A PROJECT REPORT ON Career development for recent Hirees in Organizations Today SUBMITTED TO PROF.

SK MAIDUL ISLAM

By KAMAL UDDIN MOLLAH Batch :- PGP/SS/09-11/HR IIPM , Kolkata Mobile no : +91-9038882191 E-mail : iipm.kamal@gmail.com

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CERTFICATE OF APPROVAL
The following Report titled " Career development for recent Hirees in Organizations Today " is hereby approved as a certified study in management carried out and presented in a manner satisfactory to warrant its acceptance as a prerequisite for the award of MBA for which it has been submitted. It is understood that by this approval the undersigned do not necessarily endorse or approve any statement made, opinion expressed or conclusion drawn therein but approve the Project Report only for the purpose it is submitted.

Name

Signature Faculty Examiner Prof. Sk Maidul ___________________

Signature of the student :-

Institute Name: - IIPM, Kolkata Place : - Kolkata. Date :-

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Project Topic: Career development for recent Hirees in Organizations Today. Name of the Student: KAMAL UDDIN MOLLA / SS/09-11/ T-5/002/16-10-11/ Batch: _SS-09-11 Sec: __HR______________
Signature

Project Report Guidelines

The Objective of a Project Report should be to provide a practical solution to a theoretical perspective based on both literature review and case study method. The report must display a students complete mastery over a given topic. Time Frame to submit the report Within 15 days from the date of topic approval Project Viva The Institute will conduct viva on a case to case basis and reserves the right to withhold marks and ask for further details if not convinced about the study. STUDENTS SHOULD INCLUDE ALL RELEVANT DATA WRT TOPIC & PROVIDE LATEST DATA IN THE REPORT.

PROJECT REPORT FORMAT The report should be written in Times New Roman (12 Font Size) . Each page should be serially numbered. A Hard copy of the same (spiral bound) along with a soft copy (CD) should be submitted to the examination department. The report should be properly formatted. Cover Page - This page should contain the following details Name of the Institute with Logo Students details (Name, Batch, Phone No, Email Id and Section) Name of the Faculty and Subject Project Title and date of submission.

Abstract - It should contain a brief about the entire report. Acknowledgement (optional) - It generally includes acknowledgment of assistance received from various persons. Project Topic Approval A Copy of Project Topic Approval should be attached with the Report.

Table of Contents Contents with page numbers.

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Introduction to the Topic (1 2 pgs) - Under this section the student must provide a brief introduction to the project topic as given by the Institute. Research Objectives & Methodology (2 pgs) Mention the research objectives and methodology used for the project. Literature Review 30 -35 pgs) - This section must include review of all relevant and available literature on the area of research and should be written in ones own language (any literature directly copied from the internet is not acceptable). Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on the topic. A well-structured literature review is characterized by a logical flow of ideas; current and relevant references with consistent, appropriate referencing style. Students have to include the profile of the company also in this section. Findings & Analysis (10 pgs) Support with some (preferably) primary findings to add value to the research. Students should use examples and case studies to support the research. Recommendations & Conclusion (1-2 pgs) Bibliography

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Contents

Chapter 1 9-11 Executive summary Objectives of the study Research design and methodology Literature review

Chapter 2 12- 44 Career Development in the Workplace. How is a career development program established? Mentoring: Bridging the Gap of New Hire Understanding Hiring and Orienting a New Employee How to Make an Employee's First 90 Days Successful New Employee Training Overview of workplace guidance provision

Chapter 3 .45-50 Analysis & Conclusions Bibliography

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Objectives of the study

Primary objective :- Career development for recent Hirees in Organizations Today. Secondary Objectives: Hiring and Orienting a New Employee New Employee Training How to Make an Employee's First 90 Days Successful.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

TOOLS OF DATA COLLECTION The data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. Interacted with some professionals in IT companies at Salt lake sector 5 like Webel , HCL etc. Internet

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: LITERATURE REVIEW :Human resources have never been more necessary. The competitive forces that we face today and will continue to face in the future demand organizational excellence. To achieve this excellence by focusing on learning, quality, teamwork, and reengineering are driven by the way organizations get things done and how employees are treated. To achieve this excellence we look at the work of Human resources. By designing an entirely new role and agenda that results in enriching the organizations value to customers, investors and employees, HR can help deliver organizational excellence by helping line managers and seniors move planning from the conference room to the market place, by becoming an expert in the way work is organized and executed, they should be a representative for the employees and finally by helping the organization improve their capacity for change. The responsibility for transforming the role of HR belongs to the CEO and to every line manager. HR will help organizations meet competitive challenges such as globalization, profitability through growth, technology, intellectual capital, and the greatest competitive challenge companies face, adjusting to nonstop change. HRs new role would be able to quickly turn strategy into action; to manage processes intelligently and efficiently; to maximize employee contribution and commitment; and to create the conditions for seamless change. HR should also become a partner in strategy executions by impelling and guiding serious discussions of how the company should be organized to carry out its strategy. Creating the conditions for this discussion involves four steps. First HR would define an organizational architecture by identifying the companys way of doing business. Next HR must be accountable for conducting an organizational audit. The third role for HR as a strategic partner is to identify methods for renovating the parts of the organizational architecture that need it. Fourth and finally, HR must take stock of its own work and set clear priorities. In their new role as administrative experts they will need to shed their traditional image and still make sure all routine work for the company is done well. HR must be held accountable for ensuring that employees feel committed to the organization and contribute fully. They must take responsibility for orienting and training line management about the importance of high employee morale and how to achieve it. The new HR should be the voice of employees in management discussions. The new role for HR might also involve suggesting that more teams be used on some projects or that employees be given more control over their own work schedules. The new HR must become a change agent, which is building the organizations capacity to embrace and capitalize on change. They dont execute change but they make sure it is carried out. The new mandate for HR requires dramatic change in how HR professionals think and behave. Investing in new HR practices is another way to let the organization know that HR is worthy of the companys money and attention. Finally, the most important thing managers can do to drive the new mandate for HR is to improve the quality of the HR staff itself. Senior executives must get beyond the stereotypes of HR professionals as incompetent support staff and unleash HRs full potential. Importance of knowledge workers and their career needs While not all those working in sectors defined as part of the knowledge economy will be knowledge workers, and many knowledge workers may be employed in other sectors, there is little doubt that many of the new jobs being created in the European economy will be for knowledge workers; that is, people performing tasks demanding expertise and judgement. As Hirsh (2006) points out,
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knowledge workers are essential to business performance in many sectors, in three main ways: they are the main deliverers of the core service of the organisation, they develop core products and services, and/or they provide effective business support services to the organisation. Knowledge workers are seen as crucial to much business innovation Employment in knowledge-based sectors of the economy is outpacing employment growth elsewhere. Communicating the complex changes taking place in the economy requires the availability of high-quality and specialised labour market information. Knowledge workers are looking to develop their careers in increasingly specialised and complex labour markets. Much of the information they will require to manage their careers is not routinely available. Accordingly, a challenge for workers wishing to enter or develop their careers in these labour markets is to acquire both the skills and the information necessary to manage their careers. This includes the ability to research and acquire detailed labour market knowledge. As Jackson (1996) pointed out, failure to understand how a specialised labour market operates can be a significant barrier to successful labour market participation, even to those with the formal qualifications required. Labour market information also always lags behind changes in work, so new fields are the least well described. The tacit knowledge of people working in those areas becomes a critical resource for people wishing to move into one of these new areas of work. One example would be young people trying to get into what was, then, the new field of web design in the 1990s. They had to generate their own information via contacts and personal networking.

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Career Development in the Workplace.

Recent expansion of work-based career development programs has resulted in a larger literature base. Because career development is increasingly regarded as the shared responsibility of employee and employer, the importance of this topic is likely to grow. Of interest to employers, human resource staff, and adult educators, this ERIC Digest discusses the purposes of career development programs in the workplace and describes the components of such programs. Guidelines for the creation of an organizational career development program are presented.
WHAT IS CAREER DEVELOPMENT?

Career development refers to "the outcomes of actions on career plans as viewed from both individual and organizational perspectives" (Gutteridge 1986, p. 52). The outcomes desired by organizations include achieving the best match between people and jobs. Individuals' desired outcomes range from status to job flexibility to monetary rewards, depending upon the situation.Career development is just one component of human resource management in organizations. Others include control and evaluation, organizational design, and human resource planning .
WHY IS CAREER DEVELOPMENT NECESSARY?

