Career Management Best Practice

Career Management: Best Practices in Organisations and the Implications for HR by
Antoinette Oglethorpe

The Challenge
Career management is about the future of the organisation, and also about the effective deployment and development of all employees. Even so, keeping it on the business agenda is a struggle.

Career management is full of tensions and opportunities. Individuals want a career where there is scope for development and progression, together with opportunities to fully utilise their skills. Organisations need to ensure they have the right people in the right jobs and are building a talent pool for the future.

HR Practitioners therefore need to take into account the needs of both the organisation and the individuals within it, thinking about how to build and retain the talent they need, while satisfying employee career aspirations. However, the lack of integration between the organization’s needs and the individuals needs is clearly reflected in the terminology they use with individuals referring to it as “Career Management” and organisations referring to it as “Talent Management”.

This is consistent with the findings of the CIPD survey which show that for the most part, career management is still seen as an optional “nice to have” activity for employees, rather than an essential part of organisational resourcing. Proactive career management is generally aimed at the “high potential” few. Organisations are, for the most part, not embracing the needs of the whole workforce when they talk about career management. Only a quarter of the organisations have a formal written strategy covering the career management of all employees.

The Opportunity
Employers have repeatedly been warned that a number of problems await them in terms of future availability of skilled resources. A tough economy, significant skills shortages and a future “demographic time bomb” resulting in a shortage of young people entering the workforce are all problems already facing many organisations. However, the survey results indicate that, despite this, very little is being done to rethink how career management can help organisations grow and develop their existing resources and talent to counter these issues.
As Hirsh (2002) pointed out “keeping employees at a standstill, where they are in skill and job terms,, is not a realistic option”

Therefore, gaining the necessary support from the top is very challenging. Two key difficulties are:

1. Career development deals with the future and managers will always struggle to prioritise it above short-term operational issues.
2. Many managers worry that asking about career intentions will unsettle staff and open a Pandora‟s Box of pent-up problems and frustrations that are troubling them.

But the evidence shows that attending to career issues makes staff more committed to the organisation and more productive.

Research by Penna Sanders and Sidney entitled Itchy Feet, shows that four out of ten workers surveyed expect to have quit their job within a year and seven out of ten kept their CV polished in case a better offer came their way. With the job market picking up, combined with the demise of employee loyalty and the ever present war for talent, employers cannot afford to be lax in addressing employee satisfaction. However, employees polled in the „Itchy feet‟ report stressed that faced with an environment of internal promotion (46%), better training and development (41%) and recognition of their work (36%), they would stay put. Hence, an effective career management strategy can produce benefits of:

1. Commitment of individuals to stay and deliver
2. Capability to meet future demands
3. Talent magnets – employer of choice
4. Cost savings – reduced staff turnover
5. Competitive advantage

Get career management correctly aligned and individuals will feel connected to their work, valued for their contribution, engaged with the organisation, and motivated to contribute. Their willingness to apply and increase their capability will be enhanced. Manage careers well and the organisation’s capability to meet future demands will be enhanced by its ability to retain existing staff and to attract high quality applicants thereby unlocking the value chain which links personal success, business results and shareholder value. Get career management wrong, and organisational capability is driven down as individual capability exits to competitors.

Getting the environment right
The typical organisation responds to an identified issue with career management (employee attitude survey, increased attrition, reduced morale etc.) by looking for a tool or set of tools that will put things right. Current HR practice in the area of career management tends to concentrate on formal “processes” or “interventions” driven by the organisation to make career development happen. When they fail to do so, the organisation turns its attention away from career management until the next crisis arises.

Getting the alignment right however, is not led by applying the latest career management instrument or copying competitors. It is shaped by developing an environment and culture which is right for that organisation.

The CIPD Survey suggests that organisations who are effective at career management have addressed these three key areas:

1. Formal written career management strategy
2. Getting the communication right
3. Help & support for line managers

Formal written career management strategy
Organisations with effective career management seem to be using a dual strategy of both focused career management and wider career support. HR practitioners need to work hard to sell to their organisations the business case for a more inclusive approach to career management while at the same time recognising the practicalities and limitations of the organisation.

Every organisation has a culture in the way they manage people. Career management interventions and initiatives need to be designed in a way that recognises that culture, adapts to it where possible or manages any change that is necessary.

HR practitioners need to bear in mind that the nature of their organisation (sector, size etc.) will strongly influence the types of career management activities which will be appropriate in that environment. For example, it is not appropriate (or possible) for smaller organisations to offer some of the more sophisticated or formal career management activities that some large organisations are able to offer. But small businesses can still find informal ways of providing development opportunities and encouraging skills development, and they can still work to make sure that their HR practices are not unfairly disadvantaging certain employee groups.

