Career Planning: Process, Benefits, Limitations

What is Career Planning?

Career planning is essential for new college graduates and experienced industry workers. It helps shape the career so one can have a great career that helps maintain work-life balance.

Career planning shapes how a person navigates the job market, finds the best opportunity, gets the highest salary and benefits possible, and prepares for an unforeseen event in their career.

3 Steps of the Career Planning Process

Career planning is a process involving three steps. These steps help a person plan his career and decide about his future. The process of career planning is also known as the career development stage.

The three steps of the career planning process;

1. Self Assessment
2. Thorough Research for Self Development
3. Come up with Action Form

Self Assessment

Self-assessment is a process that helps an individual in assessing his skills, potential, strengths, and ability to fulfill his aims.

As the name of the step suggests, a person assesses himself, and then, based on his analysis and keeping his strengths and weaknesses in mind, he will draft a plan.

By drafting the plan, we mean that executing this step helps the person finalize the profession and career path he wants to choose.

Once you have self-analyzed yourself, filling the loopholes you identified in the above step is the second step that awaits your attention.

By this, we mean that in this step, you must see what qualities and skills are required to help you achieve your aims and goals.

For instance, you might decide that you need training or a particular course in a field to make you perfect for your chosen profession.

Thorough Research for Self Development

Once an individual has listed the favorable careers in his case and the skills and improvements required to achieve excellence.

The third step requires him to do intensive research and see what findings related to career options and the skills required to make him a champion. To assist in this, exploring the resources provided by companies you’re targeting can be beneficial. For example, IMDA Careers page outlines potential career paths and growth opportunities that may align with your skills and interests.

He will ask the following questions;

• What is the scope of the career he has chosen?
• Will that career pay him off in the future?
• Is there room for expansion in that career field?

Come up with Action Form

Once an individual has researched the feasibility of the factors he has finalized in the above steps, the next step is to show some action and translate his plans into a page.

This step requires him to plan how he will achieve and fulfill the steps he has decided above. The best way to devise an action plan is to devise small goals for oneself.

Once these small goals are achieved, we can see how much closer we are to our main aim and major goals. This small step acts as a pathway to the main aim.

Benefits of Career Planning

The HR department should take an active interest in employee career planning. They often handle career planning because their human resource plans indicate the organization’s future employment needs and career opportunities.

D. B. Miller says that organizations have different perspectives on careers.

They want to ensure that managerial succession is orderly and efficient. When managers need to be replaced because of promotion, retirement, accident or illness, termination, or resignation, high-qualified people can quickly replace them.

The involvement of HR managers in career planning has grown in recent years because of its benefits. Here is a partial list of those benefits:

• Career planning helps to develop internal supplies of promotable talent. If vacancies occur, it is easy to locate a good successor.
• The increased attention and concern for individual careers generate more organizational loyalty and lower employee turnover. Career planning improves the organization’s ability to attract and retain highly talented personnel.
• Career planning encourages employees to tap into their potential abilities because they have specific career goals.
• Career plans and goals motivate employees to grow and develop; without career planning, it is easier for managers to hoard key subordinates. Career planning causes employees, managers, and the HR department to become aware of employee qualifications. Key subordinates can be placed in different departments.
• Career planning can help members of protected groups prepare for more important jobs. This preparation can contribute to meeting affirmative action timetables. It reduces employee frustration as the employee knows what he should do to achieve the career goal—Assists affirmative action plans.
• It ensures needed talents and promotes organizational goodwill.
• Career planning helps the individual know various career opportunities, priorities, etc.
• It helps him select the career suitable for his lifestyle, preference, family environment, self-development scope, etc.
• It helps the organization identify talented employees who can be promoted.
• Internal promotions, up-gradation, and transfers motivate the employees, boost their morale, and increase job satisfaction.
• Each employee will await his turn of promotion rather than changing to another organization. This would lower employee turnover.
• It improves employees’ performance on the job by tapping their potential abilities and stimulating their personal growth.
• Increased job satisfaction due to career planning enhances employee commitment and creates a sense of belonging and loyalty.
• Being an integral part of the workforce and corporate planning, career planning contributes to individual development, organizational development, and effective corporate goals.
• An organization with well-designed career plans can have a better image in the employment market, and it will attract and retain competent people.

