Human Resource Career Planning

Inseparably linked with employee development is career planning and career management. A successful career needs to be managed through careful planning.

An increasing number of human resource departments see career planning as a way to meet their internal staffing needs. When employers encourage career planning, employees are more likely to set goals. In turn, these goals may motivate employees to pursue further education, training, or other career development activities. These activities then improve the value of employees to the organization and give the human resource department a larger pool of qualified applicants from which to fill internal job openings.

The involvement of human resource managers in career planning has grown during recent years because of its benefits. Here is a partial list of those benefits:

Develops Promotable Employees: Career planning helps to develop internal supplies of promotable talent.

Lowers Turnover: The increased attention to and concern for individual careers generates more organizational loyalty and therefore lower employee turnover.

Taps Employee Potential: Career planning encourages employees to tap more of their potential abilities, because they have specific career goals.

Furthers Growth: Career plans and goals motivate employees to grow and develop.

Reduces Hoarding: Without career planning, it is easier for managers to hoard key subordinates. Career planning causes employees, managers, and the human resource department to become aware of employee qualifications.

Satisfies Employee Needs: With less hoarding and improved growth opportunities for employees, individual needs for recognition and accomplishment are more readily satisfied, and self-esteem is boosted.

Assists Employment Equity Plans: Career planning can help members of protected groups prepare for more important jobs.

For any employee Career Planning consists of five main components:

1. Self-Assessment is a process of clarifying your value through discovering the relationship between various occupations and your personality type and work style, interests, career values, and skills. Even if you have engaged in a self-assessment process early in your career, your interests may have changed over time and you may be eager to learn new skills.  It is helpful to periodically engage in a thorough process of self-assessment throughout your career.
2.  In the Career Awareness phase, your goal is to understand how your value applies to opportunities within your organization and the wider world of work.  Developing your career awareness means gaining knowledge of career paths and job opportunities, and the skills and qualifications necessary to be successful in these positions.
3. Goal-Setting is a process of integrating self-assessment and career awareness information into career goals that reflect your vision of what you want in a career. If you have taken the time to do a thorough self-assessment and have built up your career awareness, then you are ready to focus on taking action.
4. Skill Development means developing yourself and your skill sets to add value for the organization and for your own career development. Fostering an attitude of appreciation for lifelong learning is the key to workplace success.
5. Career Management ensures others know about you and your value. Career management, unlike the other phases, is a continuous process that occurs throughout one's career and not just at discrete times. Successful career management is accomplished through regular habits of building relationships, engaging in career development conversations, updating your career development plan, and setting new goals as life and career needs change.

You are the HR manager and one of your staff members asks you for career advice on this company. She wants to get ahead and is willing to take courses fitting your company's special needs. You have strongly encouraged such moves in the past. You know that the company is doing badly in its market and has probably less than a year to survive. How will you advise her?