Career
Development Program
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Has
your organization seriously considered implementing a career development
program? If not, perhaps this is a good time to do so. The following
description of several, widely used career development interventions and case
studies can be used to stimulate discussion on various career development
practices.
Alternative
Career Paths
One
approach to alternative career pathing involves incorporating the skills
employees already have with what their hearts want to do. It can involve
changing career and lifestyles for more meaningful and fulfilling work
arrangements. Creating alternative career paths often involves incorporating
other career development interventions, such as flexi-time or job enrichment.
Alternative career paths should not be confused with dual career paths, which
is described later.
Career
Pathing
Career
pathing, also called career tracking, is a process of outlining an individual
career plan, usually within an organization. Career pathing is most often
used as a part of management training and development, although individuals
may develop their own career track, either alone, or in conjunction with a
career coach.
Employees
follow pre-determined steps along the career path to develop expertise in
managing different types of organizational situations and to reach their
career goal. Periodic checks evaluate progress, as well as determining what
further training or experience is needed to move to the next step. Career
pathing often uses several other career development interventions as part of
the process. These include cross-training, job rotation, job enrichment or
enlargement, and temporary assignments.
Dual
Career Tracks
Dual
career tracks should not be confused with alternative career paths. Creating
dual career paths involves preparing employees to succeed and be rewarded
without necessarily being on a management or vertical organization career
path. In other words, ``up'' is not considered the only way employees can
grow and advance within the company. The establishment of dual or multiple
career tracks has proven to be an effective way to retain and motivate valued
employees.
Management
can be an attractive career alternative for many employees, but it is not for
everyone. This may be particularly true for many technical or creative
workers. The number of people managed often distinguishes managerial levels,
but under the dual career track plan, individuals apply their expertise (like
managers) to tasks of greater complexity and impact within their specialty
field.
For
example, they may make recommendations in a wide range of business areas,
participate in high level decisions, and act as mentors to other employees.
The interest in dual or multiple career tracks is likely to grow as more
organizations do away with formal management titles and establish team
structures.
Career
Coaching/Counseling
Career
coaching frequently involves helping individuals prepare for a career change
or helping employees advance in their existing jobs. From the employee's
view, career coaching consists of evaluating interests, values, work styles,
and skills. From the organization's view, it consists of matching employee
talents with organizational needs, recruiting and retaining talent in the
company, identifying training and development needs, and assisting employees
in specifying and locating new employment opportunities within the
organization.
Cross-Training
Cross-trained
workers are taught skills outside their current job assignment so they can be
called upon to perform a variety of tasks as the need arises. Many workers
and supervisors find themselves cross-training each other, just to make the
day-to-day work life manageable. As a career development intervention,
however, companies put into place a formal program of cross-training.
Cross-training
helps organizations to balance workloads so everyone is busy, and allows the
company to respond quickly to employee absences. It also allows employees and
departments within an organization to gain a better understanding of the ``big
picture'', and to improve communications and relations. Employees who are
cross-trained are more valuable to the company, and more marketable in the
work world overall.
Flexitime
Flextime
is one of the most popular and most widely known career development
interventions. Flexitime gives employees the opportunity to balance their
work and personal lives by restructuring the typical workday to accommodate
individual employee schedules. Employers who offer flexitime often report
decreased use of paid leave, decreased tardiness and increased productivity.
Other benefits for the employer include a low-cost method of providing
personal time off and extending service hours without overtime pay. This
career development intervention is popular with employees who have extended
families or young children, who may be facing ``burn-out'', and those seeking
further education or pursuing second careers.
Flexitime
allows employees to set their own schedules, within limitations set by
management. For example, workers may adjust their starting and ending times,
but are required to be at the office during management specified core or peak
hours. Working four ten-hour days is an example of a compressed workweek form
of flexitime. Flexitime may also be combined with other interventions, such
as job sharing, job rotation, and phased retirement.
Job
Rotation
Job
rotation is the systematic movement of employees from job to job within an
organization, as a way to achieve many different human resources objectives :
for simply staffing jobs, for orienting new employees, for preventing job
boredom, and, finally, for training employees and enhancing their career
development.
Job
rotation is often used by employers who place employees on a certain career
path or track, usually for a management position, where they are expected to
perform a variety of duties, and have a variety of skills and competencies.
Job
rotation is often confused with crosstraining. While both interventions
perform essentially the same service of providing employees with a varied set
of skills, job rotation goes beyond this. Besides being used as a means of
management training, job rotation can also be used as a form of job
enrichment, by adding increased responsibilities, increasing challenge, and
reducing boredom or burnout.
Job
Enlargement
Job
enlargement is defined as increasing the number of tasks a worker performs,
with all of the tasks at the same level of responsibility, and is also
sometimes referred to as ``horizontal job loading'' . Be careful not to
confuse job enlargement with job enrichment, which will be discussed later.
Job
enlargement and job enrichment can both be used with plateaued workers or
workers who are experiencing burnout, and with especially high achievers.
These two interventions may be used in conjunction with each other, or with
other career development interventions such as job rotation and temporary
assignments. Both interventions provide the employee with increased skills,
making him or her more valuable to the company, or more marketable in the job
search.
Job
Enrichment
Job
enrichment involves increasing a worker's responsibility and control over his
or her work, and is also called ``vertical job loading''. Job enrichment
allows you to expand your responsibilities or change your role to develop new
competencies without leaving your current position or the organization
altogether.
Job
enrichment is also used as an effective motivational technique. According to
this perspective, if a job provides a sense of responsibility, a sense of
significance and information concerning performance, the employees will be
internally motivated to high levels of performance. The key to creating this
situation is to enrich jobs so they provide five core characteristics: task
variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy and feedback.
Job
Sharing
With
job sharing, a full-time job is split between two employees. The two
employees share the duties and responsibilities, as well as the salary and
benefits of the job. These two employees must also work closely together, and
with management, to co-ordinate hours, duties, and communication among
themselves and other departments in the organization. Most often, job sharing
is used by parents or adults caring for their parents, and affords employees a
better balance between their work and personal lives.
Employees
pursuing further education or a second career may also use job sharing. Job
sharing offers advantages over part-time work in that employees are able to
maintain their professional status as well as some of their job benefits. One
example of the advantage over flexitime situations is that with flexitime,
parents may still require extended day care hours. Benefits to the employer
include having ``two heads instead of one'', retaining valued and experienced
employees, and down time due to vacation or sickness is reduced, because the
job share partners cover for each other.
Phased
Retirement
Organizations
typically devote far more energy to recruiting and retraining than to phasing
out workers. Phased retirement is one intervention that workers and employers
can use at the latter end of the career cycle. During phased retirement,
workers gradually taper their work schedules until they reach full
retirement. Other career development interventions such as flextime and job
sharing are typically incorporated into phased retirement arrangements.
Retirees may work part time and serve as mentors or trainers to their
successors. Benefits to employees include a greater sense of control over the
transition from work to retirement, lowering the risk of economic insecurity,
and more social support. The employer benefits by retaining valued talent and
minimizing labor shortages.
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