Career Development

A career is a pattern of work-related experiences that spans the course of a person’s tenure in an organization or their life. The two elements in a career are the objective element and the subjective element. The objective element of the career is an observable, concrete environment. For example, you can manage a career by getting training to improve your skills. In contrast, the subjective element involves your perception of the situation. Rather than getting training (an objective element), you might change your aspirations (a subjective element). Thus, both objective events and the individual’s perception of those elements are important in defining a career.

Effective career development is integrated with the existing HRM functions and structures in the organization. Integrating career development with other HRM programs creates synergies in which all aspects of HRM reinforce one another. For example, in planning careers, employees need organizational information on strategic planning, HRM planning. Skills inventories can provide this information. Similarly, as they obtain information about themselves and use it in career planning, employees need to know the career paths within the organization and how management views their performance.

Whose responsibility is career development and management? It is tempting to place the responsibility on individuals, and it is appropriate. However, it is also the organization’s duty to form partnerships with individuals in managing their careers. Careers are made up of exchanges between individuals and organizations. Inherent in these exchanges is the idea of reciprocity, or give and take.

The psychological contract between employees and workers has changed. Yesterday, employees “exchanged loyalty for job security.” Today, employees instead exchange performance for the sort of training and learning and development that will allow them to remain marketable. This, in turn, means that the somewhat unidirectional nature of HRM activities like selection and training is starting to change; in addition to serving the organization’s needs, these activities must now be designed so that the employees’ long-run interests are served, and that, in particular, the employee is encouraged to grow and realize her or his potential. Table X-1 summarizes how activities such as training and performance appraisal can be used to provide more of such a career planning and development focus (Otte and Hutcheson, 1992).

Like performance appraisal, training and development is an equally important element in managing organizational behavior and the enhancement of motivation and performance is the set of activities and processes that constitute career development and planning.

The Changing Business Landscape

Once upon a time, people graduated from school and eagerly sought employment with a large and prosperous organization. They considered themselves most fortunate if they were hired by a major and “secure” organization. They were able to assume that they would systematically move up in the organization, eventually retiring with a gold watch and a comfortable pension.

If the phase “once upon a time” sounds like a fairy tale, you understand why we use it. The lifetime employer with secure jobs is no longer a reality in the modern business environment. There are exceptions, of course, but by far the more realistic picture of a typical career today involves job changes, extensive organizational restructuring (often with job cuts) to respond to increased globalization and fiercer competition, and a greatly diminished sense of loyalty. Organizations seldom feel deeply obligated to provide long-term work, and employees rarely feel loyalty to the company. Part of the reason for these dramatic shifts is the nature of the business world. The age of technology and information has created a fluid and dynamic economy where organizations must make frequent and often radical changes to compete successfully. These changes have an impact on people. Some cannot adjust. Some lack skills to deal with a company’s changed mission. And some feel betrayed by “big business” when they are downsized or laid off.

Career planning used to involve assessing your personal goals and seeing how you could make these work with a current employer or a similar business. It used to involve seeing how to set goals that would help you be promoted in the organization. Even people who followed the advice of leadership gurus to develop a “vision” often did so within the context of existing organizations.

Advances in technology or what many refer as the Information Age has changed organizations and their people more dramatically than has any shift since the economy evolved from agricultural to industrial. At one time, the vast majority of Americans were employed in producing agricultural products. Today, less than 4 percent of the economy produces all the food we can eat. But the industrial revolution is also a thing of the past. Less than 20 percent of all workers are now employed in manufacturing. Some futurists predict that in the not-too-distant future, fewer than 10 percent of employees will produce all the manufactured goods we can use. So what will the other 85 percent of us be doing? We are, and increasingly will be, working with information.

Brain power has steadily replaced muscle power, machine power, and even electrical power. Management guru Peter Drucker (1998) says that the amount of labor needed to produce an additional unit of manufacturing output has fallen 1 percent per year since 1900 (99 percent), when machines took over what muscles once did. The years since World War II show similar drops in the amount of energy needed to increase manufacturing levels. What has taken the place of matter and energy is intelligence. Since 1900 the number of educated workers on the payroll has risen about the same rate. The major economic powers are no longer “the industrialized world,” but the knowledge world. Agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and mining employ fewer than 1 in 4 Americans, and even those people work principally with their hands rather than their backs and hands. We are all knowledge workers now, working for knowledge organizations. If all this is true, then what must employees and their organizations do to develop and manage careers in the new economy? Many of the concepts covered in the next literature will improve career development and management in any type of organization, including the knowledge businesses.