Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
Chapter Eight: Developing Employees for Future
Success
Welcome to your guide to teaching Chapter Eight, Developing Employees
for Future Success!
Welcome to your guide to teaching Chapter Seven, Training Employees!
This guide will provide you with a chapter summary, learning objectives, lecture
outlines, solutions to in-chapter case questions and end of chapter discussion questions
and possible responses.
Chapter Eight Roadmap
We hope you find each chapter of your Instructor Manual practical and useful, but also,
exciting! You can adapt the chapter text, the PowerPoint slides, and the video to work in an
online class environment, a guided independent study environment, or a face to face or on-
ground environment.
When presenting Chapter Eight, have the students first read the chapter and encourage
them to absorb the “big picture” of “Developing Employees for Future Success.”
Use the PowerPoint for Chapter Eight frame your lecture.
Have students read and discuss the cases and their respective questions.
Have students validate their knowledge of the chapter by working through the
Discussion Questions at the end of the Chapter.
Lastly, have students review, journal, or discuss the Key Vocabulary Terms at the end of
the chapter
ROADMAP: THE LECTURE
DEVELOPING EMPLOYEES FOR FUTURE SUCCESS
Chapter Summary
This chapter explores the purpose and activities of employee development. The chapter begins
by discussing the relationships among development, training, and career management. Next, it
looks at development approaches, including formal education, assessment, job experiences,
and interpersonal relationships. The chapter emphasizes the types of skills, knowledge, and
behaviors that are strengthened by each development method, so employees and their
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Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
managers can choose appropriate methods when planning development. The third section of
the chapter describes the steps of the career management process, emphasizing the
responsibilities of employee and employer at each step of the process. The chapter concludes
with a discussion of special challenges related to employee development – the so-called glass
ceiling, succession planning, and dysfunctional managers.
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
1. Discuss how development is related to training and careers.
2. Identify the methods organizations use for employee development.
3. Describe how organizations use assessment of personality type, work behaviors, and job
performance to plan employee development.
4. Explain how job experiences can be used for developing skills.
5. Summarize principles for setting up successful mentoring programs.
6. Tell how managers and peers develop employees through coaching.
7. Identify the steps in the process of career management.
8. Discuss how organizations are meeting the challenge of the “glass ceiling,” succession
planning, and dysfunctional managers.
I. Introduction
The opening vignette discusses the human resources challenges at ESPN. The employees
work in a fasted paced environment and it is hard for the employees to keep learning and
growing in their careers. ESPN meets this challenge by having employee complete an
individual development plan (IDP). The IDP helps employees to consider their current and
future career goals. Employees can also access the company’s resources including ESPN The
University.
II. Training, Development, and Career Management
1. Organizations and their employees must constantly expand their knowledge, skills, and
behaviors to meet customer needs and compete in today’s demanding and rapidly
changing business environment.
A. Development and Training
1. The definition of development indicates that it is future oriented. It involves learning
that is not necessarily related to the employee’s current job.
2. Development prepares employees for other positions in the organization and
increases their ability to move into jobs that may not yet exist.
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Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
3. Development may help employees prepare for changes in their current jobs such as
changes resulting from new technology, work designs, or customers.
4. Training traditionally focuses on helping employees improve performance of their
current jobs.
5. Table 8.1 summarizes the traditional differences between training and development.
B. Development for Careers
1. In the traditional view, a career consists of a sequence of positions within an
occupation or organization.
2. The new concept of a career is often referred to as a protean career – that is, a
career that frequently changes based on changes in the person’s interests, abilities,
and values and in the work environment.
3. Fewer of today’s careers involve repetitive tasks, and more rely on an expanding
base of knowledge. Jobs are less likely to last a lifetime, so employees have to
prepare for newly created positions.
3. The traditional career requires “knowing how” or having the appropriate skills and
knowledge to provide a particular service or product.
5. A protean career also requires that employees “know why” and “know whom.”
Knowing why means understanding the employer’s business and culture in order to
apply knowledge and skills in a way that contributes to the business. Knowing
whom means developing relationships that contribute to the employee’s success.
6. As organizations provide for employee development and as employees take control
of their own careers, they will need a pair of opportunities.
a. Employees will need to determine their interests, skills, and weaknesses
b. Employees will seek development experiences that will likely involve jobs and
relationships as well as formal courses
7. Career management helps employees select development activities that prepare
them to meet their career goals. It helps employers select development activities in
line with its human resource needs.
III. Approaches to Employee Development
1. The many approaches to employee development fall into four broad categories: formal
education, assessment, job experiences, and interpersonal relationships.
2. Figure 8.1 summarizes these four methods.
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Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
A. Formal Education
1. Organizations may support employee development through a variety of formal
educational programs either at the workplace or offsite.
2. These formal education programs may include the following:
a. Workshops
b. Short courses offered by consultants or universities
c. University programs offered to employees who live on campus during the
program
d. Executive MBA programs
B. Assessment
1. Assessment is collecting information and providing feedback to employees about
their behavior, communication style, or skills.
2. Information for assessment may come from the employees, their peers, managers,
and customers.
3. The most frequent uses of assessment are to identify employees with managerial
potential and to measure current managers’ strengths and weaknesses.
Organizations also use assessment to identify managers with potential to move into
higher-level executive positions.
4. For assessment to support development, the information must be shared with the
employee being assessed.
5. Organizations vary in the methods and sources of information they use in
developmental assessment. These methods include: performance appraisals,
psychological tests, and collecting ratings of behaviors and style of working with
others.
