

New Organizational Structures

Holacratic structures are composed of teams which can be brought together and dissolved quickly to meet organizational goals. As a form of self-management, a holacracy’s decision power resides in these fluid teams, or “circles,” which helps to disperse power throughout the organization. Rather than a formal hierarchy, these teams have a set of simple, explicit, and public rules that dictate how work gets done. If anyone has an issue with a current process, they can raise and resolve them at regular group meetings. The aim of a holacracy is to distribute decision making while enabling everyone to work on what they do best. Holacracies still possess some structure and hierarchy, but it’s based more on circles and what people think of as departments rather than on people. Zappos and Medium have been two of the most visible adopters of the holacratic method.

While the hierarchal model enabled industrial-age companies to thrive, the rise of the information economy has rendered this model harder to optimize. In factories, knowledge and intellect is concentrated at the top. Actual production, in contrast, requires little thought and massive coordination and repetition. Knowledge-based organizations, by contrast, require each employee to be

Changing structure is not easy for any organization. There is a lag between technical reality and culture. To catch culture up, we must reframe the challenges of adapting to the 21st century as an opportunity.

Some experts go so far as to advocate for eliminating all titles within an organization, though critics wonder how employees could advance their young careers without an external step ladder of success. But Carter says eliminating titles will also help break down employees’ glass ceilings. Without parameters defining their jurisdictions and authority, they can assume more responsibility and boost their level of involvement in projects.

The key to profitable performance is the extent to which four business elements are aligned:

• The individuals responsible for developing and deploying the strategy and monitoring results.
• The structure, processes and operations by which the strategy is deployed.
• The necessary roles and responsibilities.
• The experience, skills and competencies needed to execute the strategy.

New Organizational Structures and Design

Learning Organizations

In an environment where environments are continually changing, it’s critical that organizations detect and quickly correct its own errors. This requires continuous feedback to, and within, the organization. Continual feedback allows the organization to `unlearn’ old beliefs and remain open to new feedback, uncolored by long-held beliefs.

In a learning organization, managers don’t direct as much as they facilitate the workers’ applying new information and learning from that experience. Managers ensure time to exchange feedback, to inquire and reflect about the feedback, and then to gain consensus on direction. Peter Senge, noted systems theorist, points out in his book, The Fifth Discipline that the learning organization is “continually expanding its capacity to create its future for a learning organization, `adaptive learning’ must be joined by `generative learning,’ learning that enhances our capacity to create.”

Virtual Organization

This emerging form is based on organization members interacting with each other completely, or almost completely, via telecommunications. Members may never actually meet each other.

Network Structure

This modern structure includes the linking of numerous, separate organizations to optimize their interaction in order to accomplish a common, overall goal. An example is a joint venture to build a complex, technical systems such as the space shuttle. Another example is a network of construction companies to build a large structure.

Self-Organizing Systems

Self-organizing systems have the ability to continually change their structure and internal processes to conform to feedback with the environment. Some writers use the analogy of biological systems as self-organizing systems. Their ultimate purpose is to stay alive and duplicate. They exist in increasing complexity and adapt their structures and forms to accommodate this complexity. Ultimately, they change structure dramatically to adjust to the outer environment. (Some assert that self-managed groups are self-organizing systems, although others assert that self-managed groups are not because an ultimate purpose is assigned to team members).

Characteristics:

• Organic in nature: Less rules and regulations, sometimes no clear boundaries and always-changing forms.
• Strong employee involvement: Input to the system starts from those closest to the outcome preferred by the system, from those most in-the-know about whether the organization is achieving its preferred outcomes with its stakeholders or not. This way, the organization stays highly attuned and adaptive to the needs of stakeholders.
• Authority based on capability: Ensures the organization remains a means to an end and not an end in itself
• Teams: Share’s activities to take advantage of economies of scale at the lowest levels of activities and ensures full involvement of employees at the lowest levels.
• Alliances: Takes advantage of economies of scale, e.g., collaborations, networks, strategic alliances/mergers, etc.
• Flatter, decentralized organizations: Less middle management, resulting in top management exchanging more feedback with those providing products and services; also results in fewer overhead costs.
• Mindfulness of environments, changes, patterns and themes: Priority on reflection and inquiry to learn from experience; develop “learning organizations”.