Both external and internal factors influence the need for career development. Among these factors, Slavenski and Buckner (1988) list the following: o The need to identify and forecast personnel needs o Social and demographic trends o The changing nature of work o Changing types of jobs o Equity and a multicultural work force o Worker productivity o Technological change and decreasing advancement opportunities o Organizational philosophies Employers are motivated to establish career development programs because such programs are seen as an effective response to various personnel problems, because top managers prefer to promote existing employees and to ensure a good fit between the work and the worker, and because employees have expressed interest in career development as a benefit (Gutteridge 1986). Above all, "most organizations adopt career development programs in response to pragmatic human resource concerns and because they believe it will help ensure a continued supply of qualified, talented personnel" (Gutteridge 1986, p. 58).
WHAT IS THE MANAGEMENT CYCLE?

The management cycle provides a framework for career development practice. Each of the steps in the management cycle corresponds to career development strategies that help both manager and employee maximize career growth (Slavenski and Buckner 1988). These steps, with appropriate career development tasks, are the following:
HIRE OR PROMOTE

Strategies at this phase focus on assessing job candidates and hiring or promoting the person whose skills and interests best match the job.

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ORIENT OR COMMUNICATE

This step involves making known to the new employee what is expected, what the organizational culture is like, and what the value systems are. Some companies establish mentoring programs to assist with this task.
OBSERVE PERFORMANCE

Employee performance is measured with reference to expectations. Feedback is provided.

MANAGE PERFORMANCE

Employees are rewarded for their strengths. Positive aspects of performance are emphasized.
DEVELOP EMPLOYEE

Various tools can be used for staff development, including inservice training, career planning workshops, and counseling and assessment services. At this stage, managers may place employees with high potential on the "fast track."
MAKE PERSONNEL SELECTION DECISIONS

As organizational needs arise, potential employees are recruited and the cycle starts again with a job match.
WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF A CAREER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM?

Slavenski and Buckner (1988) divide the career development process into three distinct phases: (1) staffing and orientation, (2) evaluation, and (3) development. Each of these phases is composed of strategies from which the employer may choose to create a customized career development system. The staffing and orientation phase is composed of providing career information to the job candidate (whether internal or external) and using selection techniques to match potential workers with the right job. The type of career information provided may include knowledge of jobs within the organization and possible career paths for the employee. Selection techniques that are used to match employee and employment opportunity include assessment center exercises and job posting systems even for positions that are to be filled internally (a form of self-selection). The next phase is the evaluating phase. Two key tasks in this phase are performance review and succession planning. The purpose of performance review, from a career development perspective, is to provide feedback to employees on their skills and knowledge, both to increase job satisfaction and to help them prepare for their next job. Succession planning, at the initiative of the employer, links information from and about individual employees to the human resource needs of the organization. During the developing phase, more visible career development strategies are employed. Tools used during this phase include career discussions between employee and supervisor, career resource centers, self-assessment and career counseling, and career planning workshops. Career discussions between employee and supervisor form an integral part of any career development system. Training supervisors for their career discussion role is necessary for success; even more important and difficult is convincing supervisors to apply that training.

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Career resource centers have been found to be effective if they support a larger career development system. According to Slavenski and Buckner, employees view career resource centers as a concrete symbol of company support of career development and openness of information. Although career counseling does exist in organizations, self-assessment is a more common tool. A trend appears to be the formal incorporation of career counseling into employee assistance programs, as career issues become more complex. Career workbooks and similar activities are currently among the most popular self-assessment tools. Recent policy trends have guided the design and use of career development workshops. Among the most important are the following trends: o Emphasis on teaching employees to feel more power o Less encouragement for employees to explore other career fields; focus on employees experiencing success in their current jobs o Emphasis on life career planning For example, IBM's career planning workshop focuses on the interests, skills, and contributions inherent in the individual's current job. Employees study their jobs' components and learn how to make the work more challenging. In addition, participants learn how jobs evolve from business needs (Bardsley 1987).

HOW IS A CAREER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM ESTABLISHED?

The first step in establishing career development in the workplace is the assessment of organizational needs and the needs of individual employees. Several ready-made instruments exist to help organizations with this step, including "What's Your Career Development Quotient?" by Farren, Kaye, and Leibowitz and the "Career Development Opportunity Inventory" by Goldner, Hutcheson, and Otte. These instruments assist the organization with determining what is already working in career development and what is needed (Slavenski and Buckner 1988). Leibowitz, Farren, and Kaye (1985) present a model for designing and implementing a career development system. Their guidelines include the following: o State specifics o Tie the program to overall human resource development o Tailor the program to the culture o Build from a conceptual base o Plan long-term approaches, short-term payoff o Design multiple approaches o Co-design and manage the project o Ensure top management support o Publicize accomplishments Evaluating the system and improving it based on those evaluations are also important steps in the creation process. Like employee career growth, program growth should be continual. Slavenski and Buckner (1988) conclude their paper with a list of recommendations garnered from the literature and from their own experiences with career development in the workplace. Among their recommendations for persons designing and implementing career development are the following: o Link new programs to other parts of the career development system o Design the program in terms of the specific organizational culture o Think of career development as a process, not a program o Involve line management
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In summary, career development is now viewed as the shared responsibility of employee and employer. Employers are implementing career development in order to match work and workers for optimal productivity. Various tools exist that organizations can use as part of their career development system. Employers wishing to develop such a system should first assess organizational needs and then decide which components of career development systems would work best in their culture. Finally, it is important to evaluate and continue to improve the career development system.

Mentoring: Bridging the Gap of New Hire Understanding

Structured mentoring programs that support individuals in the onboarding process provide organizations with the opportunity to give new employees a better understanding of its workplace and culture - faster. Sooner rather than later, new hires need to know how their own positions and careers fit into the overall organizational structure, and conversely, how their envisioned role links with their own career goals and personal preferences. There is no better way to gain an understanding of an organization than to learn directly from someone who has lived the experience i.e., a mentor. In the context of onboarding, mentors play several roles in helping new hires. Each role accelerates the onboarding process and reduces the likelihood of turnover early in the employee lifecycle. Perhaps the biggest hurdle facing new hires is adjusting to and fitting into a new organizational culture. According to Nancy Rothbard, Professor of Management at Wharton, an experienced new hire often carries employment baggage a set of attitudes, norms and experiences that apply only to his/her previous workplace. This baggage can actually cause work experience to have a negative effect on performance at a new workplace with a divergent culture. Having a mentor with considerable experience at the organization enables new hires to quickly learn the "way things are done, so that they are as productive as possible when first starting their new jobs. Max Messmer, author of Motivate Your Employees for Dummies, particularly stresses the importance of having a mentoring program for graduate hires, who may have very little understanding of workplace culture in general: "The benefits of having a mentor shouldn't be underestimated, particularly for those who are just starting their careers. An experienced adviser can provide insight into office protocol and how to handle sensitive situationsareas that aren't necessarily taught in school but are essential to career success." Having a mentor during the onboarding process also helps new hires align their expectations with the realities of the job. New hires benefit from mentoring partnerships with mentors who have experienced being new to the organization, have been "in their shoes" at their current role, or mentors who currently inhabit the roles that they will take on in the future, given their existing career path. Well-selected and well-matched mentors can paint an honest picture of the new hires roles, answer their questions and concerns about the roles, and offer advice on how they can make the most of the roles, given their realities. Such dialogue creates a culture of honesty and understanding, which not only garners appreciation but improves employee engagement and retention from the start.
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Finally, whether an organization successfully addresses an employees career and personal preferences from the get-go can make or break his/her desire to stay. While a number of new hires may enter at identical positions, their motivations and career path goals will vary considerably. Through an onboarding mentoring program with well-matched mentoring partnerships geared specifically toward career development, organizations instantly brand themselves as employers who truly care about their employees. Mentoring partnerships should not be the most convenient, proximate or conventional; rather, they should be strategic relationships that take both organizational and individual goals into account. This may mean pairing a new hire with a mentor who has the ideal skills or experience for the mentees development, but who may work in an entirely different team, office, or department. Its well worth the effort: employees who are valuable investments should indeed be treated as such. Ultimately, organizations that provide a structured, formal onboarding process avoid losing their greatest assets from the start. According to the Wynhurst Group, new employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58% more likely to be with the organization after 3 years. Conversely, a study conducted by Egon Zehnder International found that organizations who leave onboarding up to chance experience failure rates of over 50% when it comes to retaining executive talent. By incorporating a structured mentoring program within the onboarding process, organizations can address the early catalysts of turnover - by signalling to new hires immediately that they are committed to mutual understanding. After all, there is only one chance to make a first impression - and no time to lose.
Mentoring to Accelerate Onboarding: Cutting Costs and Improving Productivity that will cover the following:

How real organizations have used mentoring to achieve optimal onboarding results Characteristics of the most successful onboarding programs Characteristics of successful mentoring programs for onboarding Determining whether your onboarding program will benefit by adding a mentoring component

Comprehensive Mentoring Solutions to Support Effective Onboarding Insalas mentoring solutions enable organizations to launch and deliver effective and sustainable mentoring programs to support employees in the onboarding process. Insala provides a wide array of mentoring solutions including program implementation, program evaluation, mentoring readiness consulting, mentor training, mentoring technology, and more. In particular, our consultants work to help organizations identify key business objectives and metrics, leverage core competencies, and develop mentoring programs that align with overall talent and business goals. Our interactive mentoring software features certified psychometric assessments, advanced matching and pairing tools, robust reporting capabilities, the ability to manage multiple programs from a single portal, mentor-mentee communication tools, and more - enhancing both administrative efficiency and participant experience.

