Human Resource Management

GARY DESSLER, Fifteenth Edition

Managing Careers
and Retention

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 Having invested time and resources in selecting,
training, and appraising employees, the employer
of course wants its employees to stay with the
firm. As an employer, what steps can you follow?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

How to support your employees’ career development
needs and improve employee retention?

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 Discussion points!
 Discuss what employers and supervisors can do to
support employees’ career development needs.
 Explain why career development can improve
employee engagement.

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 Career Management

• Career
• Career Management
• Career Development
• Career Planning

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 What Managers need to know!
After appraising performance, it’s often necessary to
address career-related issues and to discuss these issues
with subordinates.
A basic assumption underlying the second role is that the
employer has an obligation to utilize its employees’ abilities
to the fullest and to give all employees a chance to grow
and to develop successful careers.
Employers do this not just because they think that it’s the
right thing to do, but because by doing so both gain—the
employee by having a more fulfilling career, and the
employer by reaping the benefits of improved employee
relations, engagement, and retention.

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 What are these?
• Career : Occupational positions a person holds over the years.
• Career management: Process for enabling employees to better
understand and develop their career skills and interests and to use these
skills and interests most effectively both within the company and after
they leave the firm.
• Career development: Lifelong series of activities (such as trainings/
workshops) that contribute to a person’s career exploration,
establishment, success, and fulfillment.
• Career planning: Deliberate process through which someone becomes
aware of personal skills, interests, knowledge, motivations, and other
characteristics; acquires information about opportunities and choices;
identifies career-related goals; and establishes action plans to attain
specific goals.

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 Careers today:

People once viewed careers as a sort of upward

stairway from job to job, more often than not with
one or at most a few firms. Today, many people do
still move up, but many (or most) find themselves
having to reinvent themselves.

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 Careers today:
Careers today differ in other ways from a few years
ago. With many more women pursuing professional
and managerial careers, families must balance the
challenges associated with dual career pressures.
At the same time, what people want from their
careers is changing. Baby boomers—those retiring
in the next few years—tended to be job and
employer-focused. People entering the job market
now often value more opportunities for balanced
work–family lives.
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 The Psychological Contract

An unwritten agreement that exists between

employers and employees. The psychological
contract identifies each party’s mutual expectations.

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Employee’s Role in Career Management
• For the employee, career planning means
matching individual strengths and weaknesses
with occupational opportunities and threats.

• In other words, the person wants to pursue

occupations, jobs, and a career that capitalize
on his or her interests, aptitudes, values, and
skills.
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Employer’s Role in Career Management
Before hiring, realistic job interviews can help prospective
employees more accurately gauge whether the job is a good fit
for them. Periodic job rotation can help the person develop a
more realistic picture of what he or she is good at, and thus the
career moves that might be best. Finally, we will see that once
the person has been on the job for a while, career oriented
appraisals are important. Here the manager not only appraises
the employee but helps the person to match his or her
strengths and weaknesses with a feasible career path.

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Employer’s Career Management Methods

Career Development Training – Some employers create Web-based or

offline libraries of career development materials, for employees to utilize.

A career planning workshop – Is “a planned learning event in which

participants are expected to be actively involved, completing career
planning exercises and inventories and participating in career skills
practice sessions.

Career coaches – Generally help employees create 1- to 5-year plans

showing where their careers with the firm may lead. The coaches help
individual employees identify their development needs and obtain the
training, professional development, and networking opportunities they
require to satisfy those needs.

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 Improving Performance Through HRIS:

Integrated talent management software helps to achieve

such coordination.
For example: An online portal that lets employees “see their
full training history, development plans and upcoming
deadlines, register for courses, or do career planning usually
without having to ask for help.”
At the same time, “managers can get a quick picture of the
training needs for a particular group, or see all the
employees who have a specific qualification.”

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 The Manager as Mentor and Coach

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 Coaching and Mentoring
1. Set High Standards
2. Invest The Time
3. Actively Steer Protégés
4. Requires Trust
5. Professional Competence
6. Consistency
7. Ability to Communicate
8. Share Control

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 • Mentoring means having experienced senior
people advising, counseling, and guiding
employees’ longer-term career development.
Mentoring may be formal or informal. Informally,
mid- and senior-level managers may voluntarily
help less-experienced employees—for instance,
by giving them career advice and helping them to
navigate office politics. Many employers also have
formal mentoring programs.
• Coaching focuses on teaching daily tasks that
you can easily relearn, so coaching’s downside is
usually limited.

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 A Comprehensive Approach to
Retaining Employees

• Exit Interviews
• Attitude Surveys
• Open door / Hotlines
• Stay Interviews

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 Retaining employees:
1.Effectively conducted exit interviews provide useful
insights into turnover problem areas.
2.Many employers routinely administer attitude surveys to
monitor employees about matters such as supervision and
pay.
3.Open-door policies and anonymous “ hotlines” help
management identify and remedy morale problems.
4.Usually conducted by the employee’s manager, the aim of
a stay interview is to head off retention problems by
finding out “how the employee is doing.”

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 Making Promotion Decisions
1. Is seniority or competence the rule?
2. How should we measure competence?
3. Is the process formal or informal?
4. Vertical, horizontal, or other?

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 Managing Dismissals

1. Unsatisfactory Performance
2. Misconduct
3. Lack of Qualifications for the Job
4. Changed Requirements of the Job
5. Insubordination

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 1. Unsatisfactory performance – refers to a persistent failure to perform assigned
duties or to meet prescribed standards on the job. Specific reasons include
excessive absenteeism, tardiness, a persistent failure to meet normal job
requirements, or an adverse attitude.

2. Misconduct – is deliberate and willful violation of the employer’s rules and may
include stealing and rowdy behavior.

3. Lack of qualifications for the job – is an employee’s inability to do the assigned

work, although he or she is diligent. Because this employee may be trying to do the
job, it is reasonable to try to salvage him or her—perhaps through further training or
by assigning the employee to another job.

4. Changed requirements of the job – is an employee’s incapability of doing the job

after the nature of the job has changed. Similarly, you may have to dismiss an
employee when his or her job is eliminated. Again, the employee may be industrious,
so it is reasonable to retrain or transfer this person, if possible.

5. Insubordination, a form of misconduct, is sometimes the grounds for dismissal.

The two basic categories of insubordination are unwillingness to carry out the
manager’s orders, and disrespectful behavior toward the manager.

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 Fairness Safeguards
1. Allow a Full Explanation
2. Multistep procedure / Appeal process
3. Person who does the dismissal
4. Severance Pay

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 The Exit Process and Termination
Interview
1. Plan the interview carefully
2. Get to the point
3. Describe the situation
4. Listen
5. Review the severance package
6. Identify the next step

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 Layoff is when an employer sends employees home due to a lack
of work; this is typically a temporary situation but can turn out to
be permanent.
Dismissals are involuntary terminations of an employees
employment with the firm due to indisciplinary action.
Downsizing means reducing, usually dramatically, the number of
people employed by a firm. The basic idea is to cut costs and raise
profitability.

Promotions traditionally refer to advancements to positions of

increased responsibility. Most people crave promotions, which
usually mean more pay, responsibility, and (often) job
satisfaction. For employers, promotions can provide opportunities
to reward exceptional performance, and to fill open positions with
tested and loyal employees.

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 Copyright

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