Changing Career Patterns

Significant differences were observed in job mobility and organizational mobility of the various generations, with younger generations being more mobile. However, despite significant environmental shifts, the diversity of career patterns has not undergone a significant shift from generation to generation.

Job mobility no longer carries the stigma once associated with job change, although it can be emotionally stressful. Corporate upheavals of the early 1990s and low unemployment rates during the last part of the decade have caused changes in job search and hiring practices. Companies, especially those in technology fields that are in dire need of qualified, skilled, and experienced employees, are driven to recruit workers away from their current employers. Workers, who see job mobility as a way to find work that is appealing, challenging, and offers growth potential, are viewing career change as a way to progress through the uncertainties of the workplace. Job mobility is most prevalent among individuals who are first entering the labor market.

Although changing careers may seem overwhelming to many, the examples presented in this Digest show that changes are possible and probable. Employment will be increasingly characterized by sequences of decisions and work/role transitions. Similar sequences of behaviors, experiences, and judgments will influence ever-changing career patterns. For workers who seek continued and rewarding employment, career management skills will become increasingly important. Workers will need to be able to identify their strengths, goals, and skills; conduct ongoing assessments of their values and goals; monitor themselves and their job situation; and develop the interpersonal and negotiating skills needed to manage organizational career systems. Life changes and career changes often go hand in hand, offering the skilled and flexible worker opportunities to use these changes to personal advantage.

The employee, the manager, and the employer all play roles in planning, guiding, and developing the employee’s career. However, the employee must always accept full responsibility for his or her own career development and career success. This is one task that no employee should ever leave to a manager or employer. For the individual employee, the career planning process means matching individual strengths and weaknesses with occupational opportunities and threats. The person wants to pursue occupations, jobs, and a career that capitalize on his or her interests, aptitudes, values, and skills. He or she wants to choose occupations, jobs, and a career, and a career that make sense in terms of projected future demand for various types of occupations.

Of course, career planning only gets one so far. Many people who had previously worked hard to train as computer systems analysts were devastated to find that the dot-com collapse had dramatically reduced the need for systems analysts. However, uncertainties like these only underscore the need for keeping one finger on the pulse of the job market, so as to be better positioned to move when a career change is required.

The Employee Role:

Making decisions like these is the employees responsibility. For example, an employee can do several things short of changing occupations. An employee must know what he is looking for in a job and to what extent his current position is fulfilling his needs. Get rid of energy-draining, low impact responsibilities. Employee can enhance his networks, for instance, by joining a cross-functional team at work, discussing career goals with role models, conducting informational interviews with people whose jobs are of interest and becoming a board member for a nonprofit organization so that the employee can interact with new people. If an employee is satisfied with his occupation and where he works, but not with his job as it is currently organized, the employee must reconfigure his job. For example, consider alternative work arrangements such as part time work, flexible hours, or telecommuting; delegate or eliminate the job function least preferred and seek out a ostrich assignment that will let him work on something that the employee finds challenging.

Workplace Politics

Employee development programs cannot always place the same amount of emphasis on all employees at once, and not all employees are interested in growing personally and professionally. When some employees take part in development programs and others do not, it creates an opportunity for negative workplace politics. Employees have a responsibility to refrain from gossiping about or resentfully treating others who take advantage of development programs, and to refrain from looking down on employees who choose not to participate.

Outside Learning

Certain aspects of employee development programs place a great deal of responsibility on employees to work hard in their personal time. An employer can offer a college tuition reimbursement plan, for example, but employees have to put in their own hours studying and working toward their degree. Likewise, employers can send employees to seminars and workshops, but employees must choose to use their time for learning and making professional contacts rather than treat the trip like a vacation.

Attitudes

Employees absolutely must have positive attitudes when approaching employee development programs. An attitude of entitlement or complacency can seriously hinder employees’ professional growth. If an employer gives an employee additional responsibility, for example, it is up to the employee to view it as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than being forced to do extra work. In addition, employees have a responsibility to make the most of training sessions rather than complain that training wastes their time.

Taking Initiative

Employee development initiatives can involve identifying potential management candidates on the front lines and giving them training and extra responsibility to prepare them for a future promotion. Employees have the responsibility to speak up to management about their ambitions and desire to progress in their career, however, and must earn the attention of management through excellent individual and team performance.

