HRMT300 lecture 8 Career Development

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CAREER

DEVELOPMENT

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Objectives

By the end of this lecture, students should;

• _{Know the general meaning of career development} • _{Draw a distinction between career planning and}

career development

• _{Know the various career development stages in}

organisations

• _{Discuss some career anchors and the types of jobs}

they relate with

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Career

Development/Management

• _{A career can be defined as the pattern or sequence} of work roles of an individual

• _{Career Development is concerned with the provision}

of opportunities for people to develop their abilities and their careers in order to ensure that the

organisation has the flow of talent it needs, and to satisfy their own aspirations (Armstrong, 2009).

• _{It is about integrating the needs of the organisation}

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Career Development/Management

• _{“Career development is an ongoing, formalised}

effort by an organisation that focuses on

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Objectives of Career

Development

• _{a. meet the immediate and future human resource}

needs of the organisation on a timely basis

• _{b. inform the organisation and the individual about}

potential career paths within the organisation

• _{c. utilise existing human resource programmes to}

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Career Planning & Career Development

• _{Career Planning}_{is the process by which an individual}

formulates career goals and develops a plan for reaching those goals.

• _{With a career plan, a person is much more likely to}

experience satisfaction while making progress along the

career path. A good career path identifies certain milestones along the way. When a person consciously recognises and reaches these milestones, he or she is likely to experience feelings of achievement.

• _{Career development looks at individual careers from the}

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Current trends in career

development

• _{Boundaryless careers –}

• _{“It [will] seem inescapable that workers will have to}

change jobs, companies, and even occupations over their life course in the decades ahead. Even work for a single employer will feature frequent job

rotation, developmental assignments, and

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Current trends in career

development (2)

• _{A boundaryless career is one that does not hold an}

individual to one employer, location or space, unlike the traditional career which is structural constrained and pins one to one location.

• _{Organizations that easily find a lot of boundaryless}

employees include law firms, accounting organizations, management consultancies, engineering organizations, I.T. organizations, advertising, research and development units,

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Baruch and Reiss (2015) categorized

boundaryless career into local and

global

• Local boundaryless career is crossing organizational boundaries but not country boundaries. For instance, an accountant who works for different organizations in different industries but all within the same country.

• Global boundaryless on the other hand is where the individual transcends country boundaries. For instance, an accountant who moves from one international organizations subsidiary in one country to another

international organization subsidiary in yet a different country.

• Boundaryless career can be linked to individual who want to be

emancipated from unwanted working conditions, economies in recession or facing threat of recession, and job insecurity and hardly trust their

organization (Baruch and Reis, 2015; Mirvin & Hall, 1994; Mirvin & Kanter, 1992)

• _{Given the conditions for boundaryless career pursuit, African will be one of}

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Current trends in career

development (3)

Career adaptability - as a concept is currently gaining roots

because it has been “noted as a resource necessary for successful career development in recent times” (Johnston, 2018, pg. 3).

Savickas (2005) conceptualizes career adaptability as ‘‘a

psychosocial construct that denotes an individual’s readiness and resources for coping with current and imminent vocational

development tasks, occupational transitions, and personal traumas’’ (p. 51).

Career adaptability has been found to lead to an improvement in organizational performance and the general well-being of

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Theories in career

development

1.Theory of Work Adjustment

• _{Referred to also as the Person–Environment}

Correspondence Theory, the theory of work

• _{adjustment was originally developed by Dawis,}

England and Lofquist (1964).

• _{The theory posits that, the more closely a person’s}

abilities correspond with the requirements of a job, the more likely it is that they will perform the job well and be perceived as satisfactory by the

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Theories in career

development (2)

2. Theory of Circumscription and Compromise

• _{The theory of circumscription and compromise by}

Gottfredson (1981) asserts that individuals

sometimes compromise their career aspirations

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Theories in career

development (3)

3. Social Cognitive Career Theory

• _{Social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 1994) assert}

that a person’s self-efficacy, or confidence that they can successfully perform a task, has a mutual relation with outcome expectations or the consequences. These two constructs, according the theorists, influence a person’s level and type of interests. Many different activities are attempted through a person’s educational career, but generally a persistent interest is only developed in

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Theories in career

development (4)

4. The Theory of Vocational Interests

• _{The Holland’s theory of vocational interests (1997)}

defines vocational interests as an expression of

personality. According to this theory career choice is always influenced by one of six interests; Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S),

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Theories in career

development (5)

The theoretical focus of career researchers has shifted from the earlier mentioned theories to the career

construction theory in a bid to answer “how

individuals can negotiate a lifetime of job changes without losing their sense of self and social identity”

“people have therefore moved from finding one’s life work to constructing how to make one’s life work” (Savikas, 2011, pg. 4).

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Theories in career development (5)

5. Career Construction Theory

• _{The Career construction theory posits that individuals}

build their careers by imposing meaning on vocational behaviors.

• _{From the constructionist view point, career is now}

subjective and has to do with the active process of making meaning, as opposed to discovering

preexisting facts (Guichard, Jean & Janet Lenz, 2005).

• _{Career is characterized by a perspective that imposes}

personal meaning on past memories, present

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Career Development

Stages

• _{The career development stages according to}

Armstrong (2006) are considered as follows:

• _{Entry to the organisation}

• _{Progress with particular areas of work} • _Mid-career

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Entry to the Organisation)

•This is the stage where the individual begins the process of self-directed career planning.

•What this means is that an occupational choice is made after the individual has assessed his/her abilities, interests, and career goals.

