Human Resource Management

Careers and Human Resource Development

Development is a process whereby people acquire capabilities that go beyond those required by the current job and represents efforts to improve employees' abilities to handle a variety of assignments. Training focuses on learning specific behaviors and actions related to the job, while development focuses on understanding information, concepts and context.

· Development should begin with the organization's HRM plans.

· Development results from experiences and the maturity that comes from them.

· As organizations restructure and implement strategic changes, development becomes more important.

· A "developed" workforce produces more positive economic benefit for organizations than undeveloped ones

· Development strengthens core competencies.

· Project-based work is growing, making careers a series of projects, not steps upward in a giving organization.

· Individual careers gain focus and evolve through the development process.

· There is usually little time to develop technical and professional employees, so they are hired based on the amount of skill development they have acquired at the time of employment.

ü Trends indicate that employers prefer to "buy" rather than "make" scarce employees in today's labor market.

Assessment centers represent collections of instruments and exercises designed to diagnose individual development needs.

· An assessment center is not a place or a location.

· Traits such as leadership, initiative, and supervisory skills are more accurately assessed through assessment center activities than through more traditional training and evaluation practices.

· Assessment centers are oftentimes used by large organizations to help identify employees with greater-than-normal potential for growth.

· A problem with assessment centers is that some managers tend to use this development method as a way to avoid difficult promotion decisions.

Psychological tests are legal and are oftentimes used in selection and training processes. (Personality is not a disability.)

• Psychological testing should only be used when the administration and feedback processes are closely supervised by a qualified professional. (HRM professionals are rarely trained psychologists!)
• The biggest problem with psychological testing lies in reliably interpreting the results, which may result in construct validity problems.

Replacement charts are used to ensure that the right individuals are available at the right time, and that they have sufficient experience to handle the targeted jobs.

• Replacement charts may become part of the development process by specifying the nature of development each employee needs to be prepared for identified promotions.

Several different development methods may be used.

• Coaching, which is the daily training and feedback given to employees by immediate supervisors, is the oldest on-the-job development technique.
• Mentoring is a relationship in which managers at the midpoints in their careers aid individuals in the first stages of their careers.

ü Mentoring is oftentimes seen as a way for women and other protected class members to crack the "glass ceiling."

ü Women and other protected class members report difficulty finding mentors, who tend to be older, white individuals.

• Job rotation encourages learning in multiple aspects of the organization's work, but managerial development time is oftentimes lost when the "trainee" must become acquainted with different people and techniques in each new job unit.
• Committee assignments may be used in the development process, but may become time-wasting activities.
• Lateral moves work best as development opportunities when the individual is moved into the organization's core operational activities.
• Assistant-to positions are useful for development if the assignments are challenging or interesting to the individual being developed.
• During off-the-job development activities, employees meet with other individuals who are concerned with somewhat different problems and come from other organizations and may provide new perspectives on old problems.
• Lecture methods should be used in limited environments as they encourage passive listening instead of active participation in the development process.
• Classroom instruction results depend on the ability of the trainer/instructor and the interest that the individual participants have in the subject matter.
• Case studies provide a medium through which participants can study the application of management or behavioral concepts by analyzing situations and deciding on the best course of action based on the data provided.
• Role playing requires the participants to assume a role in a given situation and act out behaviors associated with that role.
• Soft skills, like diversity and other human relations matters, are difficult measure beyond reaction.
• A sabbatical is paid time off the job to develop and rejuvenate the participant, but organizations must realize that the learning experience is not within the control of the organization and is left somewhat to chance.
• Wilderness exercises can create a sense of teamwork via shared-risk activities.

A career is a sequence of work-related positions a person occupies throughout his/her work life.

• A typical career will include many different jobs, positions, transitions, and organizations.

ü Adult development theorists believe that lives and careers must be viewed as cycles of structure and transition.

ü To reward talented technical people who do not want to move into management, many organizations have established dual career ladders.

• An individual career plan focuses on the individual's goals and skills; organization-centered career planning focuses on moving up through the organization's hierarchy.

• People pursue careers to satisfy deeply set individual needs.

ü Individual characteristics that affect how people make career choices include interests, self-image, personality, and social backgrounds.

• Today, as in several recent years, many people are finding themselves in career transition (in need of finding other jobs) because of organizational retrenchment and downsizing.

ü Many technical workers change employers at a rate of twice the national average.

ü The emphasis in the "new career" is on self-development--development managed by the individual, not the organization.

ü "Moonlighting" may be considered to be a career development strategy for some professionals, although their regular employer is likely to have some difficulty with it because of reduced job performance caused from being over-tired from working 12 or more additional hours per week for someone else.

ü Dual-career couples have more to lose when relocating than do individuals moving to new locations.