Employer Role

The manager plays a crucial role in career’s development. First of all, he should be a mentor to expand the capabilities of the individuals and improve their performance. According to John Kotter (2012), the role of the manager as a mentor can be helpful particularly for young employees, who have just started their career. He emphasizes that the successful executives, who he has known, have had two or more these sort of relationships with their managers in the early stage of their career. The mentors provided them with specific information, important contacts or skills.

The effective manager should incorporate coaching skills into his management style. For instance, at Intel, the management department is responsible to help the workforce understand the shifting demand for their skills and ensure that the staff will be provided with appropriate training. At Reuters, the employees are also receiving the guidance to help them to work more efficiently.

Mentoring is a relationship between two people with the goal of professional and personal development. The “mentor” is usually an experienced individual who shares knowledge, experience, and advice with a less experienced person, or “mentee.”

Mentoring is a process of developing formal relationships between junior and senior members of the organisation, in certain cases mentoring also takes place between peers. In other words it is a process of developing relationships between more experienced members of an organisation and the less experienced ones for transfer of knowledge and skills. These associations are developed with the intent of developing career functions. For example, coaching, sponsorship, protection to peer, challenging assignments, introduction to important contacts and resources are certain ways in which mentoring may happen.

Mentors become trusted advisers and role models people who have “been there” and “done that.” They support and encourage their mentees by offering suggestions and knowledge, both general and specific. The goal is to help mentees improve their skills and, hopefully, advance their careers.

A mentoring partnership may be between two people within the same company, same industry, or same networking organization. However, the partners come together, the relationship should be based on mutual trust and respect, and it typically offers personal and professional advantages for both parties.

Mentoring is also targeted to psychological functions; role modeling, counseling, benchmarking individual practices are various ways in which the latter is achieved. It is no doubt an important tool that apart from employee development also leads to increased job satisfaction, organisational dedication and career achievement.

Mentoring Techniques

Mentoring requires an exercise of great wisdom, caution and expertise on the part of the mentor. There are many techniques that are used these days, some of which have been briefly explained below:

• Mentors are assigned with the responsibility of preparing their mentee for change. The focus is to prepare the individual mentally before he/she is asked for change, so that the change is not taken as negative and instead a developmental process. This mentoring technique s called sowing.
• The other entering technique is called as accompanying, wherein the mentor is involved in the learning process of mentee side by side explicitly, guiding all the time.
• Doing is yet another mentoring technique in which the mentor uses his own example to make something understand. It is also called leading.
• Harvesting is one technique that is essentially aimed at evaluation of the past learning’s and to extract conclusions from the same.
• Catalyzing is one technique wherein the process of learning or knowledge transfer is speeded. This is done only when a significant amount of change is achieved.

Best Practices

Open doors

You have great connections that could benefit your mentee. To help your mentee learn and grow, introduce them to people in your network who could provide insight on how to be successful in their chosen field.

Respect differences

Your mentee’s path may be entirely different than yours, so try not to make assumptions about their experiences, goals or skills. Work with your mentee to recognize how their unique backgrounds and experiences shape their perspective and can be leveraged.

Know your worth and your limitations

Don’t question whether you are qualified to be a mentor what you may take for granted might be invaluable knowledge to someone else. At the same time, it’s also important to recognize your limitations and seek out advice and support when needed, which is a great way to model problem-solving skills.

Empower, don’t solve

Most mentors are amazing problem solvers. But great mentors empower their mentees to find their own solution to a problem or challenge. Sometimes, the journey is more important than the result.

Mutual accountability

Trust and accountability are the foundations of any successful mentoring relationship. Hold your mentee accountable to set goals. By the same token, make sure you’re practicing what you preach.

Set expectations

The most successful mentoring relationships have agreed-upon expectations and goals. Must be transparent about what you can bring to the relationship and what you hope to get out of it.

Celebrate milestones

Recognize small achievements along the way. This is a great way to keep your mentee excited and engaged.

Provide opportunities for growth

Ensure that you provide genuine and honest feedback in a supportive manner. Conversely, be open to receiving it.

Learn from each other

When sharing knowledge and advice with your mentee, ask them questions about their point of view, insights and perspectives. The best relationships happen when a mentor and a mentee can learn from each other.