CAREER PLANNING

Career Planning and Development

Career is defined as a person’s course or progress through life. Career Planning is a continuous life long process of developmental exercise.

Organizational Initiatives in Career Planning and Development

Job Posting System: It is an organized process that allows employees to apply for open positions within the organisation. They can respond to announcements and postings and then be considered along with the external candidates.

Mentoring Activities: Mentoring systems can clarify the ambiguous expectations of the organisation, provide objective assessment of the strengths and weakness of the employees and provide a sounding board for participants.

Career Resource Centers: The center offers self directed, self paced learning and provides resources without creating dependence on the organisation

Managers as Career Counselors: Managers can make realistic appraisals of organisational opportunities. They can use information from the past performance evaluation to make realistic suggestions concerning career planning.

Career development workshop: It is designed to encourage employees to take responsibilities for their careers.

Human Resource Planning and forecasting: From the analysis and needs, priorities can be determined and human resource can be allocated to satisfy the existing future needs through career management.

Performance Appraisal: It is a tool for HRD which can be used to guide and direct future growth opportunities for employees. This aids in the development of an employee’s career as well as enhance communications and understanding.

Career Path: It is a sequencing of work experiences, usually different job assignments, in order to provide employees with the opportunity to participate in many aspects of a professional area. For e.g. in order for a salesperson to move up the ladder to regional manager, it is important that the employee understands all aspects of the job.

Individual Initiatives in Career Planning and Development

Career Planning: An individual employee should be mature enough to plan his/her career in a systematic way looking at the current performance and future interests.

Career Awareness: It is the responsibility of an employee to keep himself updated about the latest development happening in the specific area of his work. This is possible through taking membership from the related bodies, subscribing to relevant magazines, attending seminars and conferences.

Career Resource Center Utilization: It is one of the way that an employee can plan and develop the career. This center guides and counsels in the right direction helping to take unbiased decisions.

Interests Values and Competency Analysis: Awareness about the individual area of interest and analysis of current level of competency helps an employee to understand better with regards to his potential career path.

Internal mobility of employees: Job rotation, promotion, transfer to different department can help an employee to gain better career exposure which will enhance the growth prospect in the organization.

Steps in Career Planning and Development Process

Step 1: Self Assessment: Knowing about the strengths and weakness about own helps an employee to check the various areas of exploring the career.

Step 2: Career Skills Assessment: Based on the individual strength, right fit for the right career is possible to sustain in the job for lifetime.

Step 3: Setting the career objective: The career skills assessment leads to set the desired career objective.

Step 4: Career Development Plan: Depending on the career objective the development plan is structured and further broken to sub division of plans

Step 5: Implement the plan: The clearer the development plan is, the easier it is for the employee to implement the same since the goal becomes clearer which helps to achieve the plan.

Step 6: Looking for Continuous growth: After achieving every step, review is a must based on which further growth in the career path is made possible.

Counseling

Providing help and support to the employees to face and sail through the difficult times in life. At many points of time in their life or career, people come across problems either in their work or in their personal life, which starts influencing and affecting their performance by increasing the stress levels of the individual.

Counseling is guiding, consoling, advising and sharing and helping the employees to resolve their problems whenever the need for the same arises.

Benefits of Counseling

• Helping the individual to understand and help himself
• Understand   the     situations    and    look   at       them  with   a        new perspective and positive outlook
• Helping in better decision making
• Alternative solutions to problems
• Coping with the situation and the stress

Internal and External Mobility

“Internal mobility” (a.k.a. mobility and talent mobility) is a dynamic internal process for moving talent from role to role – at the leadership, professional and operational levels. To achieve internal mobility, companies must adopt the principles of succession management at all ranks; provide transparent discussion of skills and potential, as well as organizational needs; and, focus on development across critical talent pools, based on business needs.

Types of Internal Mobility: Promotion/ Transfer/ Demotion/ Succession Planning

External Mobility: Employees who are not satisfied with their career in the present organisation may seek suitable employment in other organisations. Similarly organisations may also prefer candidates from external sources, if the internal candidates are not found suitable. This saturation in career development of both the individuals and organisations result in external mobility or employee turnover. External mobility is also known as external career.