•Once an individual has a grasp of his/her interests and abilities, it is very helpful to develop a personal vision statement (a concise statement of career goals in

measurable terms).

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Progress within particular areas of work At this point, skills and potentials are developed through

experience, training, coaching, mentoring and performance management.

• Four Career Categories (Learners, Stars, Solid Citizens, Deadwood)

•Learners: Individuals in an organisation who have a high potential for advancement but are currently performing below standard.

•Stars: Individuals in an organisation who are presently doing outstanding work and have a high potential for continued

advancement.

•Solid Citizens: Individuals in an organisation whose present performance is satisfactory but whose chance for future

advancement is small.

Deadwood: Individuals in an organisation whose present

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Mid-Career

• _{This is where some people will still have good career} prospects while others may have got as far as they are

going to get, or at least feel that they have. This stage can bring about Career plateau.

• _{A career plateau is the point in a career where the}

likelihood of additional hierarchical promotion is very low. • A plateaued employee is one who reaches his/her

promotional ceiling long before retirement.

• It is necessary to ensure that these “plateaued” people do not lose interest at this stage by taking such steps as

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Late Career

• _{In the late career, individuals may have settled}

down at whatever level they have reached but are beginning to be concerned about the future. They need to be treated with respect as people who are still making a contribution and given opportunities to take on new challenges wherever this is possible.

• _{They may also need reassurance about their future}

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End of Career

• _{In certain instances, people whose career ends (by}

retirement) with an organisation are given the

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Career Anchors

• _{Schein (1978) originated the notion of career}

anchors. He defined them as [an evolving] self-concept of people consisting of self-perceived talents and abilities, basic values and a sense of motives and needs relating to their careers.

• _{As people gain work experience, career anchors}

evolve and function as stabilising forces.

• _{Although the career anchor is designed as a}

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What defines the Career

Anchors?

• _{While accumulating experience, people acquire}

information about themselves in three basic areas:

• _{a.They discover their true motives and needs}

• _{b.They discover the talents and skills they possess} • _{c.They discover their feelings of comfort or}

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Types of Career Anchors

• _{1.Autonomy/independence} • _{2.Security/stability}

• _{3.Technical-functional competence} • _{4.General managerial competence} • _{5.Entrepreneurial creativity}

• _{6.Service or dedication to a cause} • _{7.Pure challenge}

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Autonomy /

Independence

•People need and want control over work and want to be recognized for achievements; can’t tolerate

other people’s rules or procedures; need to do things in their own way.

•Type of work selected: seek autonomous

professions such as free-lance consulting, teaching, independent small-business people, contract or

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Security / Stability

• _{People need long-range stability and security, after that}

they need to relax

•For these people: safe, secure, predictable work;

motivated by calmness and consistency of work; don’t like to take chances, and are not risk-takers; stable companies are best bets; strive for predictability, safety, structure, and the knowledge that the task has been completed properly. •Type of Work: stability and predictability are key;

emphasis on context of job rather than content or work (in other words, pay, benefits, work environment most

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Entrepreneurial

Creativity

• _{People need to be personally creative in building}

something larger than themselves. They measure themselves by the success of this enterprise.

•People like the challenge of starting new projects or businesses, have lots of interests and energy, and

often have multiple projects going at once; different from autonomy in that the emphasis is on creating new business; often pursuing dreams at early age.

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Pure Challenge

• _{People discover that what they need is a sense of}

challenge or surmountable obstacles, or powerful opponents against whom they can compete.

• _{Here the strongest desire is overcoming obstacles;}

conquering, problem-solving; competition; winning; constant self-testing; single-minded individuals.

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Technical / Functional

Competence

• _{People define themselves by their competence in a}

certain knowledge base, skill or a craft. They are the best engineers, mechanics, surgeons, salespersons and may fail when they are pulled into managerial jobs.

•Type of Work: What turns these types on is the exercise of their talent; satisfaction with knowing concepts.

• _{it is the actual work they are concerned with not the}

organization

• _{teaching and mentoring offers them the opportunity}

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General Managerial

Competence

• People want to manage other people, to integrate functions and to be responsible for an entire unit or an organization. They measure their progress by climbing up the managerial ladder, showing analytical skills, interpersonal and group skills, emotional capacity to deal with high level of responsibility

• •People view specialization as limiting; primarily want to manage or supervise people; enjoy motivating, training and directing the work of others; enjoy authority and

responsibility, and when someone strips off control , it is “demotivator;”

• thrive in three areas of competence – analytical, interpersonal/intergroup, and emotional.

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Service or Dedication

• _{People define themselves by commitment to some}

deep value as teaching, environmentalism, human resource management, medicine, defense of the country, etc.

• _•_People_{are motivated by core values rather than}

the work itself; strong desire to make the world a better place.

• _•_{Type of Work}_:_{high concentration of}

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Lifestyle

• _{This anchor is not specifically related to career but to} integration of work and family issues – the working

career is organized around the career of a spouse or in terms of the geographic area in which they want to live • •People have a high need to balance work and the rest

of life; enjoy work, but realize that work is just one of many parts of life that are important; subscribe to

philosophy of “work to live”, rather than “live to work.” • _•_{Type of Work}_:_{careers must be integrated with the}

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Enhancing Career Development

The role of the individual

• _{a.Interpersonal attraction} • _{b.Seeking career guidance} • _c.Networking

• _{The role of the organisation} • _{a.Career counseling}

• _{b.Managerial support}

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