CAREER FUSION

© Ganesh Shermon

Preparing individual for new responsibilities is an important, exciting and difficult challenge. For an individual a career means far more than a particular job, a means of making a living although this is also largely right. A career can mean many things to many people, for some it could be financial advantages, status, social standing, and for others life satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, leading a life with meaning and purpose, professional recognition and may be for others all of it. Having a job is one thing, having a career is something quite different. A career can give a sense of accomplishment. It means opportunity, challenge, psychological rewards and a better life style. 

A career can be defined as a sequence of positions, roles or jobs held by one person over a relatively long time span usually ten or more years. It can also be defined as a sequence of separate but related or connected work/life activities that provides continuity, order and meaning in person’s life. Career is not confined to one organization. It could cut across organizations and roles each interrelated with one another. A career represents an organized path taken by an individual across time and space with a horizon. It is planned for some, for others it could just happen on account of circumstances, situation current location and so on. Career happens for those who wish to make it happen. 

CAREER PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT:  

Is a HRD function developed partly as a result of the desire of many employees to grow in their jobs and to advance in their career. Career planning included assessing individual employees potential for growth and advancement in the organisation and planning for job experiences and other development opportunities to enable employee to learn and contribute that in turn supports the advancement. The HRD manager plays a significant role in helping employees evaluate alternatives, assess their strengths and weaknesses and design a path which is appropriate for each person. Such paths show how employees can logically progress within the organisation or where necessary beyond the organization. The HRD manager has to look beyond the functions of selection, recruitment and training since neither the individual requirement nor the organizational needs for manpower sill sets and competencies remain constant. The career of a person has to be developed by preparing the employee for future positions within the organisation by further educating, training that will move the individual towards his or her career objective efficiently. It may be programmed with the help of the career plan and the career path selected. There is a marked difference between training and development. Training is a short-term technical skill, knowledge improvement, usually on the job or through classroom input. Development is a long-term process wherein a person is facilitated to reflect upon a learning opportunity, work with the learning variables, choose the best form for gaining personal strengths and help him/her achieve his/her career objective. It is usually related to managerial or professional positions. 

REASON FOR CAREER PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT 

Career planning and development is strategic in the human resource management priorities because many of to-day’s employees have high expectations about their jobs. But once they enter the organisation the job they are given is not up to their expectations. They want more. In a survey conducted by "Psychology today", 2,300 readers found that respondents rated the following as most important to them in a job: 

Chances of getting promotion ranked 17th in a field of 18. Hence, it is not good enough to set goals and timetables for employee advancement in the organisation and believe that with promotions career planning has happened and that employees also fell the same way. Specifically they must consider the career interests and aspirations of individuals in the organisation and advise them of opportunities for advancement in the organisation and provide developmental activities necessary to reach mutually agreed upon goal. 

The organizations must make the best possible use of their most valuable resource people in a time of rapid technological growth and change by helping them their career planning. 

WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT FROM THEIR CAREERS :  

For the HRD manager to make a career plan he/she must know what people want from their careers. What people want from their careers can be easily explained with the help of Career Anchors. Career anchors are the attitudinal syndromes that are formed in early life, guide many people throughout their careers, it acts a foundation of basics, with deep roots of conviction, competence, and mental preparedness for pursuing a path. These syndromes are composed of a combination of needs and drives and serve to "anchor" the person to on or a few related types of careers. 

Five such career anchors are identified by Prof. EH Schein of MIT. They are: 

What people want from their careers tends to change over time. In fact career advances and advancing age spark new career interests, alternate directions, uncharted courses and changing needs and aspirations. 

When a person’s career anchor is the type of (1) i.e. Management Competence, including managerial and administrative competence, such persons are anchored by an overriding interest in management included a capacity to bear considerable responsibility, ability to influence and control others and skills in solving problems with incomplete information. They possess organizational compatibility for administrative roles and challenges. They turn into a strong "Company Man" ( Michael Maccoby) and are dependable to turn people into achievers.  