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Hiring and Orienting a New Employee

Finding the "Right Stuff"
How many times have we tried so hard to match the skills of a candidate to the demands of the open position that the most important characteristics of a person have been relegated to lesser importance or forgotten entirely? The key to a person's worth (the "right stuff") is integrity, honesty, intelligence, the ability to communicate, and the ability and willingness to learn. Technical skills are important, but without the key ingredients, the technical skills of the applicant may be irrelevant. Finding the candidate with the "right stuff" is not an easy task, but then my grandmother, after several years of urging, finally convinced me that anything that is worthwhile is difficult and requires considerable effort. There are several roads to successful hiring: 1. Personal knowledge of a candidate. The best candidates are usually not hunting for a job. They may be people employed by one of your customers, people in competing companies, people in the same industry but not in the same line of business, or people in other industries who have exhibited the talents necessary for the job. More important, do you or one of your key associates personally know the candidates? If so, you may begin to pursue them, but with a few admonitions. If the selected candidate works for a customer, it's a good plan to contact the customer and let him know that his employee is a candidate for your position. I once hired one of my best customer's top men, believing that I would lose the customer. I decided it was worth the risk. I did lose the customer, but not forever. The man I hired is now successfully running the business from which I retired. It was well worth it! People with the "right stuff" are absolutely essential to the future success of your business! A compromise in this area has come back to hurt many businesses: it typically involves terminating the "compromise" and repeating the hiring process. What's worse is that these "compromises" do poor work, cause internal problems, and end up costing the company in many ways. Depending upon your relationship with a competitor who has a potential candidate, you may wish to treat that competitor much the same as recommended for your customer. The same may be said for candidates working for one of your suppliers. 2. A valued friend knows the candidate personally. This is the next best thing to knowing the candidate yourself. A referral from a friend, a business associate or a present employee whose judgment you respect is a valid basis for pursuing a candidate. Note that your friend must be more than a golfing buddy; you must respect his judgment as you would a trusted associate.
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3. "Pay the price." If the first two approaches don't provide a candidate, the next best avenue to the "right stuff" is a toll road. A search firm or a highly reputed employment agency is a good but expensive route (often in the area of 30 percent of the employee's starting annual compensation). Keep in mind, however, the value of an outstanding employee. It far surpasses the fee you may have to pay. Your agreement with the search firm or agency should include the right to reimbursement if the hired candidate doesn't work out within a reasonable time period, perhaps six months and sometimes longer. This may be negotiable with each individual firm. This avenue is most often appropriate for higher-level positions and not entry-level jobs. The search firm or agency should do all preliminary screening, which often includes intelligence, personality, aptitude and skills testing, the cost of which should be included in their fee. (Note: These efforts do not test judgment; you must do this yourself.) In addition, you should expect the firm to provide you with at least three good, qualified candidates who meet the requirements you specify when you contract with the firm. 4. Hire a temporary employee from an agency. It's quite common to contract for a temporary employee only to find that the temp is the right person for the job on a permanent basis and may be available. In this case, you should be prepared to pay a fee to the temp agency. This is a reasonably good way to hire clerical and lower-level technical personnel and it keeps your business moving while you're continuing your search. 5. Advertise in the right places. Although we have not found many "right places to advertise," they may include trade or industry magazines that you're reasonably sure are read by the candidates you're seeking. Sometimes the local newspaper can be a good source for candidates, but be prepared to kiss a lot of toads to find the prince. Likewise, some have reported success with national publications such as The Wall Street Journal and the National Employment Weekly, and others report good results by advertising on the internet. Choose the outlets best for you. Remember: If you hire an out-of-town candidate, you will be expected to pay for moving expenses! The hiring of a candidate assumes that you have carefully and thoroughly considered your own employees as a source. You must not overlook current employee candidates! Study the background and work history of those who might qualify. You may not be aware or have forgotten that one of them has all of the qualities that you are hunting for in the new position. Many businesses post job openings on the employee bulletin boards. I believe this is a good practice

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Get Immediate Value from New Hiree

There are many theories on how to correctly "onboard" someone to an organization or a team. Most focus on how to provide the new hire with the information and skills she needs to succeed. But that can only take her so far. She will need connections and an understanding of the inner workings and culture of your company to be truly successful. Whether she is transitioning from another part of the organization or is brand new, you can get her up to speed more quickly by going beyond the basics and explaining how things actually get done. What the Experts Say According to Michael Watkins, the Chairman of Genesis Advisers and author of The First 90 Days and Your Next Move, there are four domains that new hires need to master: business orientation, expectations alignment, political connection, and cultural adaptation. The last two are often the hardest for managers to convey, and yet the most critical for the new person to understand. Watkins' research shows that lack of cultural adaptation is the most common reason newly-hired managers fail. "It's also the hardest area for managers to provide good advice, in part because they are embedded in the culture and not necessarily reflective about it," he says. Jon Katzenbach, Senior Partner of Booz & Company, author of The Wisdom of Teams, and co-author of the forthcoming Leading Outside the Lines, notes that "a lot of onboarding focuses on the formal side of the organization and is programmatic." But helping new hires understand the informal side of the organization will accelerate their acclimation. Follow these three steps to get your new employee productive faster. 1. Start early Onboarding really begins with hiring. Start as early as possible in the process to expose your new hire to the organization's or unit's culture and to explain how work gets done. While selling your organization in the interview process is key to recruiting the right person, don't risk his eventual success by not being upfront about how things truly work. "The starting point is to recognize that the best onboarding process can't compensate for the sins of recruiting," Watkins says. Be honest and don't allow your vision of how you wish your company operated to confuse your communication of the reality of the situation. Always recruit for cultural fit as well as skills and experience and identify transition risks, such as capability gaps or tenuous relationships, before the new hire starts. If he is transitioning from another part of the organization, don't assume that he knows the culture. Companies, even small ones, often have different ways of doing things across units or functions. 2. Get them the right network "The first thing a manager can do is ensure that the new hire understands how important the informal or 'shadow' organization is in getting things done," Watkins says. It is your responsibility to explain this, but she will only truly experience it by meeting her colleagues. As soon as she starts or even before introduce her to the right people. "If the informal organization is really important, then the manager can accelerate the new hire's political learning process by identifying key stakeholders and helping to establish connections," Watkins says. Katzenbach suggests creating an "indoctrination inventory that includes meeting the people recognized as valuable resources for understanding how to make the organization work for you."
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You also need to be sure early in her new job she meets with "nodes" or "culture carriers" people who others go to for different kinds of information and insight. These won't necessarily be the people who have the highest rank or best title; instead they may be may be particularly connected middle managers or administrative assistants who decide when key meetings are held and who gets invited. "One simple way to do this is to identify ten people that the new hire really needs to know, explain to the new hire why they are important, and send messages to these stakeholders asking them to meet with the new hire," Watkins says. If you don't know who these people are, ask around or create a network map that helps you identify the "go to" people in your organization. 3. Get them working This may seem like a no-brainer for bringing new people on board. Yet many companies start off new hires with a stack of reading and a series of trainings. Giving them real work immerses them in the way things function at the organization. This doesn't mean you should let them "sink or swim"; definitely provide the support they need. Katzenbach recommends putting them on a real team where they can work on a real business problem. "Get them in working mode rather than a training or student mode," he says. Doing this instead of busy work exposes them to the company culture, introduces them to the ways things get done, and helps them to begin making the critical connections they need to productively contribute. Principles to Remember Do:

Hire for cultural fit as much as for capabilities and skill Introduce your new hire to "culture carriers" and "nodes" Explain how work actually gets done at your organization

Don't:

Let a new hire stay in "learning" mode for too long Assume your new hire can't be productive from the start Rely on the org chart to help explain lines of communication

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How to Make an Employee's First 90 Days Successful

On boarding is vital to the success of the new employee and your business itself. Here are specific steps to make an employee's first three months fruitful. When a new employee reports to their first day on the job, the feeling is quite similar to those first day of the school year jitters we all had as kids. And while it's a challenge for the employee to familiarize him or herself quickly with the office, the job responsibilities, new co-workers and more, it's just as important and stressful for their managers. Making a new hire feel comfortable and a part of the team from day one is imperative to make the employee a successful and productive member of your business.

