Career Planning and Development

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 Learning Objective

Students will be able to learn the following concepts:

 Career Planning: Meaning and Concepts

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 Definitions of Career Planning
 Objectives of Career Planning
 Career Anchors
 Nature of Career Planning
 Steps in Career Planning Process
 Advice on Career Planning
 Different Phases in the Career of an Employee
 Career Development
 Career Planning: Meaning and Concepts
Career planning is an individual’s lifelong process of

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establishing personal career objectives and acting in a manner
intended to bring them about.

The tern 'career denotes all the jobs that are held during one's
working life. It is viewed as a sequence of positions held by an
individual during the course of his lifetime.

Edwin B. Flippo defined a career as a sequence of separate but

related work activities that provide continuity, order and
meaning in a person's life. This is the objective career. A career
may be viewed as amalgam of the changes in values, attitudes
and motivation that occurs as a person grows older. This is a
subjective element in the concept of a career.
 Definitions of Career Planning

Career planning is an ongoing process through which an individual sets career

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goals and identifies the means to achieve them. The process by which individuals
plan their life’s work is referred to as career planning.

"Career planning is a process of systematically matching career goals and

individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfillment."(Schermerhorn:
2002)

"Career Planning is a deliberate process of becoming aware of self, opportunities,

constraints, choices, and consequences; identifying career-related goals; and
"career pathing" or programming work, education, and related developmental
experiences to provide the direction, timing, and sequence of steps to attain a
specific career goal." {McMahon and Merman: 1987)
 Objectives of Career Planning

Career Planning seeks to meet the following objectives:

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To provide and maintain appropriate manpower resources in the organisation by
offering careers, not jobs.

 To provide environment for the effectiveness, efficiency and growth of its employees
and motivating them to contribute effectively towards achieving the objectives of the
organisation.

 To map out careers of various categories of employees suitable to their ability, and their
willingness to be 'trained and developed for higher positions.

 To have a stable workforce by reducing absenteeism and employee turnover.

 To cater to the immediate and future human resourcesss need of the organisation on a
timely basis.

 To increase the utilisation of managerial reserves within organisation.

 Career Anchors
Career anchors denote the basic drives that create the urge to
take up a certain type of a career. These drives are as
follows:
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Managerial Competence
Technical Competence
Security
Creativity
Autonomy
 Nature of Career Planning
The following are the salient features of career planning:

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A Process: Career planning is a process of developing human resources
rather than an event.

Upward movement: It involve upward movement in the organisational

hierarchy, or special assignments, project work which require abilities to
handle recurring problems, human relations issued and so on.

Mutuality of Interest: The individual's interest is served as his needs and

aspirations are met to a great extent and the organisation's interest is served
as each of its human resources is provided an opportunity to develop and
contribute to the organisational goals and objectives to the optimum of its
ability and confidence.

Dynamic: Career planning is dynamic in nature due to an ever changing

environment.
 Steps in Career Planning Process

Step 1: Self-Assessment
Step 2: Goal Setting 
Step 3: Academic/Career Options
Step 4: Plan of Action
Step 5: Catch Hold of Opportunities

Advice on Career Planning

 Try not to waste much time and wait too long between career planning sessions.
 Don't ever judge and analyse yourself, like your likes and dislikes, abilities, etc.
by listening to what people around you say. Be your best judge.
 Be open to constructive criticisms.
 Different Phases in the Career of an
Employee:
Most working people go through career stages and it has been found that individual’s

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needs and expectations change as the individual moves through these stages

Exploration Stage: This is the stage where an individual builds expectations about his
career. Some of them are realistic and some are not. But the fact is that these could be a
result of the individual's ambitions.

Establishment Stage: This could be at the stage where the individual gets his first job,
gets accepted by his peers, learns in this job, and also gains the first tangible evidence of
success or failure. The establishment/advancement stage tends to occur between ages 25
and 44.

Mid-Career Stage: The individual's performance levels either continue to improve, or

levels, or even deteriorates.

Late Career: This is regarded as a pleasant phase, where one is allowed to relax and play
the role of an elderly statesman in the organization.

Decline: The stage, where the individual is heading towards retirement.

 Succession planning
 a process to recruit
 Succession planning establishes
employees, develop their skills, and prepare them for
advancement, all while retaining them to ensure a return on
the organization's training investment. Succession planning
involves understanding the organization's long-term goals and
objectives, identifying employee development needs, and
determining trends
 It is an ongoing process that identifies necessary competencies,
then works to assess, develop, and retain a talent pool of
employees, in order to ensure a continuity of leadership for all
critical positions. Succession planning is a specific strategy,
which spells out the particular steps to be followed to achieve
the mission, goals, and initiatives identified in workforce
planning. It is a plan that managers can follow, implement, and
customize to meet the needs of their organisation, division,
and/or department.
Diff. B/w Career planning & Succession planning

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 Career Development: Meaning and Concepts
Career development is the process of improving an individual’s abilities in
anticipation of future opportunities for achieving career objectives.

Definitions
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Followings are the main definitions of career planning:

According to Schuler, "It is an activity to identify the individual needs, abilities

and goals and the organization’s job demands and job rewards and then through
well designed programmes of career development matching abilities with
demands and rewards".

In the words of Mansfield, "Career development is a process in which personnel

experience, concept and publicly observable aspect of career interact to
precipitate each successive stage of occupational statuses".

According to Middlemist, Hill and Greer, "Career development is a process of

planning the series of possible jobs one may hold in an organization over time and
development strategies designed to provide necessary job skills as the
opportunities arise".
 Cont…

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Career development is not a mere management responsibility. It is a
composite organizational process which involves people, addresses
their ambitions, assigns them roles & responsibilities commensurate
with their potential, evaluates their performance, and creates
Job positions to accommodate growth ambitions of employees.
 Systems Approach
Career development requires a systems approach.

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1. This implies Institutionalization of processes to automatically capture
essential data about each employee at the time of recruitment or induction.
It also includes maintenance, over the service span history of employment,
of the following details:

a) training details,
b) performance statistics,
c) awards & recognitions,
d) special skills & competencies,
e) promotions,
f) pay increments and
g) Many other fields which depict the capability profile of an individual.

2. If these details are available to the management on an 'Employee

Dashboard', career planning can be managed as a part of the HR Vision.
 Outcome

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Students will be able to learn career planning and its importance in an
organization.