Those with a (2) technical/functional competence anchor leave no doubt that they are interested in creating or developing something they can call there own. Their areas of specialization involve depth, clear understanding of what they know and what they do not. These are predominantly entrepreneurs who establish separate business, less for sake of money but more for creating a product or service that could be called their own. Their ability to look at the big picture is high provided if they get out of their tunnel specialization vision. It is important for them to see the world in a holistic method. 

The (3) creative and new wave thinking people are flexible, with non steady state of life both in their professional and social life circumstance. Their motivations are to make ordinary things look extraordinary with value addition purely esoteric, marked by the quality and ability to do things different from rote. They are original in what they do and would like to recognize for their unique contribution.  

The (4) security, stability and clarity type are those who desire freedom form danger, anxiety, want or deprivation, and would perform roles, which offers least differentiation between yesterday and today. Their clarity is often to ensure predicting uncertainty, endure hardships and consequent failures. Their organizational roles are often non-conflicting and appear to be largely slow and steady state. 

The final group shows an overriding interest in (5) autonomy and freedom . 

Among these are private consultants, college professors and freelance writers.  

Interestingly, to gain a sense of how sometimes careers are influenced the fact that the first group is paid highest and the last group gets the least is an important factor. It is in this context that together with other career influencing factors do we need to research career motivations pertaining to financial aspirations in making a career. 

In planning for career development, HR professionals require knowledge of the basic motives, drives and needs of employees. Some professionals disclaim any interest in managerial responsibilities. Their dominant posture is one of dedication and service to the pursuit of professional knowledge, depth, search for the unknown, derive inspiration from the intellect, using the parent organisation as a `means to an end’. This attitude is labeled `cosmopolitan’ in as much as they are quite mobile and willing to move to any organisation, situation, circumstance that will enhance the pursuit of their profession. 

If, on the other hand, if the organisation is accorded primary loyalty with professional skills being exclusively adapted towards its end, the attitude is termed `local’. Any professional who is employed by an organisation has elements of both `local’ and `cosmopolitan’.  

MULLER AND WAGER STUDY OF ORIENTATIONS 

The attitudes of the professionals can be divided into four orientations. Muller and Wager discovered these four orientations among 390 engineers and scientists in two units of a major American aerospace company. 

What people want from their career also varies according to the stage of one’s career. What may have been important in an early stage may not be important in a later one. The distinct career stages have been identified as Trial, establishment/advancement, and mid-career and late career. Each stage represents different career needs and interests of the individual. 

Start up/Trial and Experimentation Stage : The trial state commences with an individuals exploration and primary search of career related matters and ends usually at about the age of 25 with commitment on the part of the individual to particular occupation. At this stage the journey is innocent, the mind is open, the willingness to experiment is high, and the learning is significantly based on observation. The recall and applicability of the learning is high and urge to risk and the propensity to do things differently is aggressive. Until the decision is made to settle down, the individual may try a number of jobs and number of organizations. Employees in this stage need opportunity for self-exploration and variety of job activities, frequent role changes flexibility in choices or assignments. 

Establishment/advancement/Growth stage : This stage tends to occur between ages of 24 and 44, or 25 to 40, the individual had made his/her career choice and is concerned with achievement, performance and advancement. This stage is marked with high employee productivity, several individual initiatives and career growth, as the individual is motivated to succeed in a hierarchical and social sense in the organisation in his or her chosen occupations. Opportunities for job challenge, new forms of getting things done, managing people, managing complexity are all at a all time high for the person and are desired in this stage. The employee strives for creativity and innovation through new job assignments. Employees also need a certain degree of autonomy in this stage so that they can experience feelings of individual achievement and personal success. Significant amount of power motivation sets in the management style of the employee. The need to lead people, manage teams, influence other careers, perform roles as mentors, tutors, counselors are all evident at this stage. Conspicuous, of course, would be personal life style and individual identity recognition factors. For many there is no tomorrow at this stage. 

