Career Development Benefits

Career management isn’t just a nice-to-do, it’s a must do, if you expect to gain maximum success and happiness from the hours you invest in work. Face it, you are likely going to work 40 hours a week for your entire adult life.Career management in which you plan and work to obtain new skills, capabilities, and experiences, is the answer. Share your goals with your boss and you have created a partner who can help you broaden your experience.

Succeeding in a demanding, changing workplace requires a strategic career management plan. Employers want to attract, hire and retain employees who provide the best value. So consider yourself a business with a product to sell, and create a strategy for marketing your workplace value.Each of us has a certain number of years to invest in working and making a living. Having a job is fine, but creating a career will maximize your opportunities for success. To have a successful career requires that you pursue career management strategies like these.

A successful career doesn’t happen unthinkingly. It needs planning, tending, and frequent review. Developing your skills begins with assessing which skills are important for your desired career development. Read about career skills in the self-assessment section of this website. Speak with your supervisor or manager and other career mentors to identify the types of skills that will help move you forward in your career.Although this job-hopping mentality has become more common, smart organizations recognize this trend and take counteractions to foster an atmosphere of growth where employees are able to recognize the opportunities for gain and advancement that exist within the organization. They help employees chart a path that may carry them through the entirety of their working life, knowing that when they hire an employee, it’s benefitting both the employee and employer if this new position is seen as a career and not simply a job.

This idea of looking at an employee’s career as a whole and designing different sets of formal training, developmental activities, and relationships at each stage is known as career development). This is the evolution of thinking about improving employee performance. Traditional training programs focus on improving specific competencies related to the employee’s current job, employee development programs target skills, knowledge, and behaviors that better prepare the employee for future positions; career development encompasses both training and development.The combination of specific job training, employee development, and a more complete career development plan requires a high level of strategic thinking and planning; such an overarching plan cannot be expected to come from the employee. It takes strong direction and broad perspective to be able to recognize what training and developmental experiences are necessary for employees to grow in their positions so that they fit in the organizational hierarchy and support the organizational vision. While this might require some level of investment on the part of the organization, understanding and supporting career development, impacts the organization’s ability to attract and retain high performance employees, a combination that can lead to an organization-wide competitive advantage.Because organizations have to stay current in technology, business practices, and in advances in their industry, an organization that embraces career development processes can keep employees informed of advancements and maintain their competitive edge in the market.

 

by: Ammara Siddique

Tags: article, Career Development, education

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