Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
© 2013 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or
distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
whole or part.
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CHAPTER 9
EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT AND CAREER MANAGEMENT
This chapter details development planning and different types of development activities,
including assessment, formal courses and programs, experiences, and interpersonal
relationships involving mentoring and coaching. It also provides you with examples of
companies’ development systems. The chapter explains the process of development
planning is described in terms of steps and the responsibilities of the employee and the
company (or manager) at each step. It also breaks employee development into four broad
areas for discussion: 1.) Formal education; 2.) Assessment; 3.) Job experiences; and 4.)
Interpersonal relationships. In the realm of formal education, examples of courses and
activities are highlighted. In terms of assessment, the chapter describes a major
instrument, i.e., the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It also explains the assessment
center, the types of exercises employed, and performance appraisal for developmental
purposes, including upward feedback and the currently popular 360-degree feedback.
Vehicles for development in the realm of job experiences that the chapter addresses
include job enlargement, job rotation, transfers, promotions, and downward moves. The
section on interpersonal relationships focuses largely on mentoring and also on coaching.
The chapter concludes with a discussion on succession planning, nine-box grid, and
onboarding. The theme throughout the chapter is that the company should provide the
employee with opportunities for development, but that the employee must take
responsibility for and initiate the planning process. This is important material for the
training and development of a student.
Objectives
1. Discuss the steps in the development planning process.
2. Explain the employees’ and company’s responsibilities in planning development.
3. Discuss current trends in using formal education for development.
4. Relate how assessment of personality type, work behavior, and job performance can
be used for employee development.
5. Explain how job experiences can be used for development and suggest a job
experience to match an employee’s development goal or need.
6. Identify the characteristics of an effective mentoring program.
7. Describe the succession planning process and how the nine-box grid is used.
8. Design an effective on-boarding process.
I. Introduction
A. Employee development is a key contributor to a company’s competitive
advantage in the following ways:
1. It helps high-potential managers understand their strengths, weaknesses, and
interests.
Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
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distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
whole or part.
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2. It shows managers how new jobs and expanded job responsibilities are
available to them to meet their personal growth needs.
B. This helps retain valuable managers who might otherwise leave to join clients or
competitors.
C. Employee development is a necessary component of a company’s talent
management efforts.
D. Employee development is key to ensuring that employees have the competencies
necessary to serve customers and create new products and customer solutions.
E. Employee development can help increase employee engagement by:
1. showing employees that the company is interested in their skill development.
2. developing managers who can create a positive work environment that
motivates employees.
II. The Relationship Among Development, Training, and Careers
Development and Training
A. Development refers to activities and experiences, such as formal education, job
experiences, relationships, and assessments that help employees to grow and
prepare for the future.
B. It involves voluntary learning that is not tied directly to the employee’s current
job. Training, on the other hand, is related to current job performance and is often
required of the employee.
C. Development prepares them for other positions in the company and increases their
ability to move into jobs that may not yet exist.
D. Employee development is necessary in today’s company’s efforts to continuously
improve quality, stay competitive in the global market, and to incorporate new
technologies and new work systems.
E. Development is especially critical for talent management, particularly for senior
managers and employee’s with leadership potential.
Development and Careers
A. Careers have been described as a sequence of positions held within an occupation.
B. A career has also been described in the context of mobility within an organization.
C. A career has been described as a characteristic of the employee. Each employee’s
career consists of different jobs, positions, and experiences.
D. A protean career is based on self-direction, with the goal of psychological success
in one’s work.
E. The goal of the new career is psychological success.
F. Psychological success is self-determined rather than solely determined through
signals the employee receives from the company (like salary increase and
promotion).
Psychological Success
A. It is the feeling of pride and accomplishment that comes from achieving life goals.
B. Employees need to develop new skills rather than rely on a static knowledge base.
Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
© 2013 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or
distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
whole or part.
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C. The emphasis on continuous learning has altered the direction and frequency of
movement within careers.
