By Alyson Nyiri, CHRP
Do What You Are; Who Are You Meant to Be?; Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow.
You’ve heard the titles and perhaps secretly worked through the books just to make HR was really for you.
In large part, these career investigations happen on our own time and most likely rely on online information and colleagues’ or family members’ recommendations.
The business of finding what we really want to do is largely left up to us and not typically to one’s employer. In an online survey on public perceptions about career development and the workplace, about half of Canadians have only some idea of what they need to do to advance their careers.
Career counselling – or vocational guidance, as it is also known – began around 1880 as industrialization, urbanization and immigration shifted the Canadian landscape from a largely agrarian to increasingly urban society.
The rise of factories brought new systems of production. Specialized machines required workers to have specific skills and employers began demanding those skills. As specialization and overcrowding rose, so did labour abuses and poverty. Educators and social activists developed programs to help individuals learn the skills needed to fit into the new workforce by analyzing the job and matching the individual.
Natural collaborators
Today, career development is no longer simply job matching. The world of work is rapidly changing, with jobs becoming increasingly complex, demanding specific skills while at the same time forcing individuals to adapt rapidly and effectively in order to remain in the workforce.
Rob Straby, professor and curriculum developer in the Career Development Practitioner Program at Conestoga College for 19 years, says there are many direct benefits to the organization when a career development program for employees is implemented. According to Straby, career development has the ability to help an organization know what type of talents currently exist, and what needs to be developed to have the resources available for future initiatives.
When career development practitioners work with individuals, says Straby, they teach people how to examine their skills, interests, values and attitudes, and use this knowledge to plan their work, education and life choices across their lifespan. Individuals learn how to constantly re-invent and re-package themselves in order to secure jobs in the progressively complex world of work.
Effective career counselling takes into account the realities of the workplace. For this reason, career developers and HR professionals are natural collaborators.
Career counselling can further complement HR’s recruitment, retention, development, engagement and outplacement strategies by:
• Helping individuals anticipate and train for the jobs open now and in the future;
• Structure their resumes and interview skills to better suit what recruiters are looking for; and
• Learn the soft skills necessary to perform in an increasingly team-oriented and complex work environment.
Pulling the disciplines together
Both disciplines are interested in employee development and engagement. Dr. Deirdre Pickerell, Ph.D., CHRP of Life Strategies in B.C. has 21 years of experience as a career development specialist and human resources professional.
Pickerell says that HR can help the “broader employee population” to see a future within the company by helping individual employees see who they are in terms of their skills, interests, values and personal style, and how those relate to what the organization has to offer.
For many individuals in the workplace, this opportunity may come during their performance review with the opportunity to express their career aspirations and develop a career path with their manager. These conversations can be an excellent place to delve deeper into the employee’s skills, interests, motivations and personal style.
HR specialists, who add career management principles to their practices, can help facilitate these discussions by coaching managers on how to help employees explore, plan and execute career development strategies within the company.
Pickerell advises that integrating career development practices into employee development can also help employees who are disengaged and unlikely to be considered for promotion, secondment or special projects.
HR pros know people who are just “coasting” at work; they are bored, underutilized, disengaged and might even be causing problems. In this case, a career development conversation would focus on the employee’s preferred future, motivated skills, passions, desires and explore specific occupational choices within the company. More importantly, it is the opportunity for the employee to take ownership for their level of engagement.
HR can add supportive modalities to existing career path or succession programs by:
• Documenting common interests, motivations and skills of individuals in particular positions;
• Identifying individuals who made significant and deliberate moves from one position to another; and
• Connecting individuals to others in the organization who have successfully moved into new positions.
Many HR professionals already have the basic building blocks for career development discussions. In their day-to-day roles, many offer counselling to employees on issues ranging from work-life balance, child or elder care, compassionate leave, return-to-work and performance development.
Career development offers similar assistance to individuals, so both disciplines borrow heavily from a wide range of related disciplines such as counselling and therapy; adult education; ministry and spirituality; and economic and labour force development.