External mobility means shifting of employees into and out of an organisation. It is defined as the rate of change in the employees of an organisation during a definite period. It measures the extent to which old employees leave and new employees enter into an organisation

Promotion:

• Change and call for greater responsibility
• Higher Pay
• Better Terms and conditions of service
• Higher status of rank

Purpose of Promotion:

• Boost loyalty
• Boost morale – Employee Satisfaction
• Reward & Recognition for the employees
• Utilize & Improve employee KSA
• Develop competitive spirit among employees
• Attract talents from market

Promotion Policy: A policy to identify the best performers in the organisation and reward the employees by uplifting them in the hierarchy level.

Pre-Requisites of Promotion Policy:

• Consistent
• Fair – Reasonable
• Impartial
• Planned Activity

Basis of Promotion

• Merit/ Performance
• Experience
• Education
• Trainings Attended/ Completed
• Length/ Tenure of Service

Demotion

• Re-Assignment to a lower level job
• Normally with a lower pay
• Generally happens after PIP

Transfer

Shifting a person from one position to another in the same level in the hierarchy. It is a Lateral Shift in the career

Reasons for Transfer

• Manpower Planning
• Employee Request
• Utilizing the services of employees
• Increasing the versatility of the employees
• Punishment Transfer – Remedial Transfer
• Tenure Transfer
• Types of Transfers Shift Transfer:
• From One Shift to Another
• Generally in Retail & BPO

Production Transfer

• From one process of production to other
• Due to change in the production plan

Replacement Transfer

• Replacing one employee with others
• Replacing the short service employees with the fixed ones or next set of shirt service ones

Rotation Transfer

• From one job to another to make employees versatile

Absenteeism

• Habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation.
• Indicator of poor individual performance,
• Breach of an implicit contract between employee and employer

“No call, No show”: Sometimes, people choose not to show up for work and do not call in advance, which businesses may find to be unprofessional and inconsiderate.

Causes of Absenteeism

• Bullying and harassment– Employees who are bullied or harassed by coworkers and/or bosses are more likely to call in sick to avoid the situation
• Burnout, stress and low morale– Heavy workloads, stressful meetings/presentations and feelings of being unappreciated can cause employees to avoid going into work. Personal stress (outside of work) can lead to absenteeism.
• Childcare and eldercare– Employees may be forced to miss work in order to stay home and take care of a child/elder when normal arrangements have fallen through (for example, a sick caregiver or a snow day at school) or if a child/elder is sick.
• Depression– According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the leading cause of absenteeism in the United States is depression. Depression can lead to substance abuse if people turn to drugs or alcohol to self-medicate their pain or anxiety.
• Disengagement– Employees who are not committed to their jobs, coworkers and/or the company are more likely to miss work simply because they have no motivation to go.
• Illness– Injuries, illness and medical appointments are the most commonly reported reasons for missing work (though not always the actual reason). Not surprisingly, each year during the cold and flu season, there is a dramatic spike in absenteeism rates for both full-time and part-time employees.
• Injuries– Accidents can occur on the job or outside of work, resulting in absences. In addition to acute injuries, chronic injuries such as back and neck problems are a common cause of absenteeism.
• Job hunting– Employees may call in sick to attend a job interview, visit with a headhunter or work on their resumes
• Partial shifts– Arriving late, leaving early and taking longer breaks than allowed are considered forms of absenteeism and can affect productivity and workplace morale.

Cost of Absenteeism

• Wages paid to absent employees
• High-cost replacement workers (overtime pay for other employees and/or temporary workers)
• Administrative costs of managing absenteeism
• Poor quality of goods/services resulting from overtime fatigue or understaffing
• Reduced productivity
• Excess manager time (dealing with discipline and finding suitable employee replacements)
• Safety issues (inadequately trained employees filling in for others, rushing to catch up after arriving as a replacement, etc)
• Poor morale among employees who have to “fill in” or do extra work to cover absent coworkers