This process, defined by human resources experts as onboarding, is a crucial element in both individual and organizational development and establishes a foundation for future success. So what exactly is employee onboarding, why should you focus on it early, and how exactly do you assess it throughout the first 90 days? In this guide, we'll explore all those questions to get your next new hire on track. How to Make An Employee's First 90 Days Successful: What is Onboarding? You might associate onboarding with human resources jargon for an employee's first 90 days. But onboarding, the technical terminology for an employee's familiarization with a new organization, is defined differently by nearly everyone you talk to. Its advocates describe it as a comprehensive approach to bringing on new hires that goes beyond simple orientation. Onboarding plans are intended to make new employees familiar with the overall goals of a company and support them as they embark on early projects all in an effort to achieve the perception of success and productivity quickly. The ultimate payoff is to reduce turnover and encourage workers to stay with an organization for a longer tenure.

How to Make An Employee's First 90 Days Successful: Why Focus on Employee Orientation Early According to Ron Thomas, an HR strategy consultant and blogger atStrategyFocusedHR who developed a highly successful talent management strategy while at Martha Stewart Living and IBM, employee retention and success is the ultimate goal. But companies today are dealing with a challenging environment regarding employee satisfaction. In short, Thomas notes that employees no longer have loyalty to one employer and are looking for organizations that can build their skills and experience and make them more valuable
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resources. In turn, managers are pressured to maximize the return on talent more quickly and more efficiently than ever before, and as a result, managers must balance leadership with management, creativity with control and the needs of people with productivity. "When we're talking about onboarding and an employee's first ninety days on the job, what we're really talking about is employee retention," Thomas says. "Without a proper plan for bringing new employees on board, managers run the risk of miscommunication of goals and expectations, sub-par performance, lower morale, bad decisions and potentially financial loss in the form of employee turnover." The amount of time you have as an employer to motivate a new employee and make them a successful team member is quite limited. Many past studies indicate that the first ninety days are the most important in a new job, but for many, it's a process that starts long before the employee is even in the building. You can do a lot of different things to increase an employee's comfort level and productivity in the first ninety days, from lunches to meetings to introductions and more. But an individualized program shows them that you truly do care about their success within your business. There is no hard and fast way to do it, but some combination of emails, meetings, events and more can make the difference. How to Make An Employee's First 90 Days Successful: Managing the First 90 Days Before They Start: Small things should be your focus before the employee starts. Send a welcome note sharing your excitement for them to join the team, send the first week's orientation schedule and new hire paperwork, involve HR and other team members (this isn't just a responsibility of the manager), set up the employee's work station (phone, computer, etc.) and more. Getting a head start before the employee is in the building goes a long way to building trust and excitement with the new hire. Day One: As you manage the message on day one, it's really important to make the new employee feel welcome. This is the most important day of their employment, Bradt says. Simple steps to ensure an employee's satisfaction early include greeting them, physically being there as the boss, informally introducing them to the internal team, which includes everyone they'll need to work with to be successful. Setting up onboarding conversations early on where you are assimilating the employee and making active introductions rather than just sharing names and emails is vital. The activities you have the employee participating in the first day should follow the job details from day one; so if you're in customer service, get them on the phone with a customer. "At the end of day one, have a debriefing with the boss to make sure that the employee had a good day," Bradt adds. "That shows that you care about them and you want to hear their opinions. And then include a take-home package, which could vary by organization. If you're a soap company, give them soap samples, if you're a financial services company, a one-page
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guide to household finances. Really anything that they can take home and share with people at home to answer that question about how the first day was."
According to Thomas, day one is also a good time to begin setting both short- and long-term goals, whether they are professional (actual projects the new hire will be working on) or personal (regarding familiarization with the organization, contacts made, etc.).

"It's a great idea to give them a project early on so they really feel like they're contributing," Thomas says. "It doesn't have to be the most in-depth work, but it will be good to get their feet wet and they won't feel like they're simply getting oriented. From there, start thinking about the bigger project at hand, which should have been something you addressed with the candidate before you even made the hire." Week 1 Assessment: After one week on the job, the employee should begin to feel comfortable with their responsibilities, should have met at least one (ideally more) new business contacts each day, should be familiar with their team members (in their department and out) and should be able to walk into your office with any questions. A good idea, according to Picoult, is to offer up an informal session of drinks, cake, or something similar with the other team members at the end of week one so that the new hire can assess their learnings, ask any questions to the group and hang out in a less formal setting. According to Thomas, it might be a good idea to set up a questionnaire for the employee to complete after week one. Issues you want them to address (perhaps with a 1-5 point scale, 1 being a minimum explanation and 5 thorough) are their orientation, objectives set, motivation from the manager, assimilation, adaptation, mentor, organizational philosophy, feedback, facility tours and more. This is a very simple way to address your onboarding policies throughout the process to see when and how progress is made. 15 Day Follow Up: "During the follow-up stage, the manager should check in on the employee's progress toward the goals discussed in the departmental orientation," says Thomas. At this time the manager can help the employee identify and resolve any issues/challenges and therefore, increase the potential for good performance. 30 Day Check In: The important thing to note in the first 30 days is to familiarize the new employee with the company through recruiting and introductions. You shouldn't expect the new hire to make extreme strides from a business perspective during this time, but you should make them feel welcome as a person so that they can then dig in. "It's important for any employee, but especially for new ones, to give them a combination of smaller and larger projects," Bradt says. "You don't want somebody to come in and think only about one big project, so start them off with something a little less intensive to get them started."
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45 Day Benchmark: Many outlets state that it takes 45 days to get the new employee fully acclimated and acquainted with their new business, and HR industry studies show that a significant amount of staff turnover as high as 20 percent typically occurs in the first 45 days of employment. So this is a great time to sit down with the new hire not only to assess their familiarity with the organization and their role but also to see how happy they are. You can assess their performance to this point on some of the shorter projects you assigned while also figuring out where their mind is regarding the bigger picture projects you hired them for. This meeting could go a long way in retaining the employee. 90 Day Review: Typically the amount of time it takes for an employee to fully be accepted into an organization (in terms of health coverage, benefits, sick days, etc.), the ninety-day mark is when you should start seeing serious results from your new hire. Anything faster can mean that the employee hasn't been analytical enough in their assessment of the business, and by this time they should have a thorough understanding of what will need to be done. How to Make An Employee's First 90 Days Successful: The Real Focus of the First 90 Days

Depending on your business and the job you've recently hired for, these policies can obviously vary. But in short, there are four items you as a company and as a manager you need to focus on in the first three months for your new employee. 1. Engaging the new employee by communicating and asking how things are going and by taking them to lunch or coffee, even if it's just in the office. 2. Maintaining an open-door policy as a manager and ensure that this is communicated to every employee, not just the new hire. This exudes that if they have questions, you'll be there for them. 3. Include both short- and long-term projects for the new hire from an early stage. New employees feel an inherent desire to contribute to the business right away. You don't want them working on the big projects, though, until they're really up to speed on the way your company works. 4. In addition to a regular meeting that managers should set up, ensure that the new employee's direct manager conducts a review at the end of the first 90 days that actually involves the employee (make it two-way feedback). 5. Sponsoring and organizing company get-togethers, formally or informallyanything from coffee and donuts in the conference room to a happy hour or a retreat can bring the staff together and encourage a team atmosphere

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New Employee Training

Many companies provide some sort of introductory training or orientation for most of their new employees. It may take the form of an older employee assigned to show the new employee "the ropes." Or it may be left to the HR department or the individual's new supervisor to show them where the coffee pot is and how to apply for time off. Many organizations, especially in government and academia, have created new employee training that is designed, exclusively or primarily, to provide mandated safety familiarization. Yet some companies in highly competitive industries recognize the value in New Employee Orientation (NEO) that goes much farther. They require several weeks or even months of training to familiarize every new employee with the company, its products, its culture and policies, even its competition. There is a measurable cost to that training, but is it worth it? Let's look at some of the issues. Some Background Facts The technology in the workplace is changing very rapidly and companies that can't keep up will drop out of competition. A survey by the Ontario (Canada) Skills Development Office found 63% of the respondents planned to "introduce new technology into the workplace that would require staff training." A third of the respondents included "improving employee job performance" and "keeping the best employees" as desired outcomes. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) reports that less than $1500 per employee was spent for training in 1996. The largest part of that (49 percent) was spent for technical and professional training. Only two percent was spent for New Employee Orientation and three percent on quality, competition and business practices training. Reasons To Not Do New Employee Training Even at the less than $1500 per year for training an employee we reported above, it is still a cost. For some companies, especially those with traditionally high turnover, it can be a major expense. If your profit per employee is less than $1500, it would be difficult to convince the stakeholders that training is justified. Besides, we all know it is the responsibility of the school system to train people to be workers. And it is the worker's responsibility to learn how to do a job so they can get hired.

