Question No. 5 - MMPC 002 - Human Resources Management - MBA and MBA (Banking & Finance)

Solutions to Assignments

                            MBA and MBA (Banking & Finance)

MMPC 002 - Human Resources Management

MMPC-002/TMA/JULY/2022

Question No. 5. What is career development? Explain the process of career development citing examples.

Career is viewed as a sequence of position occupied by a person during the course of his lifetime. Career may also be viewed as amalgam of changes in value, attitude and motivation that occur, as a person grows older. The implicit assumption is that an invididual can make a different in his career over time and can adjust in ways that would help him to enhance and optimize the potential for his own career development. Career development is important because it would help the individual to explore, choose and strive to derive satisfaction with one‟s career object. Through career development, a person evaluates his or her own abilities and interests, considers alternative career opportunities, establishes career goals, and plans practical developmental activities.

On the part of employees, they should manage their own careers like entrepreneurs managing a small business. They should think of themselves as self-employed. They should freely participate in career planning activities and must try to get as much as possible out of the opportunities provided. The successful career will be built on maintaining flexibility and keeping skills and knowledge up to date. Career development essentially involves the functions of career planning and succession planning. Both these functions are carried out by HR department. Keeping in view the organisational goals and capabilities of individual employees subsequent sections would cover the functions of career planning and succession planning in detail.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

There are two components of career planning and development: 

A) Career Development Programme, and 

B) Career Planning Process and Activities

A) Career Development Programme This involves three activities: 

a) Assisting employees in assessing their own internal career needs. 

Internal Career Assessment: Since a person's career is extremely important element of life, each person is to make his or her decision in this regard. However, the HR manager may assist an employee's decision-making process by providing as much information as possible to the employee showing what type of work would suit him or her most, considering his or her other interest, skill, aptitude, and performance in the work that he or she is already doing. For rendering such help some big organisations provide formal assessment centre/workshops where small groups of employees are subjected to psychological testing, simulation exercises and depth interviewing. The objective of such programmes is not that of selecting future promotees, but rather to help indivuduals to do their own planning. 

b) Developing and publicising available career opportunities in the organisation. 

Career Opportunities: Knowing that employees have definite career needs, there naturally follows the obligation of specifically charting career paths through the organisation and informing the employees. For identifying the career paths the technique of job analysis may help in discovering multiple lines of advancement to several jobs in different areas. 

c) Aligning employee needs and abilities with career opportunities. 

Employee's Needs and Opportunities: When employees have assessed their needs and have become aware of organisational career opportunities the remaining problem is one of alignment. For aligning or matching the career needs of employees to opportunities offered by the organisation, special training and development techniques such as special assignment, planned position rotation, and supervisory coaching, are used. The HR department of some organisations have also some system of recording and tracking moves through the organisation, and maintain an organisation chart that highlights age, seniority and promotion status.

 B) Career Planning Process and Activities 

The process of career planning involves a number of activities or steps to be undertaken as mentioned below: 

a) Preparation of HR inventory of the organisation, 

Organisation's HR Inventory: Such an inventory is an essential prerequisite for any successful career planning within the organisation. This inventory should be so prepared as to provide the following information: 

• Organisational set up and its different levels. 

• The existing number of persons employed in the organisation. For this, manning tables are prepared showing the nature of positions at different levels of the organisation and the number of persons manning those jobs. Sometimes the age of persons holding the jobs are also mentioned in the table to show when they are likely to retire and when the vacancy thus caused may be required to be filled. 

• Types of existing employees, their status, duties, qualifications, age, aptitude, ability to shoulder added responsibility and their acceptability to their colleagues. 

• Whether the existing manpower is short or in surplus to requirements. If there is a shortage, how many more persons are required, and for what positions. 

