CAREER MANAGEMENT: UPS AND DOWNS

1. Introduction
Today, companies face constantly different forms of strategies: mergers,
outsourcings, consolidations, downsizings etc. which have changed the implications
for human strategic management, and more particularly, for human resources
management. Strategically, career management is of outmost importance as, within a
globally competitive environment, employees’ efforts and skills shall focus on helping
their employer meet its strategic goals (Dressler, 2008:337). Thus, two activities are
to be continuously undertaken:
a. Monitoring performance corresponding to goals
b. Improving results.

These shall result in constantly setting and meeting quality standards, in decreasing
costs with personnel as well as in increasing customer satisfaction with regard to
product/service availability and delivery. Vuutari and Tahbanainen (2002:131-140)
explain that employees’ efforts shall be goal-directed, so managers shall appraise
them in accordance with the specific standards they meet in the jobs they perform
(such standards are to be defined subjected to the strategic goals of the company).

2. Defining Careers
A career may be defined as the occupational positions a person has had over many
years (Dressler, 2008:378). Hence, career management is the human resources
process used for enabling employees to better understand and develop their career
skills and interests and to use them more effectively both within the company they
work for and after they quit it (idem).

Ivancevich (2007:442) states that the popular meaning of career means moving
upward in one’s chosen line of work, which means making more money, have more
responsibilities and acquiring more status, prestige and power. But we need take into
account that career implies both success and failure, it consisting of an ongoing
sequence of positive and negative behaviours and attitudes towards jobs and their
activities under the influence of the changing values of the society.
Moreover, human resources processes have continuously changed during time, as
presented in Figure 1 below. Subsequently can we clearly understand that, a
nowadays career, in Human Resources Management, may have the following
meanings:
a. promotion
b. profession
c. succession of posts/functions/experiences during life-time.

HR activities
Focus HR training
HR recruiting Performance Compensation
HR planning and
and planning appraisal and benefits
development
- analyses jobs, - matches - provides - rates and/or - rewards for
skills, tasks organization’s opportunities for rewards time,
- projects needs needs with learning skills, productivity,
Traditionally - uses statistical qualified information and talent etc.
data individuals attitudes related
to jobs
- adds - matches - provides - adds - adds tuition
information about individual and job career path development reimbursement
the individual based on information plans and plans
interests, variables including - adds individual individual - adds
Contemporary preferences employees’ career development goal setting compensation
- uses interests and plans for non-job-
replacement aptitudes related activities
plans
Figure 1. HR activities then and now (source: adapted from Otte and Hutchenson, 1992:10)

3. Individuals’ Career Planning and Development as Major Career

Management Processes
Out of all career management activities, the most important are career planning
(making a person aware of its personal skills, interests, knowledge, motivation and
features as well as collecting information on opportunities and choices so as to
identify its goals and establishing actions to be taken to meet them) and career
development (leading to a person’s exploration, establishment, success and
fulfilment).

Under such circumstances, we can define the roles of all the actors implied in career
management as follows:
A. The Employer’s and Manager’s Role. Generally, all the human resources
activities shall, in every company, support career development, but the most
popular, according to Baruch (2006:131) are job postings, reimbursement of
 formal education fees, performance appraisal for career planning, counselling
by managers and job rotations.
B. The Employee’s Role. The SWOT analysis is the best instrument to match
personal strengths and weaknesses with labour market opportunities and
threats as nowadays, an individual shall pursue that career which capitalizes
its competences, values, interests and aptitudes whereas projecting its future
among all the occupations. So as to avoid changing jobs or occupations within
a highly competitive labour environment, every employee shall think about
alternative work arrangements, delegate/eliminate job functions least preferred
and seek out more challenging tasks (Dressler, 2008:382).
C. Third Parties’ Roles. Herein, we have to underline the roles of teachers and
professors within the employee’s educational background. Moreover, we shall
not forget about all the internal or external mentors or couches who are
specially prepared to work with planning and developing careers. On one
hand, mentors may be formal or informal and in general, they voluntarily help
less-experienced employees with advice, policies and regulations
understanding, increasing networking and interaction in the business field –
sharing information gained through experience with an organisation.

Hence, organized education plays a decisive role in career planning as most people
prepare for an occupation in high schools / colleges and vocational schools. When
taking a first job, they decide whether the chosen field of education is appropriate or
not, being given the chances to move to other jobs in the same organisation or to
prepare for something else. In this way, the duration of every individual’s career
stages differs, but the stages (presented in Figure 2 below) remain the same.