The mid-career and Reflective stage: occurs between the ages of 45 and 64. The age could limit itself to 40 and 50 depending on the state of development and the conditions prevailing in the career environment too. This is called as the maintenance and sustenance stage. In this stage, the person is no longer trying to establish a place for himself but is trying to maintain his or her place. The person is averse to change but is now reflective and in a state of autotelic, seeking a purpose in itself. This stage is viewed as a mid-career plateau in which little new ground is broken. We are not implying stagnation or peak stage of maturity, but a state of entropy where new answers are needed for future direction. Here the current state is in reaching limited learning opportunities. The employee in this stage needs strong state of art knowledge and skill inputs, technical/functional skills and competencies to remain personally competitive. The organization culture needs to be appreciating this transition and the person should be encouraged to develop new job skills. The dinosaur in the person needs to be eliminated and a new lease of life needs to be ushered in. More importantly it is possible to help the person evaluate alternatives Vis a Vis his/her current role and help make the change of course.  

Late-career and destination stage : This is the decline stage. It borders on an eventual self-evaluation of one’s own success or failure in the career and manifests itself in the behavior and attitudinal disposition. In this stage the employee plans for retirement and seeks to develop a sense of identity outside the work environment. This final stage of `decline’ is also a shock to many employees. 

The attitudes of the professionals in a real situation were: 

The professionals normally belonging to the first group were mostly engineers with long service with the organisation. In the beginning they must have high orientation to wither the profession or organisation or both but was slowly transformed into an `indifferent’ as he or she experienced lack of progress in both areas. 

The professionals belonging to the second group were largely physical scientists with Ph.D degrees working in the basic science research laboratory. 

The professionals of the third group were engineers without Ph.D. If the professionals remain with a single organisation for a considerable time, the attitude tends to become more `local’ in character. 

The professionals of the fourth group were `local cosmopolitans’. Here the engineer was a person who had worked for the company for a shorter period of time. 

ELEMENTS OF A CAREER PLANNING PROGRAMME : 

There are four distinct elements of career planning. They are as follows : 

1. Individual assessment and Needs Analysis. 

2. Organisational assessment 

3. Communication of Information 

4. Need-Opportunity alignment. 

5. Career Counselling. 

Individual Assessment and Needs Analysis : 

Many employees begin their working lives with an organisation without any formal assessment of their abilities interests career needs and goals. This phenomenon of people entering their jobs, occupations and careers with little attention to career planning is known as career drift. A 1978 `Psychology Today’ survey of 2,300 found that 40% has happened into their present jobs by chance. Less than one-fourth of the people were in an occupation of their choice and majority were thinking of making a major career change in the next five years. Nearly half the people felt `locked’ into their jobs with no avenues of escape other than termination. 

A person’s career is a highly personal and extremely important element of life. The basic stance of the organisation should be to permit each person to make his or her own choice and decision in this regard. The role of the HRD manager is to assist in this decision making process by providing as much as information possible about the employee to the employee. The employees are like college students who are confused as to proper choice of major subject. The employees are often uncertain as to the type of work that would suit them best. The objective in these assessment programs is not that of selecting future promotes, but rather to help individuals to do their own planning. The employee can be helped through workshops sponsored by the organisation or individually i.e. by giving him self-assessment exercises as shown on the next page. Workshops have the advantage of combining a number of careers planning elements including self-assessment, communication of organizational career and development opportunities and one-to-one counseling to ensure that career goals are realistic. Plans for accomplishment of career objective sometimes called `Strategizing’ may be done at this time. Strategizing facilitates gaining mutual clarity on the path to be taken and the evaluation of the choices there in. the development to be effective needs the willingness and the commitment of the person concerned. 

The purpose of Needs analysis is to identify the educational and development exercises that will best meet the individual career plans and the organization future needs and set objectives for them. 

Needs analysis has several parts: 

Need Analysis defines the abilities an employee must have to move into a more responsible and critical position. The individual learns what is needed and how to get it. It is a transparent system to help the employee gain the pulls and pressures of the potential assignment. Preparedness of an individual to changing job constraints and measurement of the alternatives makes the task simpler and relatively easy to manage.  