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Why Do New Employee Training Not surprisingly, all the reasons not to train new employees (except cost itself) are actually reasons to do that training. If you have high turnover, training new employees will make them more productive. They will feel better about themselves and the job. They will stick around longer. If your profit per employee is less than $1500 per year, you have major problems. You need to start training all your employees, not just your new employees, right away. Show your stakeholders the potential ROI of the training as we will discuss below. And if you still believe that our schools provide adequate training to make students laborready you are living in a dream world. Yes, some job seekers make the effort to learn on their own the skills needed for a new job, but most get that training on the job. Required Training Government regulation, insurance coverages, and common sense dictate some training that MUST be given to every new employee. Other Reasons for New Employee Training American International Assurance is an ISO 9002 certified insurance company. AIA makes a commitment to training for their staff because AIA "recognizes that the training and development knowledge, attitude and skills of the staff and agency field force are fundamental to its continued efficient and profitable performance. Orchard Supply Hardware considers its New Employee Training program important enough to include in their list of benefits for full and part-time employees. An Interesting Proposal Dr. Edward Gordon recommends companies make training a stand-alone function, separate from HR. He points out a twenty percent increase in training expenditure since 1983 has not kept pace with the twenty-four percent increase in workers in the same period. He suggests Training Managers use Return on Investment (ROI) to demonstrate that the training function is a profit center, not just a cost center.

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Overview of workplace guidance provision

For many employees, the formal provision of workplace guidance or career support is patchy at best. While some employers have put in place initiatives to encourage learning and development, far fewer have embedded processes to deliver career advice and support to significant proportions of their employees. Human resource (HR) professionals in the UK who responded to the survey on Managing employee careers (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development CIPD, 2003) reported that only a quarter of organisations had a strategy for career development for all staff and only a third felt that senior management was committed to career management activities. In reality, it seems fewer organisations have some provision of guidance than say they have a strategy. Strategies are often very general, more rhetoric than reality, e.g. we develop the potential of our employees. However, a range of provision that is made by employers has been identified Where there are initiatives or programmes of activity, these are usually focused on key groups of employees, such as graduates or people pursuing professional recognition (e.g. accountancy qualifications, chartered engineering status), or managers on fast-track development programmes. If anything, the focus on these talent groups and talent management as an activity focusing on developing managers and leaders has increased. Some organisations are starting to stress the role of managers as coaches and mentors as well as leaders, while others are hiring external coaches to support these key employees. As a consequence, the divide between the haves and the have nots has sharpened in recent years. For most other employees, the only formal process for discussing their career and development is likely to be the performance appraisal process. However, in practice, although most organisations now have a formal appraisal process, it can be weak (e.g. the extent of compliance inside an organisation is variable) and is often overloaded in terms of content, with a major focus on managing performance. A few organisations have introduced a range of practices to support the self-management of careers. The practices themselves are relatively simple and straightforward (see Figure 2), with the most recent innovation being to use the company intranet as a source of information and advice. Sometimes this includes self-help assessment and learning activities to support career development, usually electronic versions of paper-based self-help materials.

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Much employer-based career support is targeted at specific groups of employees, with the most intensive career support focused on what employers define as high-value or talent groups. A much smaller number of employers have introduced training and development programmes targeted at disadvantaged groups. Even when they have introduced such programmes, they have usually been concerned with identifying relatively small numbers of individuals for accelerated development to meet equal-opportunities objectives (i.e. getting more women/people from ethnic-minority backgrounds into management/senior positions). For example, the London Metropolitan Police Service developed a female and ethnic minority detective training programme (FemDTP) that takes female and ethnic-minority inspectors and chief inspectors (i.e. middle managers) working in other branches of the police service and puts them through a 12-month tailored development programme. On successful completion of the programme, participants are able to apply for jobs as detective inspectors or detective chief inspectors in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) (Hirsh and Jackson, 2004). While the impact of such schemes in numbers may be quite small, more organisations are recognising that their workforce needs to reflect the population of the communities in which they operate so that such initiatives can send important messages about an organisation. Outplacement Many large employers also routinely offer outplacement support when they make people redundant, whatever their skill level or position in the company. Once again, however, the
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level of such support is often related to the seniority of the people being made redundant, with more intensive and personalised forms of career support being offered to higher-ranking employees and less intensive (e.g. facilitation of self-help) being offered to other employees. The role of outplacement companies is discussed in more detail in Section 3.3. Current or future focus There is also frequent tension between whether development is focused on the individuals current job or their future career. The first of these has a simpler business case than the second. Much activity is currently job-focused rather than addressing longer-term development. Large versus small employers While the range and diversity of practice for career management in large organisations is fairly well documented, much less is known about practice in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In very small organisations, it is probably safe to assume that most HR issues are handled quite informally, which is acceptable where it works but can severely disadvantage employees otherwise. This does not mean that SMEs are not professional or effective in this area. They often employ people who have worked for large employers and who will, as a result, have experience of HR practice in large companies even if they do not employ an HR professional. SMEs may also have the opportunity to be more flexible in job design (e.g. creating jobs around individuals). However, SMEs are almost certainly more diverse in how they handle career issues than larger employers. They are also frequently more concerned about losing people. If they develop people, there may not always be a job in the company for the resultant enhanced skills. However, such development may provide an opportunity to grow the business. Practice in SMEs, even more so than in many larger organisations, will often be critically dependent on the initiative of one or two individuals. If the HR manager/director or managing director values learning and development, or recognises the importance of career support to employees in terms of meeting medium to long-term business objectives, some support may be provided. This is, in principle, no different from the department manager or head of a business unit/professional group in a larger business developing their own initiatives to provide career support to employees in their area of the business. The extent of such initiatives should not be underestimated. It often means that the central HR function of a large employer has only a partial picture of the range and diversity of career support available to employees in different parts of the organisation. It should also be recognised that career development is typically more of an issue in some types of business, and in some areas of large companies, than others. For example, it is likely that employees in organisations comprising predominantly professional, technical or managerial groups are more likely to value career and professional development opportunities and to expect their career development needs to be addressed than employees in some other sectors.

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Many initiatives by intermediary organisations are targeted at SMEs as are several publicly-funded initiatives (see Sections 3 and 4). The issue of how best to provide career development support to people working in SMEs is a significant challenge requiring cooperation between employers, social partners and governments and is discussed further in Section 5. Funding for career development support is also a challenge in many SMEs.

