FACULTY OF BUSINESS

BBCP4103

CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

SEPT 2019

MATRICULATION NO : 820406075613001

IDENTITY CARD NO. : 820406-07-5613

TELEPHONE NO. : 0127616474

E-MAIL : bigben012@gmail.com

LEARNING CENTRE : OUM Seremban

 Table of Contents
Description Page

1. Career development 1

2. Introduction of the organization 2

3. Identify the career stage (Mid-Life) 3 -4

4. Methods to improve the mid-life career stage 5

5. Analysis of the challenges faced 6

6. Suggestion to improve the career development 7

7. Summary 8

8. References 9 -10
Career Development

What’s the point of having a career but if there’s no development? How long can we
survive in an organization without a career? Let’s get the definition of the mentioned
career development. Career development is the process of improving an individual’s
abilities in anticipation of future opportunities for achieving career objectives. Career
development is the process that forms a person's work identity. It is a significant part of
human development and spans over the individual's entire lifetime, beginning when the
individual first becomes aware of how people make a living.

Career development helps you take stock of whom you are and where you want to go in
life. In order to achieve growth, continue learning, and achieve momentum in your career
you must assess your situation and your goals frequently, otherwise you doom yourself to
the fate of a robot working a daily routine.

Organizations also have a critical role to play in career development. The organization
that pays attention to career development planning stands a high chance to reap high
productivity from a properly trained, skilled, and talented workforce, therefore, the senior
management who is aware of this possibly will steer his organization to places and
enhance competitive advantage. The following are adopted by organizations to
communicate to employees about opportunities and to assist with planning: career
workshops, a career newsletter, and career counseling. Some organizations have career
sections on their websites.

A key system that is employed by organizations to guide HR managers to develop

employee careers is career paths or “map”. A career path represents employee
movements through opportunities over a period of time. Although career paths are
thought of as leading upward, good opportunities are also available in horizontal
directions. This is normally created and shared with individual employees.

There are also some workbooks that been prepared by organizations to guide their
employees individually through systematic self-assessment of values, interests, abilities,
goals and personal development plans.

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Introduction of the Organization

HSBC Holdings plc is a British multinational banking and financial services company
headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's fourth largest bank by total
assets, with total assets of US$2.67 trillion. It was established in its present form in
London in 1991 by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited to act as a
new group holding company.The origins of the bank lie mainly in Hong Kong and to a
lesser extent in Shanghai, where branches were first opened in 1865.The HSBC name is
derived from the initials of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The
company continues to see both the United Kingdom and Hong Kong as its "home
markets".

HSBC has around 6,600 offices in 80 countries and territories across Africa, Asia,
Oceania, Europe, North America and South America, and around 60 million customers.
As of 2012, it was the world's second largest bank in terms of assets and sixth-largest
public company, according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.

HSBC is organized within four business groups:

 Commercial Banking

 Global Banking and Markets (investment banking)

 Retail Banking and Wealth Management

 Global Private Banking

HSBC has a dual primary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and London Stock
Exchange and is a constituent of the Hang Seng Index and the FTSE 100 Index. As of 6
July 2012 it had a market capitalisation of 102.7billion, the second-largest company
listed on the London Stock Exchange, after Royal Dutch Shell.It has secondary listings
on the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris and the Bermuda Stock Exchange.

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Identify the stage in career (Mid Life)
Career development is defined an organized, planned effort comprised of structured
activities or processes that result in a mutual career plotting effort between employees
and the organization. Career development is an ongoing process by which individuals
progress through a series of stages, each of which is characterized by a relatively unique
set of issues, themes and tasks.

It’s also a lifelong process in which we become aware of, interested in, knowledgeable
about, and skilled in a career. It’s a key part of human development as our identities
forms and our lives unfold. Career experts say that people will change careers (not jobs)
five to seven times in a lifetime. We can analyze, discuss careers and look at them as
made up of 5 stages. We can identify five career stages that most people will go through
during their adult years, regardless of the type of work they do:

 Preparation to Work

 Organization Entry

 Early Age Career

 Midlife Career

 Final Phase of Career

It’s interesting to discuss my career stage as I just changed to a new job and entering
midlife career. I have been working with HSBC for over 13 years and had covered
several roles in custodian processing, system testing, project management and now
settled down in the risk management role. At age of 37, with strong 13 years background
in HSBC’s investment and securities banking, I had decided to take a leap of faith and
jumped to given opportunity by my new organization. It’s a great feeling to master a job
and become an expert. But if you’re daily tasks have become muscle memory and you
spend chunks of your day staring out the window, tweaking your EPL fantasy football
team and surfing Shoppee (online shopping), that’s the sign of midlife crisis.