6. The tools used for these assessment methods include the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, assessment centers, the Benchmarks assessment, performance
appraisal, and 360-degree feedback.
7. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: The most popular psychological test for employee
development is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The test results describe
individuals’ preferences in four areas:
a. The energy dimension – indicates where individuals gain their interpersonal
strength and vitality, measured as their degree of introversion (I) or extroversion (E)
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forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
b. The information-gathering preference – relates to the actions individuals take
when making decisions – Sensing (S) and intuitives (N) are the types
c. Amount of consideration for others – Thinking (T), and feeling (F) are the two
types
d. The lifestyle preference – describes an individual’s tendency to be either flexible
or structured – Judging (J) and perceiving (P) are the two types
8. As a result of using the four preferences indicated by the MBTI results, each person
develops strengths and weaknesses.
9. Applying this kind of information about employees’ preferences helps organizations
understand the communication, motivation, teamwork, work styles, and leadership
of the people in their groups.
10. For team development, the MBTI can help teams match team members with
assignments that match their preferences and can improve problem solving.
11. Research on the validity, reliability, and effectiveness of the MBTI is inconclusive.
12. The MBTI is not appropriate for measuring job performance or as the only means of
evaluating promotion potential.
13. DiSC assessment tool is an inventory of behavioral styles based on the work of
William Marston.
a. Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness
14. Assessment Centers: At an assessment center, multiple raters or evaluators
evaluate employees’ performance on a number of exercises. An assessment center
is usually an off-site location such as a conference center. The primary use of
assessment centers is to identify whether employees have the personality
characteristics, administrative skills, and interpersonal skills needed for managerial
jobs. Organizations also use them to determine whether employees have the skills
needed for working in teams.
15. The types of exercises used in assessment centers include:
a. Leaderless group discussion – a team of 5 to 7 employees is assigned a
problem and must work together to solve it within a certain time period
b. Interviews – questions typically cover each employee’s work and personal
experiences, skill strengths and weaknesses, and career plans
c. In-basket exercises – simulate the administrative tasks of a manager’s job, using
a pile of documents for the employee to handle
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forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
d. Role plays – participants take the part of a manger or employee in a situation
involving skills to be assessed
16. Other exercises in assessment centers might include interest and aptitude tests and
personality tests.
17. The assessors in the centers are usually managers who have been trained to look
for employee behaviors that are related to the skills being assessed.
18. Research suggests that assessment center ratings are valid for predicting
performance, salary level, and career advancement. Assessment centers may also
be useful for development because of the feedback that participants receive about
their attitudes and skill strengths and weaknesses.
19. Performance Appraisals and 360-Degree Feedback: Performance appraisal is
the process of measuring employees’ performance. This information can be useful
for employee development under certain conditions. 360-degree feedback
performance measurement is a recent trend in performance appraisals.
20. PepsiCo provides 360-degree feedback to all of its managers as a way to build self-
awareness and plan for their development.
21. There are several benefits of 360-degree feedback such as collecting multiple
perspectives and establishing formal communications about behaviors and skill
ratings between employees and their external customers.
22. This method is most likely to be effective if the rating instrument enables reliable or
consistent ratings, assesses the behaviors or skills that are job related, and is easy
to use.
23. Potential limitations of 360-degree feedback include: it demands a significant
amount of time, a facilitator is needed to interpret results, and simply delivering
ratings does not provide ways for managers to act on the feedback.
C. Job Experiences
1. Most employee development occurs through job experiences. These are the
contribution of relationships, problems, demands, tasks, and other features of an
employee’s job.
HR How To
IV. Systems for Career Management
1. Employee development is most likely to meet the organization’s needs if it is part of a
human resource system of career management.
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forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
2. A basic career management system involves four steps: data gathering, feedback,
goal setting, and action planning and follow-up.
3. Figure 8.3, Steps and Responsibilities in the Career Management Process,
identifies the four steps of a basic career management process.
A. Data Gathering
1. Self-assessment refers to the use of information by employees to determine their
career interests, values, aptitudes, and behavioral tendencies.
2. Self-assessment tools include: psychological tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, and the Self-Directed Search.
3. Verizon Wireless provides an online tool that lets employees assess their current
skills and abilities in order to see how well prepared they are for job openings
throughout the company.
4. Figure 8.4, Sample Self-Assessment Exercise, is an example of a self-
assessment tool.
B. Feedback
1. In the next step of career management, feedback, employees receive information
about their skills and knowledge and where these assets fit into the organization’s
plans.
2. Usually the employer conducts the reality check as part of a performance appraisal
or as the feedback stage of performance management.
C. Goal Setting
1. Based on the information from the self-assessment and reality check, the employee
sets short- and long-term career objectives. These goals usually involve one or
more of the following categories:
a. Desired positions
b. Level of skill to apply
c. Work setting
d. Skill acquisition
2. In the Patient Care and Clinical Informatics (PCCI) division of Philips Healthcare,
employees take assessments and then engage in regular career discussions to
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forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Chapter 08 – Developing Employees for Future Success
establish goals for where they want to go in PCCI and how they will get there over
the next five years.
D. Action Planning and Follow-Up
1. During the final step, employees prepare an action plan for how they will achieve
their short- and long-term career goals.
2. Action plans may involve any one or combination of development methods. The
approach used depends on the developmental needs and career objectives.
3. The outcome of action planning often takes the form of a career development plan.
Figure 9.5, Career Development Plan, is an example of a development plan for a
product manager.
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forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.