Career Planning and Development

Introduction

The term ‘career in career development refers to the matters connected to all aspects of life viz. personal, familial and social. Career means the life of a person taken as a whole with emphasis on the range of her/his social influence and the attitude of other persons towards him/her. Thus career refers to life style or the total life pattern of a person.

Development is the modification of behavior as a result of growth and learning.

Development is always a progressive change.

Thus career development means the overall development in the life style of a person. IT involves the persons experience that contribute to the formation of his/her identity which includes life experience, education, career choice, on job training experience, level of professional achievement an d degree of satisfaction

Career planning and development is required and hence has to be designed to fulfill the following basic objectives:

To secure the right person at the right time, in the right place. It assures the adequate availability of qualified personnel in the organization for future openings. This has two facets:

Positively, to make succession-planning timely and smooth;

Negatively, to avoid a “square peg-in-a round-hole” in the organization.

To ensure that the road to the top is open for all.

To facilitate effective development of available talent.

To impart to the employee maximum satisfaction, consistent with their qualifications, experience, competence, performance as well as individualistic needs and expectations, leading to a harmonious balance between personal and organizational objectives. Individuals who see that their personal development needs are met tend to be more satisfied with their jobs and the organization.

To strengthen the organization’s manpower retention programmes based on adequacy of career compensation, motivation management. It seeks to improve the organization’s ability to attract and retain high talent personnel, since outstanding employees always are scarce and they usually find considerable degree of competition to secure their services. Such people may give preference to employers who demonstrate a concern for their employees’ future. Proper career planning and development would insure against any possible dislocation, discontinuity and turnover of manpower.

To fulfill such a broad agenda of objectives, the organization must analyze the strength and weaknesses of the existing infrastructure, its internal support system, the typical career patterns that require to be molded according to particular needs, the elements that go into evolving and installing an effective career development progranime etc.