Career plans, in the literature also referred to as ‘training and development plans’ or ‘personal development plans’ (PDP), are the reaction to a changing business world and social environment in theory. Bagshaw (1996: p.16) suggests that “…the dynamic people of today’s dynamic world are attracted to jobs where they can see clear development for themselves, with opportunities spreading in all directions.” Accordingly, employees increasingly demand the possibility to develop themselves and their careers within the organisation. Employees who are able and willing to participate in development programmes should be more motivated and higher skilled than their ‘non-developing’ colleagues. These development programmes should provide a certain career satisfaction, which Gattiker and Larwood (1988) define as “a stimulated response to career and work events” and significantly correlate with the employee’s motivation. To create motivated and high-skilled workforce, some organisations introduced different approaches for a systematic career management. For example, external and internal trainings have been offered on a voluntary basis, annual performance appraisals have been implemented and chances for further education like Executive MBA courses have been pledged to promising staff.
Thus, organisations seem to have understood that personal development of the employees is to a certain extent important to “widen the pool of talents” (Taylor and Edge, 1997: p. 21). Development means gathering knowledge, which is suggested to be the “only meaningful resource today” (Reynolds and Ablett, 1998: p. 26) that makes an organisation more productive and more competitive (Evans, 1998). In consequence, career plans are the most promising method of personal development within organisations, because they are supposed to combine the individual and organisational needs and visions. In theory, both parties are having equal rights in determining the success, the status quo and the required procedure for the future development.
Table of contents
List of exhibits
1 Introduction
2 Who is responsible for career plans?
3 The purpose of career plans
4 How to build a career plan
5 The dark side of career plans
6 Conclusion
References
List of exhibits
Figure 1: The training cycle
1 Introduction
Career plans, in the literature also referred to as ‘training and development plans’ or ‘personal development plans’ (PDP), are the reaction to a changing business world and social environment in theory. Bagshaw (1996: p.16) suggests that “…the dynamic people of today’s dynamic world are attracted to jobs where they can see clear development for themselves, with opportunities spreading in all directions.” Accordingly, employees increasingly demand the possibility to develop themselves and their careers within the organisation. Employees who are able and willing to participate in development programmes should be more motivated and higher skilled than their ‘non-developing’ colleagues. These development programmes should provide a certain career satisfaction, which Gattiker and Larwood (1988) define as “a stimulated response to career and work events” and significantly correlate with the employee’s motivation. To create motivated and high-skilled workforce, some organisations introduced different approaches for a systematic career management. For example, external and internal trainings have been offered on a voluntary basis, annual performance appraisals have been implemented and chances for further education like Executive MBA courses have been pledged to promising staff.
Thus, organisations seem to have understood that personal development of the employees is to a certain extent important to “widen the pool of talents” (Taylor and Edge, 1997: p. 21). Development means gathering knowledge, which is suggested to be the “only meaningful resource today” (Reynolds and Ablett, 1998: p. 26) that makes an organisation more productive and more competitive (Evans, 1998).
In consequence, career plans are the most promising method of personal development within organisations, because they are supposed to combine the individual and organisational needs and visions. In theory, both parties are having equal rights in determining the success, the status quo and the required procedure for the future development.
Interestingly, career plans, although identified as being motivational (Hingson and Wilson, 1995: p. 26), still rouse struggles between employers and employees by blaming each other for failures and missing support (Atkinson, 2002; Yarnall, 1998).
This essay will examine omissions and failures of actions related to career development by means of career plans. It will show the purpose of career plans and suggest an ‘optimal’ way of setting up and using career plans for a mutual satisfaction on the organisation’s and employee’s behalf.
2 Who is responsible for career plans?
As noted above, the responsibility for introducing and developing career plans is still not clear. On the one hand, organisations should support their employees’ development in order to gain the knowledge within the organisation, which is supposed to be one of the key factors of the organisation’s success and competitiveness (Evans, 1998). Therefore, they should implement a structured system of development for their employees, a career plan.
On the other hand, according to Hall and Moss (1998), the ‘protean’ career managed by the individual instead of the organisation is strongly promoted, because “the changing business world and need for lean production undermines the traditional drivers of employee motivation: job security, cost of living increases and career progression” (Rajan, 1997) and consequently demands a proactive career management from the individual employee. Nowadays, employees have to take greater responsibility for their career development, because the organisations have not fully recovered from the downsizing waves in the 1980s and 1990s and still focus on cutting down expenditures for development programmes.
