An even more ambitious plan can be inaugurated. Employees prepare a career development plan (Strategy Four) and receive a specific increase in salary once they have completed this plan. Alternatively, employees are given additional compensation for cross training in a related job, thereby eliminating the need for temporary help, or additional compensation for training or education associated with a temporary job assignment. Typically, an employee documents the use of newly acquired skills or knowledge within a specific period of time, following their completion of the training or education program. One final cautionary note regarding pay-for-knowledge/skills: it is critical that the organization assumes some responsibility for ensuring that an opportunity is afforded for the employee to use their newly acquired talents.
Strategy Four: Career Planning/Career Ladders
This fourth HRD strategy serves as both an alternative and compliment to the third strategy. Each of these strategies addresses the role played by motivation in the performance of employees. The third strategy builds on the assumption that compensation is the prime source of motivation. Strategy Four builds on the assumption that enduring job-related motivation is to be found in a challenging career that aligns with the personal aspirations of the employee. In Career Dynamics, Edgar Schein identifies an employee’s career as the point of critical interface between personal development and organization development.[i] The career of an employee represents the meeting ground where the intentions of the organization meet with the employee’s personal intentions and aspirations. If there is a broad and fertile meeting ground then the employee is likely to be highly motivated. She will flourish in the organization and make full use of her distinct competencies. Furthermore, her daily work is likely to be aligned with the mission, vision, values and purposes of the organization.
The key to this appreciative perspective regarding an employee’s motivation resides in the career planning and career ladder programs being offered by this employee’s organization. Every appreciative organization should provide some type of opportunity for each employee to meet with a career planner at least twice per year. During this meeting she will talk with the planner about the relationship between her own career aspirations and the mission, vision, values and purposes of the organization. This career planner is never the employee’s direct supervisor nor even the supervisor or anyone else directly up the hierarchical structure. Rather the career planner should assume the role of friendly aunt or wise uncle—a person who offers an empathetic and thoughtful ear but has no vested interest in the employee’s future career directions. A mentor or coaching could also provide this career planning service (see discussion in later section of this essay). There are two additional sources: the Human Resource Department of the organization can offer career planning, or this service can be provided by someone who works with a cluster of organizations.
Typically, this career review focuses on the choices the employee must make regarding the developmental initiatives they will take in the near future. Usually, the planner and employee direct their attention to initiatives that will be taken during the coming year. They might consider the employee’s decisions regarding training workshops, informal reading, talking with other employees about work, or even enrollment in a formal degree program. In each case, the employee identifies her shifting career aspirations, and talks about ways in which these aspirations relate to other shifting priorities in her life: family, avocation, non career-related education, recreation, health, and even concerns about core values and sources of meaning in life. The career planner, in turn, represents the interests of the organization and suggests ways in which the employee’s personal aspirations overlap with organizational intentions. The career planner also encourages a consideration of ways in which the employee can most effectively realize her own aspirations, while availing herself of the organization’s current developmental resources.
