Most organizations now, however, have flatter structures, reduced HRM staffing and fewer employees doing more work, and in different ways. Â Many have increased their subcontractor or part-time workforce, yet want to involve them in feeling part of the organization. Â A consequence of restructuring how personnel are employed is resistance to releasing them for day long or longer period career development learning events such as workshops.
Roles for full-time helpers on the payroll dedicated to career support rarely survive the prevailing cost justification scrutiny. Â Interest is growing in ways to deliver career development and other HRM services to employees electronically via in-company Intranet and products are being marketed to meet this need.
An Intranet-based solution uses technology to provide the means for bringing career development support to the employees´ workstations or even to their home PCs. Â This concept reduces the need for spending learning time away from workstations and can provide access-at-will career enrichment self-help resources.
The outcome for a person accessing the system should be a strategic approach for making personal and professional plans based on their motivation and ability as well as the needs of their work setting. Â Among the firms who have ensured this takes place in their Intranet systems are in Australia, for example, Caltex and AUSLIG and in the USA, Boeing and Hewlett Packard. Â In these organizations the use of technology in this way is substantially reducing the amount of employer-funded face-to-face career support.
The new world of work
A revolution is taking place in the way work is structured within organizations. Â
Charles Handy, William Bridges, Jeremy Rifkin, Cliff Hakim and others have
been forewarning us in publications and lecture tours about workplace change. Â
Now these changes are here. Â Some organizations have already implemented
them, others are planning to or choose to hold onto ´old ways´ of organizing
how work should be done. Â Some have missed the messages and are in
danger of their own fatality.
Radical change is occurring in how people are engaged in work tasks. Â Jobs per se are disappearing, job descriptions are becoming an antiquity - no longer relevant - job titles are moving towards outmoded irrelevancy. Â People are being engaged as members of a contingent workforce - in some situations work may be done on an employer´s site, some home-based. Â More people are working as revolving members of project teams in multi-task roles. Â No wonder staff feelings are becoming more unsettled, increasing the need for reassurance of career support and helping the enhancement of their continued employability.
What is career planning self-responsibility?
As people increasingly accept their employer´s message - ´You are now
in charge of your own career´ - their expectations rise for that same employer
to provide information and resources to carry this out.
Personal career planning can be expressed in many ways:
In addition, a viable career system helps users understand the meaning of their most satisfying life experiences, i.e. helping connect with their deeper motivation - powerful for finding their best work role mix. Â Also to make sense of the changes in their life stages and the personal shifts those experiences bring about. Â An electronic career service design should allow adequately for this life management content dimension.
Who benefits from electronic career systems
We know that retaining and motivating people can make or break a business
or an organization. Â We know people are complex and their primary
wants, values, preferred skills and other attributes shift as they journey
through life and employment. Â Ways of helping people to pause, examine,
reflect in a non-threatening, unhurried, privacy-assured context can produce
results beneficial to the organization.
By providing an electronic system resource we would expect employees to:
The principal facilities are:
Variation in individual readiness
Users will vary in terms of readiness for career development training
and career options decision making, and implementing next career action
step. Â Facilities for email and/or telephone coaching need to be built
in for those requiring assistance. Â Also a screen detailing where
face-to-face help can be accessed within or external to the employment
environment.
Figure 1
Â
|
|
| How to Plan Your Career |
| Step 1 - Searching Self / Analyzing My Situation |
| Step 2 - Exploring This Information |
| Step 3 - Exploring My Information Resources |
| Step 4 - Setting My Career Goals |
| Step 5 - Implementing My Career Action |
There will also be variations in individual personality, learning styles and experience with screen-based learning. Â For example, for an individual with Holland´s Social type dominant, the Intranet may be inadequate to provide the interactive, reinforcing and modeling conditions necessary to maintain motivation for screen interaction throughout the career support process. Â Conversely a dominant Investigative type is likely to access and use career services delivered in this mode eagerly.
 Screen designs can make locating information easy but also recognize that advice needs to be given about how new information relates to the career planning process, e.g. explaining that internal job vacancy information can be used to identify job targets.  (What is obvious to career counselors and HRM staff is not always obvious to users.)  Care needs to be taken with having fewer links rather than a profusion, as users could become overwhelmed with information and abandon the process.
 Confidentiality of users´ personal data and responses must be preserved and potential users made confident that this is so.  One way is by a facility for the user to download Word files and work on their career planning in a separate file or hard copy form.
Electronic career service design
 The core content outline of the system designed by Worklife is
shown in Figure 1. Â The origin is print materials delivered in on-to-one
format or workshops, commencing in 1984 and being refined continually since. Â
The content has consequently undergoing ´field testing´ with many hundreds
of adults across many industries and occupational sectors. Â It comprises
carefully sequenced, structured exercises and readings that enable the
employee to clarify their preferred career direction progressively and
prepare to implement it.
 Step1 starts with self-analysis where the user accesses their interests, values, preferred skills, audits their primary wants, and examines their career history for clues as to what really matters to them.
 Step 2 helps them explore this information, synthesize the data and interpret the results, isolating among many aspects the skills they are most motivated to use and the work settings, which bring out their best work.
 Step 3 guides the user to source information external to self, which has a bearing on their career determination.  This comprises data within and external to their current employment environment.
 Step 4 helps them make decisions on options that have been revealed - a stage which daunts many in the process but is helped by the decision learning design features.
 Step 5 concerns creating a career development strategy and action plan linked to the organization´s needs and realities.  Employees use this as the foundation for discussions and negotiating with their manager.
There are 23 further modules in the system developed by Worklife segmented into four sections described below:
Life Planning
(Interactive)
Employee
Resources
HRM/Line Mangers´
Support
Employer´s Data
(Customised)
Service responsibilities
The career systems author / provider customizes the Intranet career
service site in consultation with the organization for program content,
functionality and user appeal refinements.
The employer is responsible for:
a. reviewing and approving the customized design
b. loading the relevant data diskettes onto their file server
c. creating links between the career support system and other human
resource information sites on the Intranet site
d. establishing marketing and communication strategies for release
of the on-line service to employees
e. maintaining the operability of the site once it has been established
on the file server
Service monitoring
A system such as described needs continual management. Â Events,
communication sessions, internal publicity, user success stories, i.e.
how I benefited, are some of the ingredients of this management task. Â
Others can be:
Cost effectiveness in system delivery is concerned with offering services that have the greatest likelihood of meeting employees´ perceptions of their needs at the lowest possible cost while maximizing the number who can access them. Â For user effectiveness to be achieved, the system must deal with the content dimension, i.e. all the complex factors involved in making a career determination and the process dimension, i.e. the sequence and detail of steps in making informed choices.
Short-changing on either will result in limited outcomes and jeopardize
the system´s effectiveness - a design challenge when one knows that employees
have multiple needs, which vary from individual to individual.
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