D. These new career patterns mean that developing employees:
1. determine their interests, skill strengths, and weaknesses.
2. seek appropriate development experiences that will likely involve job
experiences and relationships as well as formal courses.
E. “Boundaryless” means that careers may involve identifying more with a job or
profession than with the present employer.
F. A career can also be considered boundaryless in the sense that career plans or
goals are influenced by personal or family demands and values.
Development Planning System
Development planning or career management system refers to a system to retain and
motivate employees by identifying and helping to meet their development needs.
III. Development Planning Systems
Companies’ development planning systems vary in the level of sophistication and the
emphasis they place on different components of the process.
A. Self-assessment refers to the use of information by employees to determine their
career interests, values, aptitudes, and behavioral tendencies.
B. It often involves psychological tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI, a type of personality assessment described later in the chapter), the
Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, and the Self-Directed Search.
C. Through the assessment, a development need can be identified. This need can
result from gaps between current skills and/or interests and the type of work or
position the employee wants.
D. The assessment allows employees to identify capabilities they are lacking and
provides them with specific information about what they can do to develop skills
through training, job experience, or enrolling in an academic program.
Reality Check
Reality check refers to the information employees receive about how the company
evaluates their skills and knowledge and where they fit into the company’s plans
(potential promotion opportunities, lateral moves). Usually, this information is
provided by the employee’s manager as part of the performance appraisal.
Goal Setting
Goal setting refers to the process of employees developing short- and long-term
development objectives. These goals usually relate to desired positions (such as
becoming sales manager within three years), level of skill application (use one’s
budgeting skills to improve the unit’s cash flow problems), work setting (move to
corporate marketing within two years), or skill acquisition (learn how to use the
company’s human resource information system).
Action Planning
Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
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distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
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An action plan is a written strategy that employees use to determine how they will
achieve their short- and long-term career goals.
Examples of Career Management and Development Systems
A. Companies are using technology to provide employees with greater access and
give them more responsibility for managing their own careers.
B. Examples of Sprint, Automatic Data Processing, General Mills’s, Walgreens, and
IBM’s Blue Opportunities.
IV. Approaches to Employee Development
Four approaches (often used in combination) are used to develop employees: formal
education, assessment, job experiences, and interpersonal relationships.
Formal Education
A. Formal education programs are on-site or off-site programs tailored specifically
for a company’s employees, short courses offered by consultants or academic
institutions, executive MBA programs, and on-campus university programs.
These programs may involve lectures by business experts, business games and
simulations, adventure learning, and meetings with customers.
B. Most formal education programs actively involve the employees in learning.
Separate programs are usually offered for supervisors, middle managers, and
executives. Special programs for particular jobs (such as engineer) are also
available.
Executive Education
A. Executive education includes executive MBA programs, as well as specialized
curriculum on topics such as leadership, entrepreneurship, change, innovation,
and global business.
B. Executive education programs typically involve a blended learning approach.
C. Managers visit campus for face-to-face instruction and, between sessions, work
online on assignments such as team projects, cases, or reading assignments.
D. In addition to blended learning, business schools or other educational institutions
have begun offering companies in-house, customized programs to help managers
gain real-world skills and study problems in real-world environments—without
requiring the managers to disrupt their work by requiring them to travel to
campus. These programs supplement formal courses from consultants or
university faculty with other types of development activities.
E. One of the challenges the company faces is how to get its managers to understand
the global challenges facing the steel industry. As a result, the program involves
middle managers visiting steel plants in both mature and emerging markets to
gain an understanding of the technology and management processes of a more
established steel plant compared to a growing steel plant.
Tuition Reimbursement
Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
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distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
whole or part.
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A. Tuition reimbursement refers to the practice of reimbursing employees’ costs for
college and university courses and degree programs.
B. Enrollment in executive education programs or MBA programs may be limited to
managers or employees identified to have management potential. As a result,
many companies also provide tuition reimbursement as a benefit for all
employees to encourage them to develop on their own.
