Career development is defined as a formal approach taken by a company to assist its employees get the experiences and skills required to do future and existing jobs.
Employees are assisted by developing their career through policies of business organization like opportunities to excel in future, counseling the employees and promotion.
Career development contains experiences education & skills as well as refinement techniques and behavioral modification that permit the employees to work together & add value. Here let’s check below the challenges in career development.
Challenges in Career Development
Recently most of business people concord on the fact that investment should be made on career development by their organizations.
See Also: Career Planning and Development Methods
But is not obvious that what type of investment the organizations should made. Management needs to consider the following three challenges before putting a career development program in action.
Who will be Responsible?
It is concluded by many organizations that employees must participate actively in planning and implementing their own personal development plans.
Employees have encouraged by many business organizations to take responsibility for their own development. These situations may contain acquisitions, mergers, employee empowerment and downsizing.
However, at least general guidance is required by the employees in order to do actions to build their careers, both outside and inside the organization.
How Much Emphasis is Appropriate?
The organization’s effectiveness can be harmed by giving too much emphasis on career development. Employee can be more concerned about his image rather than his performance if he or she gives too much importance on career development.
Some precautionary measure should be made by the manager on the lookout for contain a potential concentration on managing impressions, advancement opportunities and socializing versus job performance.
Career development programs include some serious side effects like poor performance and employee dissatisfaction etc.
How will the Needs of a Diverse Work Force be met?
Business organizations require diffracting the barriers some workers face in accomplishing advancement in order to fulfill the career development requirements of recent diverse work force.
See Also: Human Resource Development Activities
It is highlighted from a government study conducted in 1991 that minorities and women are mostly excluded from the career development activities like mentoring, networking and participation in policy-making committees.
The best way to ensure that the minorities and women have equal chance at executive & managerial positions is to design a broad based approach to worker development that is present in training & education.
Dual career couples are another worker group that requires special consideration. In dealing with the dual career couples there are some common organizational approaches such as telecommuting, flexible work schedules, and the offering of child-care services. There are some business organizations that are counseling dual-career couples in career management.