Key issues
In this section, several key issues that affect provision of career development support by employers are reviewed. Paying attention to career development is part of the response employers need to make to the changing expectations of employees (see Section 1.3) as well as to changing business and economic circumstances. These are some of the most significant messages emerging from this review of employer practice: (a) access to career advice and guidance in the workplace is limited for most employees, although some examples of good practice exist. Most support is targeted at key talent groups, while most other employees are expected to take responsibility for their own career development; (b) much career support is delivered informally by managers, work colleagues, family and friends; (c) intranet and telephone-based advice and information are being introduced by some large organisations. This is often linked to HR call centres; d) provision in SMEs is more likely to be informal and dependent on the enthusiasm/ commitment of individual managers. Even in large organisations, a committed manager may develop local initiatives in their department/part of the business. Where initiatives are critically dependent on a single individual, they are vulnerable to personnel changes; (e) lack of clarity and confusion about objectives may hinder the development of career support in many organisations. Having a framework that sets clear purposes for career development activity can be helpful in shaping the interventions necessary for effective career support; (f) failure to articulate a strong business case for career development activity can hinder the development of a coherent career development strategy; (g) few organisations take a proactive approach to the provision of career support ahead of career transitions and/or at key career stages; (h) there has been little formal evaluation of employer-provided career support. Language and terminology The first key issue that affects dialogue between people inside companies with responsibility for career development and career professionals (who mainly work in the public sector), is the different language and terminology used in discussing career issues. In particular, the terms career guidance or career advice are rarely used by HR professionals or line managers to describe the processes of career support used inside organisations. Instead, they are much more likely to use the terms career management or career development to describe these processes. Corporately-managed career processes are often referred to as talent management in the HR profession. These represent differences not just in the language used to describe processes but also in the specific meaning attached to these terms. Critical issues concern the focus of activities whether they are for the benefit of both parties (individual and
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organisation) or only one (individual or organisation) and also the independence of the activity. Career guidance and career advice are usually seen as both independent and primarily benefiting the individual, even though it may be recognised that there are societal benefits and possibly also benefits for employers from these activities. In contrast, career development at work and talent management in particular, are usually seen as benefiting both the individual and their employer. Research into the nature of effective career discussions at work (Hirsh etal., 2001) showed that effective career support was most often seen as impartial (i.e. independent) even though given by someone employed by the organisation. It would be nave to claim that career development processes are never used by employers to coerce employees into a particular course of action, but it is clear that such a strategy is likely to have only a short-term pay-off. Real career development has a longer-term payoff for individuals and the organisation through such outcomes as better relationships, improved skills, and more confident negotiation about the future. It is a strategy for eliciting commitment to the organisation, i.e. going the extra mile to achieve superior performance. The issue for organisations and the people they employ is to create effective partnerships. In the literature on stakeholding, effective stakeholder engagement is about creating win-win situations for organisations and their stakeholders (Partridge et al., 2005). Successful partnerships create value for both parties. Similarly, it can be argued that effective employee engagement requires companies to work in partnership with their employees and that this will result in benefits for both parties. In this context, it is clear that career development activities will only be effective and sustainable if they lead to benefits (i.e. create value) for both the individual and their employer. Activities that only benefit one party are unlikely to be sustainable in the longer term. Lack of clarity of objectives and benefits Linked to these issues is the lack of clarity about the objectives of career support to employees. For employers (both public and private sector), issues that concern them include: (a) who benefits: the individual or their employer? Career development can be seen as a perk for employees, but some employers fear it might encourage people to leave; (b) some employers may fear that if they develop high-quality services (similar to those for high fliers), they will be overwhelmed by demand and it will be very costly; (c) there is a risk of not reaching the right target audience, i.e. people who need to develop (e.g. employees who have reached a plateau in their career or who are facing a major job change); rather, services will be used primarily by people who are already managing their careers effectively. Employers have also found it difficult to implement successfully low-cost self-help approaches to career support. This may partly be a result of not having a framework around which to structure career development activity (see below) and can easily result in a piecemeal set of initiatives that fail to meet either employee or the needs or those of the business. Employees are also sometimes suspicious of employer-led initiatives in this area. They may pick up on scepticism about employers motives in providing career support (often echoing concerns from guidance professionals who predominantly work in the public sector). The key concern is about the independence of career advice and support provided by employers; there is suspicion that it might be partial, biased or otherwise incomplete and, as a consequence,
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that it is employer- rather than client-centred. Similarly, employers may be concerned that employees will only tell them what they think they want to hear. High levels of trust are needed before employees will be confident about revealing all their likes or dislikes, etc. There are misperceptions: on the employee side that career advice is all about persuading me to take a job that I dont really want to do; and on the employer side that it is all about endless spending on career development and training unrelated to business needs and priorities, or raising unrealistic expectations among employees that will lead to frustration and/or even encourage people to leave. These tend to undermine commitment to the provision of career support and are long-standing issues. Hall (1986) noted tensions between the extent to which different types of career intervention provide information (e.g. about job opportunities, employee strengths and weaknesses) to the employer or the employee, and also the extent to which they can be used to influence either the employee or the employer. Career support, particularly in employment settings, involves the exchange of information and power in any such exchange is not always equal. Most employees will see through advice that is exclusively employer-centred and most employers realise that putting someone in a job they do not want is short-sighted. Research on effective career discussions (Hirsh et al, 2001) suggested that employees were often pleasantly surprised when senior managers took an employee-centred view. They concluded that there was a widespread recognition that effective career support is independent of a business agenda and focused on the employees best interests. Understanding the business context, however, is critical to understanding the range of possible career opportunities and to the tactical implementation of career plans. Recognising there is a business agenda is an essential element of individual career planning (7). The issue of who benefits from career interventions inside organisations is illustrated by the example of the Nationwide Building Society (a UK mutually owned financial services organisation), which has quantified the economic benefit it receives. Nationwide tracks how well it is seen as delivering on its career promise, and how this indicator moves against employee satisfaction, commitment and retention. Three-quarters of Nationwide staff say they have the opportunity for personal development and growth compared with under a third in the companies against which they benchmark.

A scheme for structuring career development activity Being clear about the underlying purposes of career development activities is also important for ensuring that a suitable range of career interventions are put in place. Hirsh et al (1995) suggest that there are five purposes, which apply equally to the individual and the organisation: (a) assessment: activities to provide the individual and organisation with the opportunity to learn about the individuals strengths, weaknesses, interests, etc.; (b) career options: activities to assist individuals and their managers understanding of current and future career and job options; (c) action planning: planning of specific, concrete, time-based learning activities by individuals and organisations; (d) skill development: activities to promote or deliver skill development; (e) vacancy filling: activities designed to manage the internal labour market in line with
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business needs and organisational culture. Organisations can use a wide variety of processes to deliver these objectives (see Figure 2) (8 Although the activities themselves are designed to support career development, their successful implementation in a particular organisation may not be straightforward, since their effectiveness requires a favourable cultural context that supports meaningful negotiation between the individual and the employer. However, the methods for designing and structuring most career development activities are well understood (see, for example, Jackson, 1990; Arnold, 1997). The key issue is putting together a coherent set of interventions that address each of the five underlying objectives. The range and extent of activities needed by small organisations is likely to be less than those required by large organisations. In small (and some large) organisations, some career development activities may have to be resourced by external suppliers (see Section 3.3), but others can be successfully handled informally if there is a sufficiently high level of trust and openness. In small organisations a well-chosen but simpler set of activities can be used to deliver against these five objectives. Even large organisations will not need all these processes but they do need to ensure that there are activities to address each of these objectives.

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Positioning Employer interest in the provision of career support also appears to change with the economy, the success or failure of an individual business, and demand for labour in specialist labour markets. When a business is successful, or is in a strong economy, or faces a competitive labour market, there is likely to be more interest in providing career support and development initiatives as part of a broader HR strategy for attracting and retaining employees. In a recession, or when an organisation is trying to cope with a difficult trading or business environment affecting a particular sector, such initiatives may seem a luxury, especially if an employer is obliged to freeze recruitment or even make people redundant. Only a few employers realise that in such circumstances a proactive approach to career development can reap dividends by helping to ensure that key talent at all levels in an organisation is retained and developed. For example, in the early 1990s several employers in the UK had experimented with initiatives to support self-managed careers. In the ensuing recession, many backtracked, and messages such as There are no careers any more became commonplace. Hirsh and Jackson (1996) documented the repositioning that took place and identified a best practice scheme that emphasised shared ownership (see Figure 3).

Traditional career management processes (the left-hand side of Figure 3) had mainly been designed to generate information about people for the organisation to use. They aimed to assess people for jobs, identify talented people and reassure employers about numbers and quality of people available. The new processes designed to support self-managed careers (the right-hand side of Figure 3) had tended to provide information to people directly, but often provided no information to the organisation unless the individual decided to share it. As Figure 3 illustrates, a degree of convergence took place with changes in key elements of the process. For example:
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(a) succession planning became a more open process (recognising that employers can no longer force people to take jobs); (b) development centres replaced assessment centres for some internal promotions. Newer processes, such as personal development plans (PDPs) and 360-degree feedback, were introduced to give more systematic feedback on performance; (c) advertising internal vacancies became the norm for most internal jobs (but not all). This involves the exchange of information, with the organisation providing information about job opportunities by advertising them, but individuals also providing information to the organisation by whether or not they apply for particular jobs and thereby signalling interest and career intentions; (d) competence frameworks provided a bridge between corporate needs and individual development through making clear the skills and experience needed. This enabled an individual to focus their own development to meet the organisations requirements. Ironically, some employers have introduced more internal career support following major redundancy programmes. Often this has been as a result of using outplacement services to support redundant employees and then realising that there is a need and a benefit in offering similar support to their remaining employees. When is career support needed? Focused career support for key talent groups can be considered as part of an overall people management strategy. As such, it is more likely to be delivered in a proactive manner ahead of major career transitions or at certain career stages (e.g. after entry on a graduate training programme). There is often less thought given to when other employees need career support. At worst, provision is only reactive i.e. when someone has a major career problem, rather than proactive and educational in its rationale. Best practice aims to get people to think about career issues ahead of time. This is not to say that people should not be given career support when they have a major career issue but rather to emphasise that employers would almost always benefit from giving some thought as to how best to facilitate a more proactive approach to careers being pursued by employees. This is strongly linked to the concept of employability (ensuring one will be employable in the future) and equipping people with the skills they need to manage their careers effectively (Kanter, 1989; Kidd and Killeen, 1992; Jackson, 1996).