Organizational Assessment: A major issue in career counseling sessions is whether an employee’s goals are realistic in terms of organizational possibilities and organizational assessment of employees abilities and potential. Accurate assessment of employee abilities is important to both the organization and the individual. 

Organizations have several sources of information for making assessments. First is the selection information, including ability tests, interest inventories and biographical information such as education and work experience. Second is the current job history, past information records, recommendations of past employer, past references, customer feedback and promotion recommendation, salary increases, general interests, academic pursuits, participation in various training and development programs. Organizations traditionally the primary basis for assessing employee potential. 

The use of performance appraisal data as a primary and perhaps the only source of data to assess employee potential are sometimes faulty for a number of reasons. In fact it highly recommended that performance appraisal and potential appraisal is done independent of each other and at different intervals.  

First, performance appraisals do not always accurately reflect employee abilities and actual performance. Appraisals done specifically against goals that are specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, target oriented offers a specific perspective. In any case appraisals is a measurement of achievement against clear goals and objectives at a point in time. It is reflective of neither the past nor the future. It is purely present. Appraisals are often colored by evaluation biases and by faulty instruments that are either sufficient or contaminated.  

Second, if the job requirements of the future position are substantially different from those of the present position, it is erroneous to assume that the successful employee will be equally successful in a new role. In order to avoid the problems of basing predictions of future performance on measures of past performance a number of organizations have turned to methods such as psychological testing and assessment centers. 

Assessment centers evaluate employees on their competencies and abilities to perform behaviors required for future positions. Assessment centers use groups form discussions, role play, interviews and an assortment of tests but they also use alternate forms of simulation exercises. Each participant’s behaviour is observed and evaluated. Assessment helps organizations determine the possible avenue for employment development and also aids employees in understanding their strengths and weaknesses so they can set more realistic goals. 

Before realistic goals can be set, an individual employee needs information about career options and opportunities. This includes information about possible career directions, possible paths of career advancement and specific job vacancies. This is communication of information about possible promotion to the employees. Job vacancies are announced in company newspapers or by word of mouth, or through a system of job posting. 

In organizations with informal career planning programs, employees learn about career options and opportunities from their supervisors within the context of development of Performance appraisal interviews. Organizations with more established career planning programs make greater use of planning books, workshops and even recruiting materials to communicate career options and opportunities. 

Career paths chart the possible directions and paths of advancement in an organisation. Career paths have been defined as logical progressions between jobs or from one job to a target position. They can be either traditional or behavioral. 

Employees base on traditional career paths past patterns of actual movement. They tend to be limited to advancements within a single function or organizational unit, such as purchasing, sales or customer relations. For example, a salesman might expect to advance to the position of account supervisor after five years to sales supervisor after 10, to district manager after 15, and to regional manager after 25 years of service. 

A basic problem with traditional career paths is that they are based on organizations past needs for human resources. Past needs may not always suit present and future purposes. With needs for human resources always changing due to technological advances and legal requirements to day’s organizations should develop more flexible progressive pattern of career growth and development. 

More flexible patterns of employee career movement are described by Behavioral career paths, which are based on analysis of similarities in job activities and requirements where similarities in the job exist, job can be grouped into job families or clusters. Thus, all jobs involving similar work activities and levels of required skill and abilities from one job cluster regardless of job title. 

Need opportunity alignment: When employees have accurately assessed their career needs and have become aware of organizational career opportunities, the remaining problem is one of alignment. The employee should be developed in the fields that are not developed. Specific emphasis should be given to the more individualized development techniques such as special assignments, planned position rotation and supervisory coaching. 

The HRD unit should have some system of recording and tracking career moves through the organisation. The specific transfer and promotion decisions made by management for each employee is the final pay off of a career development program. Appraisal, counseling, training and development and education go for naught if the employee does not progress along his or her individually perceived career path. Both productivity and morale are facilitated if these personnel decisions are based on objective assessments of present and potential capabilities. 

