Meeting business and employees' needs
In recent years, career development has seen a change in the way it is approached. Usually, it was up to an organization to ensure that its employees had the skills to meet the company’s long-term goals. Now, however, employees argue that they are—and should be—responsible for their own career development.
This shift has changed the way in which organizations deal with career development. Career development is today seen as a kind of partnership with employees. It is also an important part of a company’s attraction and retention strategy. Many candidates do not consider a job with an organization if they do not offer career development as the basic component of their culture.
You should consider career development from the perspectives of both the organization and the employee:
An organization should require skills and knowledge to achieve their business goals.
Employee should think critical about their current skills and knowledge and future career plans.
Organizations should think through two aspects when compiling the career development program. These are the business plan and employees career paths.
It is clear that an organization must assess the overall direction and goals in order to assess the competences they need from their staff to be successful. It is equally important that the organization takes into account the motivation of an employee to succeed as an individual.
The career development has to meet the organization and employee’s needs.
A proven method to meet these needs of the organization and the employee involves:
Developing career paths that enable employees to understand their options to grow in the organization
Gathering the information to determine what skills they would need to achieve this
A career paths can entail promotions or lateral transfer. A solid career path program requires detailed job descriptions and support through management coaching.
While identifying and updating an employee`s plan, each employee should have a career plan that has been discussed with their manager. Normally, this would take place during the performance review process. The career plan includes an assessment of "gaps" or training requirements. The career plan must be constantly reviewed. This ensures that the needs as well as the objectives of the employee and the organization are adjusted in the course of time.
Some topics that you should include in the discussion of career planning are Current job, Gaps, Future Aspirations and Career Plan.
“The future depends on what you do today. “Mahatma Gandhi