7 Limitations of Career Planning

Though career planning helps an organization in numerous ways, it has a few limitations that undermine its importance and relevance of career planning. These are;

1. Time Factor
2. Unsuitable for Large Workforce
3. Lack of Objectivity
4. External interventions
5. Lack of Knowledge and Awareness
6. Lack of Flexibility
7. Difficulty in Measuring Career Success

Time Factor

Career planning is usually a long-term and time-consuming process.

Unsuitable for Large Workforce

It may not be possible for organizations with a large workforce to develop individual career plans breach and every organization’s employee.

This is because the career planning process requires an in-depth analysis of each employee’s strengths and weaknesses on a sustained basis.

Lack of Objectivity

Only those organizations that believe in strict observance of objectivity in promotion and transfers can succeed in career planning.

In contrast, favoritism and nepotism in promotions often make career planning an unsuccessful exercise.

External interventions

Government rules and regulations can also affect the career planning options of an organization.

For example, the government may make it mandatory for the organization to adopt reservations in promotions.

Lack of Knowledge and Awareness

Career planning by an employee is essentially a self-management process. It requires employees to know the basics of career planning and management activities.

Lack of Flexibility

Many organizations treat career planning as a ritualistic and rigid exercise. They often fail to consider the uncertainties caused to career planning activities by the changes in the situation.

The absence of dynamic career planning programs may limit the applicability of career plans in uncertain and changing situations.

Difficulty in Measuring Career Success

Since career success is an abstract concept, it is interpreted differently by different persons. Some may consider a good performance on the job as a career success.

Others may consider the quality of life as an indicator of career success. Still, others may consider vertical mobility in the organizational structure as career success.

This divergence of opinions may cause confusion and vagueness in interpreting career success.

10 Factors in Organizational Career Planning

What Do Employees Want in Organizational Career Planning?

Over the past two decades, organizations have encouraged their employees to be career self-reliant.

They have told employees to “take charge” of their careers and not rely on the organization to provide guidance.

While this worked to some extent, the changing expectations of employees in the workplace require greater collaboration. But organizations should avoid their responsibilities.

An organization needs to help facilitate the process by providing clarity and opportunity.

New generation employees are more educated and demanding.

Organizations must consider new employees’ new expectations, different perceptions, and desires while making career planning.

Employees want the 10 factors in organizational career planning:

1. Meaningful and challenging job
2. Career equity
3. Communicate the strategy and direction of the organization:
4. Supervisory concern
5. Awareness of opportunities
6. Employee interest
7. Help employees customize their careers.
8. Clearly articulate expectations at different levels
9. A transparent process for career advancement
10. Career satisfaction

Meaningful and challenging job

The job must be interesting and challenging to make employees satisfied.

Career equity

Employees want to perceive equity in the organization’s performance and promotion system for career advancement opportunities.

Communicate the strategy and direction of the organization:

To ensure an employee’s career goals are aligned with the company’s goals, the company needs to be open about its strategy and future directions.

Employees cannot be in charge of their careers and make good career decisions if they don’t understand where the organization is going.

Supervisory concern

Employee wants their supervisors to play an active role in career development and provide timely performance feedback. Supervisors assist them in developing skills and abilities.

Awareness of opportunities

Employees want knowledge of the career advancement opportunities that exist in their organizations. An organization must help its employees to learn about new opportunities within the organization.

Employee interest

Employees need different information and have different degrees of interest in career advancement depending on various factors (age, sex, occupation, education).

Help employees customize their careers.

Employees have different cycles in their lives. The employers who can attract them will allow employees to ramp up or down during their careers depending on different events in their personal lives.

This allows the individual to integrate themselves with their work instead of choosing work or family.

For some organizations, this may mean redesigning some roles to allow individuals to succeed as they define success.

Clearly articulate expectations at different levels

Employees often get frustrated when they don’t know how to get ahead and don’t understand how to develop themselves for the future.

By being clear about performance expectations for the future and at different levels of the organization, employees can more accurately self-assess if they have what it takes to move ahead.

A transparent process for career advancement

There should not be any discrimination. The employee should be made aware of the advancement criteria.

Career satisfaction

Depending on their age and occupation, employees have different levels of career satisfaction. Some are happy with good performance, while others are happy with quick advancement opportunities.

Comparative studies have shown that employees in the 21st century are likelier to remain and work productively in large organizations that articulate and communicate the purpose and value of the roles staff are asked to perform and mentor them as they progress in those roles.

These organizations are said to foster a high level of employee engagement.