CAREER MANAGEMENT

HRM 350

Article Review

Submitted by:

Saeed Salem Al Mansoori

(201640031)

Submitted to:

Dr: James Ryan

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Introduction

In the current economy, employers are seeing high attrition rates caused by dis-satisfied

employees leaving organizations for greener pastures. The employees in turn feel neglected,

unappreciated and feel their individual needs and aspirations being ignored in their firms and

move in the hope of finding an employer who will better appreciate them. As described by J.M.

Ivancevich and W.F. Glueck,

Employee needs and aspirations should be taken in conjunction with the organisation's needs and

aspiration through feedback from both, to ensure that both parties's needs and aspirations are

taken care of (Manolescu, 2003). To ensure firms retain their top talent, proper career

management planning is required to ensure that good employees are motivated to stay in the

organisation and they always have the "right person in the right position at the right time" (van

de Ven, 2007)

Issue related to employees and employers

Some of the issues and challenges faced by employers and employees in today's fiercely

competitive business environment are as below (Goswami, Jha, 2012) :

• Money or titles: with other firms luring good candidates away with brighter prospects,

organizations are struggling to retain employees who are leaving for bigger salaries and

attractive designations.

• Challenging work: if organizations do not offer opportunities to work with new

technologies or products, then employees will prefer to leave in order to broaden their

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 domain expertise. While it is difficult for a firm to try and find challenging or latest work

for employees all the time, offering frequent role changes of choice or upskilling/cross-

training for employees will ensure that they find their work interesting and their career

paths progressing.

• Work environment: employees will leave firms if they do not offer a good working

environment or if they feel the system within is unfair or biased against them. Firms need

to conduct good orientation or periodic team bonding, so teams and employees do not

feel alienated or un-integrated at work.

• High stress: Employees will not care to take on highly stressful jobs for a long period of

time, stress at crucial stages of a project is expected however extended periods will cause

employees to want to change out of that situation. This could be because the role and the

employee are not a good fit, and needs to be evaluated by the employer to ensure it does

not happen or is caught in time to re-assign the employee to the right role.

• Lack of work life balance: Employees will want a good work-life balance to be able to

sustain their job for as long as possible, lack of a good balance will drive away good

talent straight to a competitor who might offer such balance.

• Supervisor/Management: It is often said that people leave their managers and not their

firms. If employees find themselves unable to work with their immediate supervisor or

management, they will prefer to leave the firm to escape a bad boss.

• Unclear performance goals/lack of clarity on role: If an employee does not understand

what is expected of him/her then the likelihood of finding job satisfaction is rare for that

specific employee. employers should ensure that supervisors or managers coach their

teams on their roles and the importance of the goals they are trying to achieve.

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Career management planning is required to help employees think through their job/career goals,

review their strengths, talent, passion and experience for their work, and identify knowledge and

skill gaps that they would need to fill to grow towards their desired career goal. To accomplish

this, employees and employers need to work together to create career development plans.

Conclusion

Career development planning is an important step in provoking thought in an employee about

his/her future at work. The planning can involve 1 on 1 meetings with supervisors, line

managers, peers, mentors etc. all of which can make an employee stop and consider/re-consider

their career path. This exercise will also bring to a supervisor's attention any dissatisfaction in

his/her team and can enable him/her to understand an employee's point of view and to re-think

role assignments, additional work/work life balance, training trajectories, all of which will go a

long way to ensure employee satisfaction at work and to reduce attrition.   

Works Cited

Brijesh Kishore, Sushmeta. (2013) Attrition - Issue & Retentions employee

challenges. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, 2(3). 4-11

Manoles, S. (2004) Human Resource Management, 4th Edition. 331

Frans., (2008) Fulfilling Promises of Career-Development: Getting to "Heart" of the

Matter. Organization- Development- Journal, 26(2). 47

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