The Master Programmer of Career

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The employee must be the master programmer for his career, if his own decisions necessarily come first because only he can apply his personal values effectively, what role does institutional management play? And how important is it? Clearly, management's function is important. Employees and prospective employees have their own high levels of expectation about this. The consequences of failing to demonstrate positive, supportive interest in employee careers can be serious.

Educational Opportunities

Most large companies spend large sums of money on training programs of all sorts. It is one of the advantages they offer. Company training programs, however, have a way of becoming stereotyped and no longer relevant to assigned work. A certain company, for example, may have given a course in electronic circuitry for 20 years. The current instructor has taught it for at least five years. The methodology, the problems, the course outline, and even the tests arc completely standardized. Possibly the course gets a good rating by participants because the material is well organized, the instructor is reasonably effective, and there is no apparent basis for a poor rating, at least in the students' view.



But the most important reason for rating it down may still be present: the material might be below the level of knowledge actually in use in the company. This can happen on the college campus as well as in the company classroom, of course, but the message is that if employees want educational opportunities for career advancement, they want fresh information, presented with the latest teaching methods.

Inviting university professors and gifted teachers to review subject matter and presentation methods can pay handsome dividends. Asking company specialists to audit course content to be sure of its currency can be enormously helpful. Bringing in prominent outside lecturers knowledgeable in the subject the course is treating can help break set patterns and open minds to fresh ideas. This brings better work results as well as facilitating employee career advancement. It may in fact save senior specialists from becoming obsolete.

Management need not do it all. Nearby institutions of learning may be encouraged to set up evening courses in subjects of interest. While many companies consider tuition refund an employee benefit in such instances, this isn't always necessary. Most employees are quite willing to pay their own way or share the cost involved. The object is to have outstanding learning opportunities readily accessible.

A Working Promotion System

A company sincerely interested in attracting and holding outstanding people must demonstrate convincingly that there is a promotion system in effect that is fair and that works to the common advantage of the employee and the company. There is no one system that is better than all others, but there are some essential features found in most.

Here are some key questions to be answered:

  • Who has the decision-making responsibility for final selection? The manager alone, two levels of management, the manager with the concurrence of a personnel specialist?

  • Does this decision-making responsibility vary with the organization level (or salary level) of the opening?

  • How are candidate pools assembled? By the manager? By the personnel office? From inside the department, outside it, outside the company?

  • Who is eliminated from consideration? People of certain age groups, employees with short tenure in current jobs, employees rated below certain levels, those with specified health problems, those in certain parts of the organization?

  • Are some candidates given preference in consideration? Long-service employees, employees within the department where the opening occurs, those in specified training programs?

  • If an employee is selected, does he have the choice of accepting or declining without sacrificing future consideration?

  • If an employee is selected, does his present manager have the choice of permitting or refusing his acceptance?

  • If an employee is denied permission to accept, what recourse or appeal does he have?

  • Are the serious competitors for a position told of their status and of reasons for the final decision?

  • Are the monetary rewards and other perquisites attached to a position fixed and stated, or are they negotiable at the time of offer and acceptance?

If these questions are answered and published together with the reasons behind them, employees will understand the ground rules and will judge management on the consistency with which it lives up to stated policy.

  • Simple procedures in use to implement policy. A policy is only as good as the procedures and tools available to implement it. Regardless of the policy decisions, the following are needed:

  • Notice of actual or impending opening. This may be a form to be completed or a note or checklist of items to be included in the description of the responsibilities of the opening.

  • Specifications for the opening. The most useful is a list of things the incumbent should have done in the past, the conditions under which he should have functioned successfully, and the kinds of experiences that are most likely to have prepared him for the opening.

  • Up-to-date personnel data records. Some itemization is needed of current expressions of career interests and of the education, work experience, and extracurricular activities of all employees, assembled in a form that permits efficient search with elimination of unqualified individuals and identification of those to be considered. In large companies, this usually means some computerized sorting system. In smaller firms, a manual or mechanical sort is probably adequate.

  • Evaluative tools. Once the candidate pool is assembled, evaluative tools are needed to expose the full talents of the individuals involved. These may consist of past performance appraisals, past accomplishments matched against plans, personal interview data, tests, checks with former managers who know the individual's work and methods, and similar sources of information.

  • Data comparison. With the information about the leading contenders in hand, a systematic method of comparing their qualifications is needed. A current trend is to let several career management persons participate in this comparison in order to eliminate personal bias (to the extent this is possible).

  • Notice of offer or rejection. This need only be a simple telephone call by the manager or a personnel specialist to communicate the decision and the reasons for it.

  • Formal move procedure. Some clear-cut rules on how a man completes one job and moves to another are needed. It is desirable to state a maximum time limit for the change and to point out the man's responsibilities to his present manager and the latter's responsibilities to him.

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