Safety, security, Achievement, esteem, Esteem, self-

Self-actualization needs
psychological needs autonomy needs actualization needs

age

STRATEGIC
APPRENTICESHIP ADVANCEMENT MAINTENANCE THINKING

Figure 2. Correlation between human needs and career stages (source: Ivancevich, 2007:444)
Moreover, the first five years of career are considered to form the establishment
phase when employees are more concerned about their safety needs. It is a phase
which generally consists of apprenticeship periods within the same job or of the
individual experiences with more occupations within the same organization or in
different industries. The advancement phase usually lasts from 30 to 45 ages and
needs as achievement, esteem and autonomy prevail. The maintenance period
comprehends all the efforts of the past so as to stabilize in an occupation, but there
are also different crises which occur, forming the so-called midcareer crises (people
do not achieve satisfaction from their work and experience discomfort). The last is the
retirement phase which basically means completion of the career, so strategic
thinking shall bring mentorship or moving on to another occupation/interest (volunteer
service, painting, gardening etc.).

Career planning is a process involving the match between an individual’s career

aspirations and the opportunities available in an organisation. Furthermore, there is
career pathing the concept expressing the sequencing of the specific jobs associated
with those opportunities (Ivancevich, 2007:460). The individual, as presented in
Figure 3 below, identifies its aspirations and abilities and through counselling,
recognizes what training and development activities are needed for a specific career
path.

Organisational needs and Individual needs and

opportunities aspirations

Personnel planning and Personal counselling

Matching
career information and assessment

Formal training and Individual

Matching development efforts
development programmes

Placement on
career path

Figure 3. The process of career planning (source: Ivancevich, 2007:460)

On the other hand, the company identifies its needs and opportunities and offers
necessary career information and development programmes to its employees. If
these two elements do match properly, then a successful career is developed within
the organisation.

With regard to career development, such programmes are always a matter of

concern and debate within organisations. The following issues must be addressed:
a. Integrating career development and workforce planning: Career
development offers a supply of talents and skills whereas workforce
planning projects the demand of such talents and skills. Thus, these
two processes cannot be separated and developing people but having
no place for them is the real issue a company may encounter. Failure
also occurs when there is no communication between the specialists
performing the two processes: psychologists do career development
whereas economists and system analysts do workforce planning.
b. Managing dual careers: Dual careers refer to both adult members of a
household being employed in the same company. Particular issues
appear when companies offer promotions with relocation, when
employees take maternity leave or when companies do not offer the
appropriate unpaid benefits – thus, not developing the proper
development career paths for their employees denote that companies
are inflexible and they easily lose talented people.
c. Career planning and equal employment opportunities: There are still
many pieces of evidence that there is discrimination with regard to
career development, women and minorities feeling the most reluctant
effects.
d. Downsizing and job loss: Unneeded positions and bureaucracy1 seem
the main reasons for downsizing, its negative effects being the
elimination of memory and sense of values (Ivancevich, 2007:469). But
the options a company uses for its employees are: retraining, laterally
transferring and temporary work contracts. Moreover, a difference shall
be made between job layoff and job loss. The former implies that at the

1
Report: Most U.S. Layoffs in Years, August 15, 2002, Career Network
 time, there is no work available and the employees are sent home (a
temporary situation) whereas the management intends to recall them.
The latter means that the employees have lost their jobs permanently.
But both concepts are stressful and mean there is no opportunity for
career development. In this regard, companies have developed within
their human resource departments outplacement services (a variety of
job placement services offered to people who are asked to leave),
according to Gowan and Nassar-McMillan (2011:185-196).

4. Career Start-ups
After having graduated from schools, young professionals enter the labour market
with a lot of knowledge, but with a lack of professional experience which firstly may
be translated as a lack of understanding the organization’s demands and
expectations (Ivancevich, 2007:445). Their first needs are expressed by their
necessities to work closely with experienced people and to develop relationships
during the apprenticeship period.

Thus, through learning and following directions, this process of career start-up may
become efficient for both parties concerned with business: the newly employed and
mentors. But there is only one aspect to be taken into account: the youth accepting
dependence to others. This psychological state may be wrongly understood and
coped with by individuals who have not understood that this career phase implies
authority from others and that a first job does not provide a considerable level of
freedom. Actually, if this process is clearly understood, a recent hiree having
successful experiences in performing its first tasks shall positively shape the rest of
its career (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001).