But employees still expect the management to manage their career. “They [The employees] had not received or not accepted the message that career planning was now an individual responsibility” (Atkinson, 2002: p.18).
Furthermore, there is evidence that voluntary career initiatives have not shown great participation of the employees. Different studies (Yarnall, 1998; Giles and West, 1995; Russell, 1991) report that only about 30 per cent of the employees had taken place in voluntary career initiatives. Organisations can make use of this results in order to defend their cut-down development policy.
However, employees, who are strongly interested in career development, pointed out that the opportunities for career development are limited. According to the retail bank survey of Atkinson (2002), only 29 per cent of the bank staff had career plans and 77 per cent thought that career paths were “inadequately defined” in 1993. The above noted survey was repeated in 2000, showing no significant improvement although actions for improvement of the results found out in 1993 were introduced.
It becomes more and more obvious that omissions were made by both the management and the employees. The management did not support the development of its employees appropriately and the employees only showed average interest in personal development and did not take the initiative for their development consequently.
Nevertheless, there is an agreeing commitment about the necessity of career plans as a tool of developing high-skilled and motivated workforce. The idea and specifications of career plans will be introduced in the following.
3 The purpose of career plans
Career plans are not only a piece of paper where tasks and needs are stated. They are guides which focus on the abilities, needs and plans of employees to develop successfully and adequately. Therefore, they need an appropriate degree of internal and external support. A very famous way of introducing a career plan to an employee is the so-called ‘trainee programme’. Trainee programmes are usually available for graduates who are entering their first long-term employment. They show a detailed development plan containing job rotation, internal and external training and tutoring for a limited duration of one to two years. The purpose of these programmes is to assure that the ‘new’ employee is able to adjust himself/herself to the organisation’s culture and the tasks given to him/her. These programmes are usually set within the employment contract and obligatory for the employees who commit themselves to these. In this case, the organisation is in charge of the introduction of the trainee program because “without graduate training programmes or in-house development programmes organizations are in danger of creating gaps in their management structure” (Higson and Wilson, 1995: p. 25).
Unfortunately, the availability of these programmes has decreased in the last years due to downsizing actions. Furthermore, a lot of organisations stop supporting their talents, i.e. the organisations often do not continue the development plans after they passed the trainee program. Talents cannot face this strong support of the organisations anymore. The situation of already employed people is even worse. They usually do not a have a career plan, and according to Higson and Wilson (1995) most of the organisations trimmed their training and development staff back. They hardly get any support from the organisation in order to develop their career, especially when they are not regarded as ‘important’ workforce. That means that they are not to be supposed to have crucial influence on the organisation’s performance.
Ideally, career plans should be available to everyone in the organisation. Career plans should be supported by the top-management, line managers and internal and external trainers and tutors. The basic justification for career plans is the theory of motivation and satisfaction at the workplace. Porter and Lawler (1965) describe job satisfaction as the result of an appropriate reward regarding to an effort which the employee has put in an action. The reward can either be intrinsic, extrinsic or a combination of both. Motivation is directly linked with the job satisfaction, because if an employee is not satisfied with his job, he/she is certainly not well-motivated.
Bröckermann (2001) suggests that there are two types of factors which affect the job satisfaction. These are the Kontextfaktoren (context factors) and the Motivatoren (factors of motivation). The Kontextfaktoren are crucial for the job satisfaction, e.g. salary, relationship to colleagues, superiors and subordinates, and policy of the organisation. If these factors are not satisfactory in the organisation, the employee probably suffers from dissatisfaction and resignation. The Motivatoren, on the other hand, determine the motivation of the employee. Motivatoren are, for example, intrinsic reward, self-employment, tasks and career development. This shows that especially career-linked factors, e.g. career development, tasks and self-employment, create motivation. For that reason, organisations should be interested in supporting their employees, trying to raise the level of satisfaction and commitment in order to gather the creativity and knowledge of their employees who are the most important resource in a competitive business environment.
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- Arbeit zitieren
- Sven Röhm (Autor:in), 2003, Can career plans generate motivated and high-skilled workforce?, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/24458
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