During my early age career, learning a job, becoming good at it and making money
satisfy me to a point. But as I grow older, my characters and sense of value changed, and
I really wanted something to challenge myself and to check if I got the ability to reset
back from the start. Mid-life career covers the age period of 35 to 45 years. At this stage,
I am no longer considered to be a fresher and my mistakes are taken seriously by the
senior management. So I had evaluate my current career position and decided to look for
the future career prospects. Do take note that I also have to maintain a balance between
my career and my personal life, along with my family.

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 Most people do not face their first severe dilemmas until they reach their mid-career
stage. This is a time when individuals may continue their prior improvements in
performance or begin to deteriorate. At this point in a career, one is expected to have
moved beyond apprenticeship to worker-status. During the phase of moving out, there
were few certain career-crisis triggers and I asked myself some hard questions so that I
can identify the issues as either a temporary slump or the sign of a deeper problem.

Would I be happier almost anywhere other than my current position? Am I dragging

myself to work every day? Was there any more approach I can take to make things
differently in my career? A dead giveaway is when others tell you that you seem
unhappy. It could be the company, but more likely, it is the work itself. After careful
consideration, I was ready to switch the career path with new organization.

Bear in mind that there are other factors such as failing to reach goals, lack of career
progression, fewer opportunities to learn or challenge one-self that can contribute to mid-
career slumps. It can be understandably frustrating to continuously pound the pavement
for no perceived return. Mid-career crisis are mostly characterized by serious questioning
of personal identities and values, which often result in dramatic career shifts by those
previously considered successful in their organizational or professional roles. Those who
make a successful transition assume greater responsibilities and get rewards. For others, it
may be a time for reassessment, job changes, adjustment of priorities or the pursuit of
alternative lifestyles.

The midlife crisis, also a major career dilemma for certain individuals are common and
practically expected. Instead of trying to avoid a mid-career crisis, consider the benefits
of being prepared for one. Many experts agree that a mid-career crisis can even be
helpful. And in the next page, we will look at how methods that can be used by the
organization to increase the quality of employees in that mid-life career stage.

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Methods to use to improve mid-life career stage
Midlife professional transition decisions are important. Trends within this population
suggest individuals are increasingly seeking opportunities for career transitions. These
include increased enrollment in executive MBA programs, experimentation with
entrepreneurship and complete changes in profession. The organization can help with this
by providing extra study leaves and even some financial assistance to ensure that the
individuals get all the support on upgrading themselves in education.

Organizations can design learning interventions where individuals are encouraged to

build a portrait of “who they are when they are at their best” and what situations reinforce
that view. Further, organizations can also endorse extra-organizational activities (e.g.
interaction with non-profit organizations, sabbaticals) that enable one to express the self
within the broad context of the organization. Finally, organizations should give
importance on increasing the usage of professional growth plans (Fenwick, 2003) with
midlife employees. As discussed previously, midcareer is often a time when the
organization seems less concerned with the employee’s growth, in part because the
individuals have experienced mastery and there are fewer advancement opportunities,
especially as organizations continue to flatten. However, it is at this time that professional
growth plans may be of their greatest importance.

Organizations should also provide opportunities for job crafting. Wrzesniewski and
Dutton (2001) define job crafting as “a creative and improvised process that captures how
individuals locally adapt their jobs in ways that create and sustain a viable definition of
the work they do and who they are at work (p.180).” They had stated that individuals are
engaged in this process of redefining the work and themselves within the work. For
example, one bank manager may see themselves strictly as an improver of processes or
product while another may see their role as improving the conditions on the line for the
staffs, enabling them to perform their jobs with greater ease or great satisfaction. The first
bank manager works primarily with improving the current process with streamlining and
other manager spends more time with individuals on the line, thus, how one sees their
roles and their work will influence how they perform their jobs and their evaluations of
psychological success.

Management need to do a frequent check in with the staffs as the days of simply relying
on mid-year reviews for providing feedback are long gone. Today’s workforce craves
regular feedback and that helps with faster course correction and reduces waste.
Management need utilize both formal and informal check-in strategies and preferably
monthly session on this. And we must recognize that while individuals at this stage
might have experienced mastery they are still developing. Organizations must be
prepared to enable this development and facilitate self-discovery if they are to retain this
critical human capital.