It is also very important to take a closer look at the advancement opportunities for females and minorities. 

CAREER COUNSELLING: 

It is in these counseling sessions with supervisor or manager in developmental performance appraisal interviews that most employees explore career goals and opportunities in the organisation. Supervisors and managers need accurate information about the employee and the options open in the organisation. They have to be helped by the HRD managers who will give them the needed information and if necessary the training for counseling. In career counseling sessions employees seek answers to the following questions: 
 

DESIGNING OF A CAREER PLAN 

The program involves the following steps : 

The above steps may not always be followed in the specified sequence. In fact, steps 6 and 7 may be repeated or modified several times during the designing of individual career. A general set of managerial job abilities are used to determine individual development required the `Job Description’ - requirements information is used to establish a profile of the career job which is defined in term of managerial job abilities. The same set of abilities is assessed against the individual, the difference determines the development need. 

These determinants are as follows but they could be different for different levels of jobs performed. 

A. Position being evaluated. 

B. Abilities required. 

a) Planning - Establishes clear goals, objectives and priorities. 

b) Organisation - Established schedules for short term and long term  

Projects brings together various resources, programs to carry out  

Plans. 

c) Decision-making - Able to reach thoughtful conclusion based upon  

Available data take risks - make judgments. 

d) Problem Analysis - Able to gather relevant information, uses appropriate tools for analysis, define central problems or issues and propose alternative solutions. 

e) Implementation - Able to launch, program develop needed rules or  

guidelines, provide needed support display initiative and follow through. 

f) Management practices - Possesses needed skills for analysis, control, 

budgeting, dealing with personnel, salary administration. 

g) Relationship with people - Able to develop and motivate individuals  

and communicate to groups, able to develop effective oral and written 

communications facilities two-way self colleagues communication and  

work group members establishes good communication relationship  

with own manager or supervisor. 

FACILITATING CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 

Organizations can facilitate career planning in a number of ways. The areas of concentration are as follows: 

1. Organizational entry 

2. The job 

3. The boss 

4. Organisation structure and procedure 

5. Personnel Policy. 

The figure on the following page illustrates the ways the organisation can facilitate career planning within each of these areas. 

1. Organizational Entry :

Efforts to facilitate career planning can begin before or at the time an individual takes a job. 

Sometimes career planning activities play a large part in pre-entry recruiting and selection. The top college graduates are given a chance at a managerial level position. Trainees begin with a two-week orientation session and then are looped through all operations through a system of rotating job assignments. The program objective is to have all participants rise at least the level of department head during their career. And in addition 
 

 
2. The Job : 

Career planning and development can be facilitated on the job itself. If the job given is demanding and challenging in the beginning itself it is seen that employees in such jobs tend to be more successful later in their career. Despite this evidence many organizations are reluctant to give challenging jobs to new employees. Some managers hold negative stereotypes of recent college graduates as too theoretical over ambitious immature and inexperienced. 

Related to the job progression i.e. progressing from one job to another, the idea is job rotation, which allows employees to work in a variety of capabilities and provides growth and development opportunities at any stage of career development. Job rotations are useful in providing managers with both knowledge and experience in different areas. Such moves not only facilitate interdepartmental or divisional co-operation but they also offer managers new challenges and opportunities to learn and grown in their career. 

The Job 

1. Make first job challenging 

2. Sequence jobs so progression provides gradual acquisition of skills. 

3. Use job rotation to provide new challenge and growth opportunities. 

The Boss 

The Boss is another agent of career planning in an organisation. The importance of the immediate supervisor especially an employee’s first boss, cannot be underestimated. The boss assign tasks, judges performance, provides feedback rewards and punishes and provides a model for the employee’s own behaviour and future leadership style. Further, bosses often counsel individuals in career planning. Any one of these factors can have a large effect on an employee careers, but taken together they make the first boss a key to career progress. Research has shown that even a boss’s expectation can have a substantial effect on a new employee’s career expectation and performance. When the boss expects and demands more from the employee, the employee comes to expect and demand more from him or herself. 