There are some career start-up crises that may be encountered, especially by young
managers, herein explained:
a. Initial job challenge: Young managers do feel sometimes unable to
demonstrate their full capabilities and may demand from them less than
they are capable of delivering. But they offer creativity and enthusiasm
even within routine activities.
 b. Initial job satisfaction: When management start-up, recently hirees
consider that the recent theories and techniques they acquired during
their education make them ready to run a company. But what they get
is a lot of disappointment and dissatisfaction, as a result of their
unrealistic aspirations and low performance.
c. Initial job performance evaluation: Hirees are generally inadequately
trained for feedback on performance and on techniques to evaluate
both their work and others’ work. As the period of time spent in the
company is not sufficient, they are not confident with the beliefs, values
and behaviours expected to be used in their company. And if their
managers fail to properly and accurately evaluate their work, ignorance
and confusion with regard to the levels they meet organisational goals
will be high. Professional achievement is not the only category of needs
which may not be saturated during a career.

5. Managing Retirement
Retirement is defined as the point at which an employee gives up work, generally
between the ages of 60-70. Fleites and Valentino (2007:42-46) emphasize that 78%
of employees stated that they expected to continue working in normal capacity after
the normal retirement age, of which 64% said they would like to work part-time
whereas 43% gave as a reason remaining active and a third for financial reasons.

Hence, there is an obvious need of pre-retirement counselling plans provided to

employees who are about to retire and which cover explanations of social security
benefits, counselling on leisure time, finance and investment, health, psychology and
counselling for second careers outside and inside the company. But, nowadays, such
plans shall also be implemented not only to help current employees to retire, but also
to enable employers to retain, according to Dressler (2008:395), in some capacity,
the skills and brain power of those who would normally retire and leave the company.

The activities listed below are to be taken into account by career management:
 a. Honouring experience within the organizational culture: Retiree-friendly
organisations are working along with bodies specialised in aged people needs
so as to deliver mentoring for young employees.
b. Offering flexible work
c. Offering part-time work.

Furthermore, people in this stage are mainly focusing on training the young
employees and interaction with all the working personnel from inside and outside
their company. But these two processes are stressful enough if one considers doing
a great job as the retirees are not only responsible for their job (as previously) but
also for the work of others.

6. Promotions and Transfers Management

Promotions are defined as advancements to positions of increased responsibility.
When making promotion decisions, several factors shall be taken into account:
a. By the employee: more pay, more responsibility as well as more job
satisfaction; less free time for personal life and more risks.
b. By the employer: reward of exceptional performance, filling vacancies with
loyal and tested employees, but more costs.

Thus, some decisions with regard to promotion shall be clarified herein:

1. Vertical versus horizontal promotion: Vertically, more parallel career paths
may be created, as for managers (e.g. head of the department) and high-
performing personnel (e.g. senior engineer, senior lecturer). Horizontally, jobs
are enriched and trainings are offered so as to assume responsibility, whereas
employees may be moved to other departments to develop skills and test
aptitudes so as to further return in their department on a higher position.
2. Formal versus informal promotion: Criteria used by managers may be clearly
specified in company’s regulations and procedures (promotion policies,
employee qualification databanks, replacement charts and computerized IT
systems), or they may use their own criteria to make decisions with regard to
promotion.
3. Competence measurements: Defining and measuring past performance shall
comprise all the human resources processes previous to career management:
 job definition, standard settlement, use of the appropriate appraisal tools to
record performance. In this regard, managers working with promotions shall
correctly predict a candidate’s / an employee’s future performance and thus,
they use tests and assessments to evaluate promotable features and identify
potentials.
4. Seniority versus competence promotion: Lately, competence has been
favoured by employers. But, in industries or public institutions where labour
unions are very powerful, senior employees may be preferred and given better
chances.

Transfers are re-assignments to similar positions in other parts of the firm, in general
with no change in grades or salaries. Personal enrichment, more
challenging/interesting jobs, more convenience (working hours, location etc.) and
advancement possibilities seem the most given reasons for employees’ transfers
whereas employers do transfers so as to vacate a position where an employee is no
longer desired/needed, to find a better employee within the firm or just to offer
employees personal growth opportunities.

7. Conclusion
Career management is fundamental for understanding and managing career start-up,
development and retirement. Any company shall be committed to managing these
career stages properly so as to help individuals correlate personal needs with career
needs which will lead to satisfaction, motivation and success in meeting
organizational goals.

As there are still many gaps in understanding how these herein before presented
processes work, in the foreseeable future, we shall continue to study them and
experiment with solutions. Managers and employees should be involved with their
own career development, not expecting this from their employers. If they lack of the
abilities and information needed to systematically develop their own career plans,
they cannot properly work to their benefit and to the organisation’s.