CHAPTER 9 Developing Employees for Future Success

Jessica Christelle Rola

McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Copyright 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction
Employee development: the combination of formal education, job experiences, relationships, and assessment of personality and abilities to help employees prepare for the future of their careers. Development is about preparing for change in the form of new jobs, new responsibilities, or new requirements.

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Table 9.1: Training versus Development

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Development for Careers

Protean career: a career that frequently changes based on changes in the person s interests, abilities, and values and in the work environment. To remain marketable, employees must continually develop new skills.

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Figure 9.1: Four Approaches to Employee Development

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Approaches to Employee Development

(continued)

Job experiences: the combination of relationships, problems, demands, tasks, and other features of an employee s jobs. Most employee development occurs through job experiences.

Key job experience events include:

Job assignments Interpersonal relationships Types of transitions

Through these experiences, managers learn how to handle common challenges, and prove themselves.

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Figure 9.2: How Job Experiences Are Used for Employee Development

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Approaches to Employee Development

(continued)

Interpersonal relationships: employees can also develop skills and increase their knowledge about the organization and its customers by interacting with a more experienced member:
Mentoring Coaching

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Approaches to Employee Development

Formal Education
These may include:

Assessment
Collecting information and providing feedback to employees about their behavior, communication style, or skills. Information for assessment may come from the employees, their peers, managers, and customers.

Workshops Short courses Lectures Simulations Business games Experiential programs

Many companies operate training and development centers.

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Assessment Tools
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Assessment Centers Benchmarks Assessment Performance Appraisal 360-Degree Feedback
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Assessment Tools: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

It is a psychological test that identifies individuals preferences for source of energy, means of information gathering, way of decision making, and lifestyle, providing information for team building and leadership development. This is the most popular test for employee development. The assessment consists of more than 100 questions about how the person feels or prefers to behave in different situations.

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Assessment Tools (continued)

Assessment Centers An assessment process in which multiple raters or evaluators (assessors) evaluate employees performance on a number of exercises, usually as they work in a group at an offsite location. Benchmarks A measurement tool that gathers ratings of a manager s use of skills associated with success in managing.

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Table 9.2: Skills Related to Success as a Manager

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Assessment Tools (continued)

Performance appraisals can be useful for employee development under certain conditions:
1. The appraisal system must tell employees specifically about their performance problems and ways to improve their performance. 2. Employees must gain a clear understanding of the differences between current performance and expected performance. 3. The appraisal process must identify causes of the performance discrepancy and develop plans for improving performance.

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Assessment Tools (continued)

360-degree feedback can be used for development purposes:
1. The rater would identify an area of behavior as a strength of the employee or an area requiring further development. 2. The results presented to the employee show how he or she was rated on each item and how self-evaluations differ from other raters evaluations. 3. The individual reviews the results, seeks clarification from the raters, and sets specific development goals based on the strengths and weaknesses identified.
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Figure 9.3: Steps and Responsibilities in the Career Management Process

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Career Management System (continued)

Data Gathering: Self-Assessment
The use of information by employees to determine their career interests, values, aptitudes, behavioral tendencies, and development needs. MBTI Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory Self-Directed Search

Feedback
Information employers give employees about their skills and knowledge and where these assets fit into the organization s plans.

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Career Management System (continued)

Goal Setting
Based on the information from the self-assessment and reality check, the employee sets short- and long-term career objectives.

Action Planning & FollowUp

Employees prepare an action plan for how they will achieve their short- and long-term career goals. Any one or a combination of development methods may be used. Approach used depends on the particular development need and career objectives.

Desired positions Level of skill to apply Work setting Skill acquisition

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Development-Related Challenges
Glass Ceiling Circumstances resembling an invisible barrier that keep most women and minorities from attaining the top jobs in organizations. Succession Planning The process of identifying and tracking highpotential employees who will be able to fill top management positions when they become vacant. Dysfunctional Managers A manager who is otherwise competent may engage in some behaviors that make him or her ineffective or even toxic stifles ideas and drives away good employees.
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Figure 9.6: Process for Developing a Succession Plan

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Dysfunctional Managers
A manager who is otherwise competent may engage in some behaviors that make him or her ineffective someone who stifles ideas and drives away employees. These dysfunctional behaviors include:
insensitivity to others inability to be a team player arrogance poor conflict management skills inability to meet business objectives inability to adapt to change

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Dysfunctional Managers (continued)

When a manager is an otherwise valuable employee and is willing to improve, the organization may try to help him or her change the dysfunctional behavior:
Assessment Training Counseling

Specialized programs include Individual Coaching for Effectiveness (ICE)

This includes diagnosis, coaching, and support activities tailored to each manager s needs.
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