Why More Companies Focus on HRM Career Development and Planning

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The duty of an organization’s Human Resource Management (HRM) is to ensure that the firm is equipped with skillful and highly motivated staff (Wang & Wang, 2008).  For magnificent performance of an organization, the HRM must be actively involved in motivating and enhancing the skills of their employees. This is done through career development and planning. Career development involves progression of employees’ skills through successive stages where each is represented by a set of improvement activities. The general theme of career growth is to enrich an organization’s personnel for the good of the organization and those individuals. This program seeks to ensure that employees have the most articulate skills required for the job (Cummings & Worley, 2009).

On the other hand, HRM career planning is the intentional process through which the organization seeks to articulate the skills of its employees with their career goals. This process is carried out at the dispensation of the employees where an individual takes parts in his or her own career planning process with the assistance of the HR. This process aims at matching the existing career prospects with the individuals’ career goals. The process assists individuals to plan on how to realize their career aims. It provides a map of the individual’s career expectation and provides a strategy on how to attain them. This plan assists an organization to align the skills and competencies of its employees with the constantly changing labor demand of the current dynamic business environment (Rothmann & Cooper, 2008).

This study will carry out an analysis of past literature in the same topic in order to develop a deeper insight on the matter. Research methodology will be given to provide an analysis on the expected data collection and analysis techniques for this research. A discussion on the expected findings will be developed while the expected research limitations will be outlined. Finally, the study will provide a work schedule which gives a general program for the research.

General Objective

To establish the reason why many companies are focusing in HRM career development programs as well as career planning programs.

Specific Objectives

  1. To establish why organizations are becoming more interested in career planning and growth programs
  2. To find out the importance of career growth and planning programs to organizations

Research Questions

  1. Is HRM career planning and growth worthwhile for business firms and organizations in the current business world?
  2. What are the factors leading to adoption of career planning and growth programs in organizations?

Literature Review

            According to Chew & Chan (2008), today’s organizational workforce are more career cognizant than before. The employees are more demanding in various aspects of their career growth and development. Employees in the current world are more anxious in growing their careers and seek employment opportunities in organizations that are capable of giving them an opportunity to grow. Kroth & Christensen (2009) indicates that organizations risk losing their esteemed personnel if they deny them the opportunity to develop their careers. Career development is a multifaceted approach that seeks to match employees’ needs with those of the organization. The career advancement program is important to both the employees and the organization as well. The eminent danger of organizations losing their employees to their rivals due to insufficient career advancement needs for their employees has elevated their quest to initiate more career development and planning programs. According to Morrison & Adams (2013), it is expensive for organizations to train their current staff than to recruit a new workforce. Therefore, organizations find it more convenient to foster career expansion programs on their workers other than acquiring a new workforce.

Savickas et al (2009) indicates that employee retention is a key area of concern for organizations and can only be enhanced through employee motivation. Usually, employees would want to seek job opportunity elsewhere if they do not feel motivated or where they feel underutilized. Organizations therefore set off career development programs to retain and motivate their employees. The author shows that organizations with effective profession advancement programs have the likelihood of retaining higher number of workers than those that do not invest into such programs.

Research indicates that profession growth is a strategic asset for organizations with high growth prospects. Organizations are observed to have taken a vigorous role in the mission of growing the careers of their workforce which was previously left with individual’s own interest. Career growth programs aim at elevating the skills of every individual in the organization to leap maximum benefits in attaining the organizational goals. Personal job satisfaction is an aspect that modern day employees are conscious of. Organizations are therefore obligated to initiate programs that seek to develop the careers of their employees for sufficient job satisfaction (Garavan, 2007). According to Cummings & Worley (2009), the key purpose in a business organization is profitability and is directly related to employees’ job performance. Organizations are hence investing more time into employee empowerment programs leap the benefits of a highly motivated workforce.

According to Rothmann & Cooper (2008) most people aim at attaining self sufficiency in their jobs. This revolves around securing a job whose pay has the ability to cover ones costs and reserve enough surplus for recreation activities. The current job market is highly volatile and employees need to plan their careers in order to offer articulate services to their employers. The labor market is experiencing constant changes and employees need to effectively plan their careers to meet the market needs. The authors indicate that organizations have realized the competency behind career planning. Most organizations are seeking to spearhead career planning programs to ensure that their employees are fully conscious of their performance competences.  Through programs aimed at developing own career plans for personnel, organizations are able to align employees competences with available job areas. This arguably increases the productivity of the organization.

Research shows that an effective career plan enables the employees to make use of their full potential. When an organization takes part in the career mapping process employees feel motivated and are likely to achieve maximum performance on their respective roles. The career mapping practice gives employees an opportunity to realize their personal aspirations. This also makes them more suited to achieve the corporate goals expected of them by the organization (Raabe, Frese & Beehr, 2007). According to Savickas et al (2009), employee turnover is high in organizations that do not focus in programs that aim at planning the careers of their employees. This results from frustrations of the employees and there is a high likelihood of them to seek more fulfilling careers elsewhere.

Methodology and Methods

            The paper will use quantitative research approach methods to investigate the topic of the study. The key concepts that influence the need for profession growth and planning for employees will be addressed. These include employee turnover, employee grievances, and insufficiencies of skills. A survey will be conducted on a well designed sample. The sample will be developed through the simple random sampling method. The sample is expected to involve some local and multinational firms where the study will be conducted. After a suitable sample has been established, depth interviews will be conducted upon the employees of the selected organizations. Surveys about HRM practice in relation to developing and planning the careers of the employees will be developed. This will involve dispatching questionnaires to top HR officials of the selected organizations. The questionnaires seeking to collect information from the employees will be sent to relevant HR managers. A cover letter giving details about the objective of the study will accompany every questionnaire (Remenyi, Swan & Assem, 2011).

The data obtained from the study will be analyzed and measured with data measurement facets obtained from Wang and Zang (2008). The five point Likert Scale will be utilized in measuring the extent of HRM practice of professional planning and career advancement for their employees. The scale will establish the correlation between career advancement and planning with the influencing factors, that is, employee turnover, the grievances of the employees and insufficient skills among the employees. Based on the scale (5 = high correlation while 1 = low correlation). The oblique research technique will be used to determine the level of inter-correlation among the factors. The contemporary least square method regression analysis will be used to analyze the data obtained in the research. This will establish the correlation among the variables in the research (Carey & Warner, 2005).

Discussion

The study assesses why most organization are becoming more conscious in HRM profession planning and career growth….

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