Who gives career support? For key talent groups, career support is usually coordinated by dedicated HR specialists, by heads of a business function or, perhaps, by designated professional mentors. Sometimes additional specialist advice and support is delivered by external career coaches or occupational psychologists. Such support may be provided as a follow-up to participation in a development centre or training programme, for example. Mentoring and coaching are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. Mentoring can be either informal (sometimes called classic mentoring) or formal (sometimes called assigned mentoring). Classic mentoring is a voluntary activity and involves a relationship between an older person and a younger one that has both career and psychosocial functions.
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Career functions might include: sponsorship, coaching, protection, exposure, and challenging work. Psychosocial functions include: role modelling, counselling, acceptance and confirmation, and friendship. Many organisations have introduced formal mentoring programmes where selected employees are allocated mentors, while others have tried to encourage informal mentoring. Sometimes formal mentoring programmes have been introduced to address equal opportunity concerns that some groups might be excluded from informal mentoring opportunities. Other organisations have introduced peer mentoring, for example, where new employees are mentored by an employee who joined the company a year earlier. Coaching is primarily designed to focus on skill development and behaviour change to deliver improved performance. Much coaching aims to improve the performance and leadership skills of managers. Most coaches are brought in from outside an organisation, although some employers are starting to emphasise the coaching role of managers in relation to the employees that work for them and contrast this to other roles that managers have as leaders, managers and mentors. Some careers professionals have labelled the work they do as career coaching or as career/life coaching. This may reflect an approach that emphasises the importance of career management skills or simply be a rebranding of their work. For most other employees, it tends to be assumed that the individuals line manager is capable of delivering career support. This view is supported by research evidence (MORI, 2005; Felstead et al. 2005) which has found that line managers take a major role in providing both career and other forms of support, and that people cite their line manager as the person they are most likely to turn to for careers advice. In reality, however, much career support is also provided to employees via informal routes. Few organisations have yet developed methods to equip people to give this kind of support, although short training interventions have been developed (9). Hirsh et al. (2001) in their research on the nature of discussions about career development found that the key to an effective career discussion was a high level of trust between the participants, combined with challenge and information-giving. Effective discussions gave employees a better sense of direction, increased self-awareness and more confidence. They also led to concrete actions. A later study (Hirsh et al., 2004) interviewed employees who said they had at some time had a manager who developed them. Managers who were effective developers created a climate of openness within their teams and encouraged informal discussions about work issues. These managers were reported as being close to employees and their work, and giving them focused coaching and access to work experiences. Another study (Winter and Jackson, 2004) asked over 700 high-performing employees in a small sample of large (mostly global) organisations to comment on the conversations they had at work which had impact on them. It found that they were not always getting the types of conversations they most needed. About half of the conversations having the greatest impact were performance-related, and about half of these took place in appraisals. By contrast, only about a quarter of high-impact conversations were development-related, and less than a quarter of these took place in appraisals. The lack of development conversations was a major source of dissatisfaction, which also correlated with intention to leave. The big conversation gap in relation to development was about career development rather than about skills and training for the current job. Issues related to work-life balance were not being effectively addressed. Finally, 40 % of respondents had an issue about work which they wanted to discuss but were not doing so. These respondents were nearly three times more likely than other respondents to be planning to leave the organisation in the next twelve

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months. The study concluded that good dialogue rests on trust and can, in turn, lead to engagement that improves performance. These series of studies all indicate the importance of informal career support to employees and should encourage other employers to develop interventions to improve the quality of this type of support. New roles concerned with the provision of career advice and guidance are also emerging in some organisations, for example with the delivery of career advice and support via a company intranet or from an HR call centre. This raises important issues about how best to identify and train people for these roles. Quality standards and evaluating of effectiveness Few organisations employ professionally qualified career counsellors, although in the UK a few have had their internal provision accredited by the matrix quality standard (see Case study 6). As the range of provision increases, issues of how to train people for career support roles are emerging. Attempts to address this include the professional standards of the Association of Career Professionals International (ACPI) and the Institute of Career Certification International (ICCI) career certification (see Section 3.3). Better training will be required but whether formal accreditation and clearer professional standards will be the best way forward is unclear. It could be argued that it might stifle innovation and slow down the introduction of more varied forms of career support; on the other hand, it could provide a stronger professional base for such development, particularly if it includes substantial attention to competence in developing support networks and systems and in direct service delivery. There is also little formal evaluation of career support/interventions in organisations. A few small-scale studies have been conducted, but most go little further than measuring employees satisfaction with the support they have received. This is not altogether surprising. Most organisations accept that there is a strong business case for supporting the career development of their key talent groups. They may also feel that there is already sufficient evidence for the effectiveness of career interventions in other settings (e.g. education) to justify their use more generally with employees.

The role of intermediaries

Career development support in the workplace may be provided by the employer, a PES or a publicly-funded careers service. Employers purchase services both from external providers and from a large number of types of intermediary organisation that also provide support. Some do this directly by offering services to individuals and others still work primarily with or for employers. In niche labour markets, such as acting and sport, agents are employed to negotiate contracts on behalf of their clients but frequently agents also advise clients how best to pursue their careers. This is one example of how the boundaries between different activities can be blurred. Changing economic circumstances and new technology are transforming the ways people look for work, both inside and outside organisations. This has given rise to an increasing range of intermediary organisations offering some form of career guidance alongside their other activities. These include: (a) trade unions, (b) other social partners, such as chambers of commerce, (c) outplacement/coaching consultancies,
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(d) self-help and peer support, (e) professional bodies/associations and industry sector bodies, (f) recruitment consultancies, including specialist agencies increasingly targeting particular sectors or groups within the workforce. While much of this activity is ICT-based (e.g. using the Internet to provide access to self assessment tools or using e-mails to answer career questions), other initiatives are delivered face-to-face either to individuals or groups (e.g. via workshops). Some of these organisations provide career support as an ancillary activity alongside recruitment advice or recruitment advertising; some do this on an international basis. As specialised labour market knowledge becomes more important, there is an increasing role not only for specialist information providers but als1o for other types of organisation, such as professional bodies and associations. The range of case studies presented in this chapter is extremely varied, to make clear the very diverse range of potential sources of career development support. Many of the case studies do not describe provision that can be considered as mainstream in any way, as much of this provision is not designed for general application. On the contrary, there seems to be a growing market for tailored sources of information and support. Many issues that affect the delivery of career guidance inside organisations can also affect the delivery of support from intermediaries (e.g. independence, quality). This section reviews how the different types of intermediary organisations identified are delivering career development support. There are also professional practice issues that arise in career support provided by intermediary organisations: these will be discussed in more detail in the final sections of the report.

Trade unions
Trade unions as a social partner have a major role in employment policy within the EU and hence in the provision of career guidance. Several case studies of trade union-led initiatives are presented, many funded directly or indirectly by the EU and/or by national governments. First, the trade unions role in workplace learning and guidance activities are explored.

Why it is important for trade unions to have a role

Learning, training and skills development are an important commodity for collective bargaining. Unions can work with employers to tackle their joint priorities of addressing national and regional skills shortages, and skill development and training needs, thus improving productivity. They can do this in several ways, for example through negotiations with employers offering more by way of training (an extension of collective bargaining to include development). They can act directly to offer advice which may be more purely in the interests of the employee (the employee advocate at individual and local level) and encourage employees to take up more learning opportunities than they would otherwise through being a strong advocate of lifelong learning in the workplace (a more strategic and cultural role).

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The case studies suggest that a bottom-up approach, involving trade unions in negotiating and cooperating with employers, government, other social partners, and other agencies, may be more effective for: (a) developing a culture of lifelong learning in the workplace; (b) improving access and overcoming barriers to learning and training, to competence and qualifications, to guidance, and to progression at work, particularly for traditionally excluded or disadvantaged groups in the workforce (e.g. part-time and low-paid workers, migrants, ethnic minorities, women, older workers); (c) providing outreach services to those who cannot or will not use conventional services or disclose learning or training needs to managers; (d) increasing individual confidence, motivation and self-esteem, raising awareness of opportunities, discovering potential and ability to articulate needs and aspirations; (e) assisting workers to deal with change, sectoral and organisational restructuring, redundancy, unemployment or retirement, and for developing a concept of career as well as transferable skills to increase employability; (f) promoting the use of ICT-based learning and guidance; (g) brokering and setting up flexible workplace learning opportunities; (h) attracting new members to the trade union movement, including young people. The role of trade union umbrella organisations with affiliated unions has also been important in initiating, coordinating and negotiating funding to develop this area of work. This is an issue to which will be discussed further in Section 5.