Unfortunately many supervisors and managers fail to make the most of their potential to influence employee careers in a positive direction. This problem can be remedied through training. The managers must receive training in job analysis and job restructuring so that they can identify a challenging job, or restructure a job to make it more challenging. They should receive training in interviewing and counseling skills, interpersonal skills and performance appraisal. The supervisors and managers may become ineffective agents of career planning if they are not rewarded for such activities. The managers should be rewarded for their career planning development activities. Also organizations must ensure that the managers are not `punished’ unconsciously for their career planning efforts. Also career development may result in subordinates leaving the organisation. This has to be treated and perceived as a turnover problem for the organisation. 

i. Provide training to increase boss’s ability to be an effective agent of 

other planning. 

ii. Reward boss for career planning activities. 

Organisation Structure and Procedures  

The most obvious way to facilitate career planning is, of course, to provide career planning facilities and programs. Although this is done on an informal basis in the organizations, established programs are still rare. Some organizations hesitate to involve them in career planning activities. They believe that career planning may raise employee expectations for career development advancement and that unfulfilled expectations will lead to dissatisfaction and possible turnover. This may well be true, but risks can be minimized. This depends to a large extent on the success of career counseling efforts and on the job information provided by human resource planners. If expected job vacancies fail to materialize , someone is likely to be disappointed. To avoid this, career planner and manpower planners need to keep lines of communication open. 

1. Offer career planning services and programs. 

2. Work closely with human resource planning aim of the organisation. 

3. Institute human resource accounting procedures. 

Personnel Policies 

Personnel policies can also facilitate career planning. An internal recruiting policy for example, enables employees to plan their career with greater certainty than does a policy of external recruiting. Additionally a policy of job posting promotes employee awareness of position openings and necessary qualifications. A policy of making human resource forecast available to employee also facilitates career planning. Compensation policy should provide financial incentives for employee development to both the employee and his/her boss. Periodic objective appraisals are important to growth and should be arranged by establishing performance appraisal system as a part of personnel policy. 

A personnel policy is legitimizing downward transfers and fallback position can also promote career planning. A downward transfer is a move from one organizational level to a lower level. A fall back position is simply a job to which an employee can return if a new job assignment does not work out. In this way, with the help of downward transfer and fallback position the employees can effort to take the risk involved in a more challenging assignment without the fear of failure. 

Two additional personnel policies that could facilitate career planning are (I)-providing incentives for an employee to leave the organisation (ii) involving families in career decision. Too often it is seen the organizations reward people for simply long-term organizational membership. The result is that people who might benefit both themselves and the organisation by leaving end up staying. 

As people’s needs for job satisfaction increase, so does the family’s role in affecting career decision. A Psychology Today survey found that 93% of all women and 59% of all men had spouses who were fully employed and pursuing a career. So nowadays number of individuals turn down an offer of a transfer or a job offer to avoid uprooting a family or a working spouse is steadily rising. Since family considerations are important to today’s employees, organisation should maintain a policy of actively seeking to involve employees family members in significant career decisions. More emphasis must be placed on growth opportunities within the organisation than their relocation and transfer. 

1. Institute policies that promote career planning. 

2. Legitimize downward transfers and fall back positions. 

3. Provide incentives for employees to leave the organisation 

4. Involve the family in career decisions. 

CAREER ACTION PLANNING KEY ISSUES : 

1. Personal wants which are most important and least important in the 

job assignment. 

2. Personal wants which are most important in the next job assignment. 

3. Does your present job setting offer possibilities for satisfying what you 

want most in your next job set up ? 

4. How do you want your next job assignment to satisfy your wants ? 

5. Describe major activities you can do and will do to gain what you want?  

6. Do not use job titles or positions. 

7. Describe type of activities for achievement. 

8. New skills or abilities required for next career/life stage.

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