Looking across the piece we see active career management for key groups plus a “core” offering for all staff of appraisal, a more open job market, informal advice (from the line and often HR) and perhaps some career information or tools.

The Achilles Heel of this prevalent pattern is that appraisal is really the only process directed at all employees which offers significant formal dialogue between employee and employer. Unfortunately, this approach seldom leads to what employees might see as “real” conversations about their careers. This is partly because an immediate boss is often not the best person to be talking to, and partly because a formal appraisal review is almost the worst place to tackle the complexities of someone’s future working life.

This may also explain why the most common career goals explored by line managers are short-term goals within the organization, promotion and project roles. These are relatively simple goals to be discussed indicating that managers may not feel they have the skills to talk about some of the more complicated types of career management issues like secondments, work-life balance or career changes.

A research project by the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC) showed that only a minority of useful career conversations took place in the context of formal HR or management processes such as appraisals. Most occurred naturally and were informal. These effective conversations were with a variety of people in the workplace. About a fifth were with the employee’s line manager, but far more were with other managers (including the boss’s boss). Mentors or a friendly, well-informed HR function were also valued sources of advice.

Informal career support is not about providing an “answer”. It often takes several conversations to help someone talk through their career issues. Even then they are still likely to need more information or advice. Sharing our networks and putting employers in touch with those who have access to wider information or know about another part of the organisation can be very useful.

So how can HR use informal discussions as part of a wider career development strategy? First, a strategy should include support from sources other than line managers, including career workshops, mentors or people in HR. Lloyds TSB is promoting this kind of “off-line” provision by training staff in its HR call centre, as well as volunteers from other functions, to act as career coaches. In addition, HR can encourage employees to seek less formal advice from a range of people.

Getting the Communication Right
Career management is often described in terms of the implementation of particular activities or processes. However, most researchers in this field also emphasise the messages – and implied promises – to staff which lie behind the strategy.

Whatever the type, organisations must make sure they are offering clear and honest messages to employees about career and development prospects.

The aspects of career development most likely to be promised to staff are opportunities to develop their skills, flexibility in aspects of their work, interesting work and reasonable levels of security. The “employability” angle is strong here.

The messages are clear and unsurprising. If employees want to get on they should seek qualifications and training, greater responsibility and varied work experiences. They should not work reduced hours, take career breaks, work from home or get ill. So “being there” in continuous full-time employment is a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition for career progression.

The CIPD Survey showed that, on balance, HR practitioners believe that organisations should be adopting a “partnership model” approach to career management. In this partnership deal, individuals should “own” their own careers – but employers should support them by offering advice, support and training. The reality however, seems to be that individuals are pushed towards fulfilling their side of the “deal”, taking ownership for their own career development, but most employers are not delivering their side of the deal.

This amounts to a difficult message to employees. The message about managing your career can easily be heard by employees as saying “you‟re on your own”, with the messages about career partnership and support being less audible. We also see that the career management activities undertaken offer information support to employees, but probably fall short of an active partnership. The message about the organisations need to develop certain groups of people can also seem at odds with the more universal messages about career support. This is not to say that the strategic thinking is flawed just that the communication challenge is considerable.

Help & support for line managers
The CIPD survey shows that getting involvement in career management from line managers is still an uphill struggle. Career management activities are mostly driven by the HR function and by individuals with the Board taking rather secondary responsibility. It seems that the line will play a part but need to be coaxed and cajoled by the HR function on the one hand and employees on the other.

HR practitioners need to devise ways of helping line managers support career development more effectively particularly since one of the major barriers to career management is reported as being a “lack of time”. Other research has shown that career education for employees can help them extract support from their bosses (Yarnall, 1998), so this should be a focus for practitioners.

Wendy Hirsh expresses a personal view that “career development needs stronger „hands on‟ HR input than many other areas of people management. Some of the reasons for this include: its future orientation which makes it slip down the business agenda; the need sometimes for expert and confidential career support; and the need to facilitate career moves across functional or business unit boundaries. These are not reasons to pull line managers out of their role in career management, but they do imply more proactive HR input alongside that of the line.”

If organisations were really serious about line managers taking the lead in supporting the career management of their staff, they would train them to do it. Not surprisingly, the survey shows only a minority of managers receive such training. This will reinforce the “optional extra” status which career management so often has in the line – nice if you have the time and interest, but not really all that important.

The CIPD survey results show that few managers appear to take career management seriously or are trained to provide effective career discussions to their team members. CIPD research indicated that, if delivered well, HR practices such as career development and training can contribute to producing highly committed, motivated employees (Purcell et al, 2003). This is where line managers have an important role to play. CIPD research “Understanding the people and performance link: Unlocking the black box”, also highlights the crucial role of line managers in delivering HR strategy and effective practices. If line managers are to be the main source of support for employees in terms of career support, organisations need to properly equip them with the training, guidance and information to perform their task effectively. Much needs to be done to make line managers understand why career management is important to future individual and organisational success.