Issues affecting trade union involvement of in learning and skills and in career guidance It has not been easy to locate and communicate with contacts in trade unions that have an overview of the role of unions in each EU country. In most countries, it appears that unions direct involvement in delivering guidance in the workplace is limited, though unions may be represented on committees and have some influence on public policy in this field. Factors which influence the degree of involvement include: (a) government policy and legislation: (i) role of social partners in policy making and in the development of occupational standards, competences, qualifications and training programmes; (ii) location of the operational aspects of the welfare insurance/benefits system; (iii) centrality of lifelong learning agenda; (iv) individual and collective entitlement to guidance (in context of employee rights). (b) economic background: (i) labour market conditions; (ii) changing working patterns; (iii) the number of SMEs and non-unionised workplaces;
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(c) trade union traditions in that country: (i) degree to which workplaces are unionised; (ii) degree of modernisation of the trade union agenda; (iii) sectoral differences and differences in the membership of trade unions; (iv) sources of sustainable funding for union activity; (v) the internal structure of unions e.g. whether they are centralised or devolved, and whether the national umbrella organisations have capacity to support the development of an advisory capacity; (vi) extent of access to ICT in trade unions; (d) education and vocational guidance infrastructure: (i) infrastructure for adult learning and adult guidance; (ii) awareness among guidance agencies of the actual and potential role of trade unions

Employment practice:
(i) the existence of incentives for employers to take an interest in personal development planning; (ii) paid time off to learn or train, and for activists to carry out their role; (iii) whether there is a prevalent concept of managing ones own learning and development; (iv) employer and employee attitudes; (v) methods of targeting specific groups in the workforce; (vi) perceived links between learning and skills on the one hand, and productivity, health and safety, and other key areas on the other. How a role is being defined for trade union activists In some countries a role is developing for a new kind of trade union activist, with a variety of descriptions: learning representatives; education ambassadors; near-by and Learntrust representatives; personal development consultants; competence pilots; and career counsellors assistants. These are usually volunteers, often from groups who would not traditionally come forward to take on such roles. They provide a range of impartial front-line services to union members during working hours, including peer guidance and learning support. They also negotiate and work with employers to provide access to learning opportunities. In countries where the role of these activists is being developed, training courses, support mechanisms and resources are provided. Training courses may include skills in identifying needs and supporting learning, handling information networking and signposting, as well as promoting access to other services.

Self-help and peer support

Self-help books and educational materials have been widely available for many years. The most well-known is probably What color is your parachute? which was first published in 1972 and is updated annually (latest edition: Bolles, 2006). Much self-help material is now available on the Internet. However, more recently, peer-support websites have started to develop. These virtual community websites are places where a group of people go to communicate or share information via the Internet. Some are targeted at specific groups of people young people or women are two frequent examples or at particular occupational fields. They are perhaps a response to the fact that people trust their peers or people like me
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as much as they trust doctors or academics (Edelman, 2006). In some specialist occupational areas, such as medicine, research has also found that more experienced peers (i.e. those in the next stage of training) were rated the most useful source of careers advice and guidance, ahead of senior doctors (Jackson et al, 2003). The extent to which informal or non-professional sources of career support are used is often underestimated. In many specialist labour markets, the best source of information about many aspects of recruitment and careers will be people already working in the particular field. Social networks may aim to do more than just provide information and can create employment opportunities via networking. For example, IQONS (www.iqons.com) is a new online fashion community that aims to have the same impact on fashion as MySpace had on music. It is a free platform where anyone involved or interested in work related to fashion can connect, show their work and start their own alternative networks.

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Professional associations and sector bodies

Professional organisations have published regular bulletins with job advertisements for a long time. While many continue to exist as print media, many are now also available on the professional associations websites and can be seen as part of the rapid spread of erecruitment. Professional associations and sector bodies are often the definitive source of information on training and professional requirements associated with a particular professional career route. They are, therefore, a key information source not only for career professionals but also for individuals. However, they do represent different constituencies. Professional bodies mostly serve the interests of individual members, while sector bodies mostly serve the interests of powerful employers within that sector. While some information on training or careers in the particular professional area will normally be publicly available on these websites, other information (e.g. job adverts) may only be available to members in a members-only section. Many professions also now have requirements for continuous professional development (CPD) and for some of them the provision of training is a discrete area of business activity. Providing information about
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training is, therefore, not always an activity in which they are disinterested. Elsewhere initiatives to provide career guidance have been joint efforts between the social partners. One

Specialised sources of information and expertise

The need for increasingly specialised labour market information has been stressed at several points in this report. The next case study provides one example of how a specialised need for labour market information is being met. It describes Expertise in labour mobility (ELM), a specialist consultancy based in the Netherlands that advises businesses and individuals about international labour mobility

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Conclusion :

After the completion of my data collection and interpretation part through secondary and primary research. I have realized the importance of career development of the new hired employees as a student as well as a management trainee during my summer internship project at Amrit fresh Pvt. Ltd. According to my observation career development should follow the following practices to get optimum result : First after the recruitment of new employees company have gone through the orientation programme, its time to start thinking about their careers. Then is organisational entry. This happens several times during the career as people change jobs and employers. Up to about age 40, the third stage follows. An informative induction, challenging work, and a supportive organisation will keep people happy. Here is where career opportunities are most important. What is the pathway to advancement? After that , or mid-career, from about age 40-55. Most re-evaluate their career and life decisions. Some may continue to advance, while others will stagnate. Stage 5, or late career, takes us up to retirement. Many organisations do not place a lot of value on these employees believing them to be almost ready to leave. But their experience is invaluable to organisations. Detailed and concluded view is as follows : So, There are three phases Pre hiring , Hiring and Post hiring

a) PRE-HIRE PHASE.
The major HRM activities in the pre-hire phase are human resource planning and job analysis. These activities form the cornerstone upon which other HRM practices are built. Human resource planning helps managers to anticipate and meet changing needs related to the acquisition, deployment, and utilization of employees. The organization first maps out an overall plan called a strategic plan. Then, through demand and supply forecasting it estimates the number and types of employees needed to successfully carry out its overall plan. Such information enables a firm to plan its recruitment, selection, and training strategies. Job analysis is the systematic process used for gathering, analysing, and documenting information about particular jobs. The analysis specifies what each worker does, the work conditions, and the worker qualifications necessary to perform the job successfully. The job analysis information is used to plan and coordinate nearly all HRM practices, including:

Determining job qualifications for recruitment purposes

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Choosing the most appropriate selection techniques Developing training programs Developing performance appraisal rating forms Helping to determine pay rates Setting performance standards for productivity improvement programs

HIRING PHASE.
The hiring phase of human resource management is also called staffing. Staffing involves policies and procedures used by organizations to recruit and select employees. Organizations use recruitment to locate and attract job applicants for particular positions. They may recruit candidates internally (i.e., recruit current employees seeking to advance or change jobs) or externally. The aim of recruitment practices is to identify a suitable pool of applicants quickly, cost-efficiently, and legally. Selection involves assessing and choosing among job candidates. To be effective, selection processes must be both legal and technically sound, accurately matching people's skills with available positions.

POST-HIRING PHASE.
Training and development are planned learning experiences that teach workers how to effectively perform their current or future jobs. Training focuses on present jobs, while development prepares employees for possible future jobs. Training and development practices are designed to improve organizational performance by enhancing the knowledge and skill levels of employees. A firm must first determine its training needs and then select/develop training programs to meet these needs. It also must also take steps to ensure that workers apply what they have learned on the job. Through the performance appraisal process, organizations measure the adequacy of their employees' job performances and communicate these evaluations to them. One aim of appraisal systems is to motivate employees to continue appropriate behaviours and correct inappropriate ones. Management also may use performance appraisals as tools for making HRM-related decisions, such as promotions, demotions, discharges, and pay raises. Compensation entails pay and benefits. Pay refers to the wage or salary employees earn, while benefits are a form of compensation provided to employees in addition to their pay, such as health insurance or employee discounts. The aim of compensation practices is to help

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the organization establish and maintain a competent and loyal workforce at an affordable cost. Productivity improvement programs tie job behavior to rewards. Rewards may be financial (e.g., bonuses and pay raises) or nonfinancial (e.g., improved job satisfaction). Such programs are used to motivate employees to engage in appropriate job behaviors, namely those that help the organization meet its goals.

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BILBILLIOGRAPHY :-

Human Resource Management by Robert L. Mathis & John H. Jackson Purcell, J. (1999) Best Practice and Best Fit: Chimera or Cul-de-sac? Human Resource Management Journal, 9 (3), 26-41
http://managementhelp.org/careers/index.htm

http://www.insala.com/Articles/Mentoring/mentoring-for-onboarding-increase-newhire-retention-and-maximize-hiring-investment.asp
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9212/career.htm

www.wikipedia.com www.businessdictionary.com www.learnmanagement2.com www.scribd.com www.citehr.com www.slideshare.net

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