Number of persons required in the near future, say in the next one to five years, to meet the needs arising from expansion or diversification of work or natural wastage of manpower. The latter includes death, permanent disability, superannuation and retirement, discharge, dismissal, voluntary resignation, or abandonment of the jobs. Collection of all the above information may amount to manpower planning, and involve preparation of manpower budget showing present and immediate future needs. 

b) Building career paths or ladders for various categories of employees, 

Employee's Potential for Career Planning: After determining the career path, the next logical step is to find out the suitable employees who may have the necessary ability and potential for climbing up the ladder and are willing to be promoted and to take up higher responsibilities. For this the management control technique of Performance Appraisal and Merit Rating is utilised. Periodical evaluation and merit rating of employees is also necessary for proper planning of manpower and career of employees in the organisation. This can be possible only by knowing how much and what types of human resources are available, and the potential of employees whose career is to be planned.

c) Locating or identifying employees with necessary potential for career planning, 

Formulation and Implementation of Training and Development Plans and Programmes: For making the career planning a success it is essential that the training and development programmes should be so planned and designed that they meet the needs of both the management and employees. The participants of these programmes should be the employees who are willing to be trained and developed further to make their career in the organisation. Methods of training and nature of skill and knowledge to be imparted may be different for different types of employees. The emphasis may be on improving technical skills of skilled workers and on acquiring and improving leadership qualities, human and conceptual skills for senior supervisors, executives and managers. 

d) Formulation and implementation of suitable plans for training and development of 

Age Balance and Career Paths: One widespread difficulty in career planning may arise from the need to accommodate people in the same level of supervisory and managerial hierarchy, some of whom are young direct recruits and others are promotees who are almost always considerably older. The latter, because of their limited education or formal professional qualification, cannot expect to move up very high; the former as they are better educated and trained have aspirations for rapid vertical mobility. Promotion and direct recruitment at every level must, therefore, be so planned as to ensure a fair share to either group. Intense jealousies, rivalries or groupism may develop if this aspect of personnel administration is neglected. Very quick promotions which create promotion blocks should also be avoided if the employees are not to feel stagnated or demotivated at early stages of their careers, and think of leaving the organisation for better prospects. Such a situation can be avoided if promotions are properly spaced. 

e) persons for different steps of the career ladder or paths, and 

Review of Career Development Plans in Action: Career planning is a continuous activity. In fact it is a process. For effective career planning, a periodical review process should be followed so that the employee may know in which direction the organisation is moving, what changes are likely to take place and what resources and skills he or she needs to adapt to the changing organisational requirements. Even for the organisation, annual evaluation is desirable to know an employee's performance, limitations, goals and aspirations, and to know whether the career plan in action is serving the corporate objective i.e. effective utilisation of human resources by matching employee abilities to the demands of the job and his or her needs to the rewards of the job. Some of the questions that could be asked while evaluating the career plan might be:

• Was the classification of the existing employees correct? 

• Are the job descriptions proper? 

• Is there any employee unsuited to his or her job? 

• Are the future manpower projections still valid? 

• Is the team pulling on well as a whole? 

• Are the training and development programmes adequately devised to enable the employee to climb up the career ladder and fit into higher positions?  

Answers to all these and other questions can be found either by holding brainstorming sessions or by undertaking a survey of career planning activities and their impact on the working of the organisation.

f) Maintaining age balance while taking employees up the career path and review of career development plan in action, etc.

Career Counselling: Career planning may also involve counselling individuals on their possible career paths, and what they must do to achieve promotions. The need for such counselling arises when employees plan their own careers, and develop or train themselves for career progression in the organisation. This does not mean revealing the number of determined steps in a long range plan of the organisation. Even if it were possible, it would be inappropriate to raise expectations which might not be fulfilled or induce complacency about the future. In counselling, the wisest approach is to provide a scenario of the opportunities that might become available. The main aim should be to help the individual concerned to develop oneself by giving him or her some idea of the direction in which he or she ought to be heading. Some other objectives of career counselling are as follows:

• Enabling individuals to study the immediate and personal world in which they live. 

• Providing a normal mature person with guidelines to help him or her understand oneself more clearly and develop his or her thinking and outlook. 

• Achieving and enjoying greater personal satisfaction, pleasure and happiness. 

• Understanding the forces and dynamics operating in a system.