Career Management Practices - Developing a “Career Partnership”
The duality of the objectives of career management – meeting the needs of the organisation and of the individual – have led to much debate about who “owns” career development. In reality of course individuals have always owned their own careers and certainly their own attitudes and aspirations.

There are three general strands of thinking about career ownership:
1. Individuals should take primary responsibility for their own careers, and be proactive in their own career development, particularly when in a rapidly changing organisation or when unemployed.
2. Employed individuals will manage their career‟s inside an organisation more effectively if they have information and support from their employer. To be most effective, a “career partnership” should be formed between employer and employee based on active dialogue and negotiation to meet the needs of both parties. Employees need advice, support and training in how to manage their careers.
3. Organisations have a vested interest in taking more initiative in planning for the careers of their most valued employees, typically senior managers and their potential successors.

The processes most commonly made available to “all” staff are online vacancy boards, an open internal job market, formal appraisal or development review, and career information/advice from staff in a learning centre. These processes can be seen to be relatively standard or straightforward activities, predominantly focused on providing information or forming part of another process such as appraisal.

Practices less likely to be aimed at all employees are succession planning, high potential development schemes, formal mentoring, graduate entry schemes, development or assessment schemes and external secondments.

In other words there are a number of widespread processes regularly implemented and aimed at “all” employees. However, these are often informal and not always considered to be effective e.g. appraisal. Certain groups of employees, such as senior management and graduates, do seem to be receiving more proactive career development, but this only affects a small proportion of the workforce.

The survey tells us what activities or processes HR people think are being deployed in their organisations, which employees they cover, and how effective they are felt to be.

Succession Planning is one of the more common processes, although it remains difficult to implement effectively. A high proportion of respondents reported their organisations had some career processes aimed at specific populations (such as high potential or graduate schemes). This links with the survey findings that the dominant objective for career management is developing future leaders. Other research would support this view (Gratton et al. 1999).

Appraisal is the only formal process applied to nearly all employees. The survey respondents who used this process found it only moderately effective. Other research has shown it is not very helpful for career dialogue (Hirsh et al. 2001)

An open internal job market is now very common (Hirsh et al, 2000) and available to the whole workforce, often supported by an online vacancy board. The survey shows the open job market is most used in organisations with lower proportions of managers and professionals. It is felt to be an effective process, at least by HR practitioners.

Over two-thirds of organisations offered some form of career support such as career information, career counselling, or workshops. With the exception of information (often now intranet-based), most of the initiatives are not offered to all staff. They are, however, less common than the targeted forms of career management for potential senior managers.

Informal career support is, as we would expect, very widespread. It is interesting, however, that over three-quarters of respondents felt that HR or training people in their organisation offered informal career support to employees.

The practices considered to be most effective are:
• An open internal job market
• Development or assessment centres
• Online vacancy boards
• Development Programmes
• Graduate entry schemes

Practices considered to be least effective are:
• Succession planning
• Career information/advice
• Informal support from managers

The implications for HR
The barriers to better career management appear to be practical rather than philosophical. The main barriers are seen as lack of time/resources; being seen as peripheral; and a lack of senior management commitment – all to do with getting it done rather than strategic intent.

Hence, two key activities for the HR function should be (a) working hard to involve senior management both in strategy and implementation and (b) training line managers much more thoroughly for the role they are expected to undertake.

HR need to develop a clear business case for career management. Career management should improve the deployment of skills and develop a stronger and more flexible skills base for the future, as well as supporting the attraction, motivation and retention of high-quality staff.
Career management in most organisations requires two strategies to work side by side. The first pillar of the strategy facilitates planned career development for selected groups of staff the organisation wants to bring on. The second pillar of the strategy offers information, advice and support to all employees who wish to develop their careers.

HR practitioners need to bear in mind that the nature of their organisation (sector, size etc.) will strongly influence the types of career management activities which will be appropriate in that environment. For example, it is not appropriate (or possible) for smaller organisations to offer some of the more sophisticated or formal career management activities that some large organisations are able to offer. But small businesses can still find informal ways of providing development opportunities and encouraging skills development, and they can still work to make sure that their HR practices are not unfairly disadvantaging certain employee groups.
Organisations expect all employees to manage their own careers; all managers to support other employees in their career development; and senior managers to take a strategic lead and provide positive role models. Employees at all levels need adequate training to equip them for their roles in career management.

In conclusion, the HR function needs to be an active player in career management and to allocate enough of its own resources to offering practical career support.

(C) 2010 Annette Oglethrope, Banana Park Consulting