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Analysis of the challenges faced in the selected company.
For a number of years now, HSBC have been going through enormous changes in
organization and structure. New technology and new ways of structuring the operation
have left their mark on the working conditions and daily lives of employees. Emerging
technologies had significantly reshaping working lives by continuous changes on
employment and working conditions, but is the organization looking into both internal
and external factors of challenges?

The organization need to look into the development of their employee and help them by
facilitating with training of managerial and professional skills. And you might ask my
why we need to do that? Failing to do so will cause major challenge for an organization is
to retain its valuable and talented employees. The management can control the problem
of employees quitting the organization within no time to a great extent. Financial services
organizations need to be employing a variety of employee retention strategies to hang on
to their best employees, especially millennial workforce that might not be sticking around
for long, meaning the cost-per-hire figures could soon be stacking up.

And let’s not forget on hiring midlife career candidates that bring so much of
experiences and values into the organization. There are only fewer mid- and upper-level
professionals in the financial services job market today and midlife career candidates are
now in high demand since there’s been vast growth in our local economy. In a nutshell,
hiring a key local talent which is in midlife career stage is not that easy and very difficult.

This had led to another challenges faced by local banking industry where, they start
bringing foreign talents, instead of grooming local talents to be the next leaders of
tomorrow. Grooming foreign expatriates for leadership positions doesn’t work when the
leaders-in-the-making keep leaving as they are probably around only for few years. We
have plenty local talented employees that have potential for leadership growth and the
organization need to actively investing in that growth.

HSBC does have a very good health benefits but health in the workplace isn’t just about
hygiene and safety. Today, the psychological well-being of employees can deteriorate
due to high demands, limited time, and general employee burnout. The organization
needs to keep a close eye on escalating workloads and stress levels and this a challenge as
there not many ways to observe on this.

Monetary rewards is one of the biggest challenges in retaining the employees in the firm
and therefore the organization must create a system to reward employees for excellent
performance is one way to make up for a lower salary. In addition, consider offering
incentive programs such as profit sharing or bonuses, which can be a win-win for the
employee and the company.

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Suggestions to improve career development process
Developing your talents and skills will stretch your world and enable more of your
unique contribution. This, in turn, can make your career success. You are likely going to
work 40 hours a week for your entire adult life, and by managing your career effectively,
you can make the best of those 40 hours. And by saying that, I meant that the
improvement needs to start from you. First, you need to set goals and create a plan to
achieve them. Develop a timeline, including milestones. Utilize company programs.
Some companies have formal programs to help employees develop their careers. In
others, you will need to informally pursue your career development.

Own your career path. A career path can be discussed at several bi-annual meetings with
your boss. Some companies demonstrate a deep commitment to their employees by
assisting where possible with resources of time and dollars. However, remember that it is
your career path. Career paths are recommended for the same reason that goals are
recommended. They are the written plan that can help each employee take charge of what
is most important to his or her fulfillment and success.

Develop the local talent and they will see the value of the development process when
they see their current leadership continue to develop personally and professionally. By
modeling this behavior, leaders build credibility and the trust necessary to encourage
employees to participate in development-building activities. It shows employees that
development is part of the organization’s culture. It sends the message that it’s important
for, and expected from, everyone in the organization to be part of a continual
improvement process that nurtures from within.

Create opportunities for an employee to take on new responsibilities outside their job
function. This cross-training will increase their awareness and knowledge of the
organization and help them work more effectively with others because they have a new
understanding of what other employees do for the company. The additional responsibility
will put them in new situations, add challenges, expand skill sets, and encourage them to
think on their feet, which will also improve their chances for success in any future roles
they take on. This type of development also creates energy and excitement in the
workplace.

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Summary
Last but not least, every employee working in an organization is looking for a career
development which moves in the right direction. Career path taken by an employee
determines the growth. Career should be planned in a way that it moves forward. Career
development provides the framework with skills, goals, awareness, assessment and
performance which helps an individual to move in the right direction and achieve the
goals one has in one's career.

Careful career planning is always useful for individuals to succeed professionally and
also helps to boost employee motivation in the organization. Organizations that achieve
sustainable success are those that attract the best people to develop their strategies and
achieve their goals. An effective career development initiative brands your organization
as one that truly cares about its employees. This helps your organization attract the best
people for the roles you need.

As for my own career, while I was in the middle of writing this assignment on midlife
career stage, it’s my first week of new career path in Royal Bank of Canada. Successful
career shifts, I learned, tend to be less dramatic than the ones we fantasize about. They
also tend to be scarier and more difficult than anticipated. But if you want to thrive in the
years ahead, a new challenge, and a new purpose, may be the things your brain needs
most.

(2964 words)

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