C. These courses include face-to-face classroom instruction, online learning, and
blended learning.
D. Companies that have evaluated tuition reimbursement programs have found that
the programs increase employee retention rates and readiness for promotion, and
improve job performance.
Assessment
A. Assessment involves collecting information and providing feedback to employees
about their behavior, communication style, or skills.
B. The employees, their peers, managers, and customers may provide information.
C. Assessments are used for several reasons:
1. Assessment is most frequently used to identify employees with managerial
potential and to measure current managers’ strengths and weaknesses.
2. Assessment is also used to identify managers with the potential to move into
higher-level executive positions.
3. Assessment can be used with work teams to identify the strengths and
weaknesses of individual team members and the decision processes or
communication styles that inhibit the team’s productivity.
D. Assessments can help employees understand their tendencies, needs, the type of
work environment they prefer, and the type of work they might prefer to do.
E. Many companies use employee performance evaluations.
F. Companies with sophisticated development systems use psychological tests to
measure employees’ skills, interests, personality types, and communication styles.
G. Self, peer, and manager ratings of employees’ interpersonal styles and behaviors
may also be collected.
H. Popular assessment tools include personality tests, assessment center performance
appraisal, and 360-degree feedback.
Personality Tests and Inventories
A. Tests are used to determine if employees have the personality characteristics
necessary to be successful in specific managerial jobs or jobs involving
international assignments. They are used to help employees gain self-awareness
of how they respond to conflict, what motivates them, how they solve problems,
and how they react to stress.
B. Some personality tests such as the NEO Personality Inventory (or the NEO-PRI)
measure openness to new experiences, conscientiousness or dependability,
emotional stability, assertiveness, and the ability to get along with other people.
C. Two popularly used assessment tools are DiSC and the MBTI, which can be used
to help employees better understand how to adapt and change their behavior to be
a more effective leader or team member.
Chapter 09 – Employee Development and Career Management
© 2013 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or
distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in
whole or part.
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D. The DiSC measures personality and behavioral style, including dominance
(direct, strong-willed, forceful), influence (sociable, talkative), steadiness (gentle,
accommodating) and conscientiousness (private, analytical).
Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI)
A. MBTI is used for team building and leadership development that identifies
employees’ preferences for energy, information gathering, decision making, and
lifestyle.
B. The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) determines which one of sixteen
personality types fits best. The sixteen unique personality types are based on
preferences for introversion (I) or extraversion (E), sensing (S) or intuition (N),
thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P).
C. Each personality type has implications for work habits and interpersonal
relationships.
Assessment Center
A. At an assessment center, multiple raters or evaluators (assessors) evaluate
employees’ performance on a number of exercises.
B. An assessment center is usually an off-site location such as a conference center.
C. Assessment centers are primarily used to identify if employees have the
personality characteristics, administrative skills, and interpersonal skills needed
for managerial jobs.
D. They are also increasingly being used to determine if employees have the
necessary skills to work in teams.
E. The types of exercises used in assessment centers include leaderless group
discussions, interviews, in-baskets, and role plays.
1. In a leaderless group discussion, a team of five to seven employees is assigned
a problem and must work together to solve it within a certain time period.
2. In the interview, employees answer questions about their work and personal
experiences, skill strengths and weaknesses, and career plans.
3. An in-basket is a simulation of the administrative tasks of the manager’s job.
The exercise includes a variety of documents that may appear in the in-basket,
e-mail, or on a manager’s desk.
4. Role plays refer to the participant taking the part or role of a manager or other
employee.
F. Assessment center exercises are designed to measure employees’ administrative
and interpersonal skills.
Performance Appraisals and 360-Degree Feedback Systems
A. Performance appraisal is the process of measuring employees’ performance.
Performance appraisal information can be useful for employee development under
certain conditions.
B. This includes providing a clear understanding of the differences between current
performance and expected performance, identifying causes of the performance
discrepancy, and developing action plans to improve performance.
C. Managers must be trained in frequent performance feedback.