LESSON 5 – MAINTAINING A QUALITY WORKFORCE

“It is not enough to hire and train workers to meet an organization’s immediate
needs. They must be successfully retained, nurtured and managed for long-term
effectiveness. If talented workers leave to pursue other opportunities, the
resulting costs for the employer can be staggering.” According to a survey, the
most effective tools for maintaining a quality workforce were good benefits,
competitive salaries, flexible work schedules and personal time off, and
opportunities for training and development.
Learning Outcomes
Be sure you can:
a. Define the terms career plateau and work life balance
b. Discuss the significance of each term for the human resource management
process
c. Explain why compensation and benefits are important elements in human
resource management
d. define the terms labor contract, labor union and collective bargaining
e. Compare the adversarial and cooperative approaches to labor-
management relations.

Career Development
What is career?
Career is a sequence of jobs and work pursuits that constitutes what a person
does for a living. A career begins on an anticipatory basis with our formal
education - - then into an initial job choice and any number of subsequent choices
that may involve changes in task assignments, employing organizations and even
occupations.

Objectives of Career Development

1. To meet the immediate and future HR needs of the organization on a timely
basis
2. To inform the organization and the individual about potential career path
within the organization
 3. To utilize existing HR programs to the fullest by integrating the activities
that select, assign, develop, and manage individual careers with the
organization’s plans

Logical Flow of Events in Developing a Career

Finding a suitable field finding a job
Establishing career goals and a career path
Selecting relevant career advancement strategies
Switching careers if the need arises Retirement planning

Activity: Describe “lifetime loyalty model” and “self-directed career model”

What is a career planning?

Career planning is the process of systematically matching career goals and
individual capabilities with opportunities for their fulfillment. It involves questions
as “Who am I?” “Where do I want to go?” and “How do I get there?”

It is also important to have self-assessment (use of information by employees to

determine their career interests, values, aptitudes, and behavioral tendencies)
Self-assessment can help employees consider where they are now in their career
fits with their current situation and available resources.
Self-assessment Exercise
Step 1: Where Am I? (Examine current position of life and career)
Think about your life from past and present to the future. Draw a time
line to represent important events.
Step 2: Who am I? (Examine different roles.)
Identify your different roles
Step 3: Where would I like to be and what would I like to happen? (This helps in
future goal setting.)
Consider your life from present to future. Write an autobiography
answering three questions:
1. What do you want to have accomplished?
2. What milestones do you want to achieve?
3. What do you want to be remembered for?
Step 4: An Ideal Year in the Future (Identify resources needed.)
Consider a one-year period in the future. If you had unlimited resource,
what would you do? What would the ideal environment look like? Does
the ideal environment match step 3?
Step 5: An Ideal Job (Create current goal.)
In the present, think about an ideal job for you with your available
resources. Consider your role, resources, and type of training or education
needed.
Step 6: Career by Objective Inventory (Summarize current situation)
What gets your excited each day?
What do you do well? What are you known for?
What do you need to achieve your goals?
What should you do now to move toward reaching your goals?
What is your long-term career objectives?
Three major aspects of a Job Campaign:
1. Job Hunting Tactics
2. Preparing a resume
3. Performing well in an interview
Job Hunting Tactics
1. Identify objectives
2. Identify potential contribution
 3. Use multiple approaches and tactics
4. Use networking
Potential Sources of Contacts through Networking
a. Friends
b. Parents and other family members
c. Faculty and Staff
d. Former or present employer
e. Community groups, churches
f. Trade and professional education
g. Career fairs
5. Persist
6. Take rejection in stride
7. Avoid common mistakes such as:
a. Not knowing what type of work one wants to do
b. Not taking the initiative to generate job leads; and
c. Having a poor resume

What is a career path?

A career path is a sequence of jobs held overtime during a career. Career paths
vary between those that are pursued internally with the same employer and
those pursued externally among various employers

Establishing Career Path

It involves analyzing work and information flows, the type of tasks performed
across jobs, similarities and differences in working environments, and the
historical movement patterns of employees into and out of the jobs (where in the
company employees come from and what positions they take after leaving their
job).

Career Switching
This is the shift from one career to another because they have no other choice
due to forced retirement, layoff, or boredom in their present job. (It can also be
because of skills deficiencies or obsolescence)
Career Stages
1. Growth stage – the period from birth to age 14, where the adolescent
develop preliminary ideas about what his or her interests and abilities are
2. Exploration stage – (15-25) explores various occupational alternatives,
matches alternatives to interests and abilities
3. Establishment stage – (26-44) the heart of most people’s working lives/
involves creating a meaningful and relevant role in the organization.
4. Maintenance stage – (45-60) the person receives her/his place in the world
of work and most efforts are now directed at maintaining that place. At this
stage, the individual should already prepare for the next stage while
preparing to cope with becoming plateaued.
5. Decline or disengagement stage – (60 and above) the prospect of having to
accept reduced levels of power and responsibility and learn to accept and
develop new roles as mentor and confidant for those who are younger.
Then, there is the more or less inevitable retirement, after which the
person finds alternative uses for the time and effort formerly spent on
his/her occupation

Late Career Stage

The aging workforce and the use of early retirement programs to shrink
companies’ workforces have three implications:
1. Companies must meet the needs of older employees
2. Companies must have taken steps to prepare employees for retirement
3. Companies must be careful that early retirement programs do not
discriminate against older employees.
Development Needs during Late Career
1. Senior leadership roles
2. Productivity
3. Effective retirement
Organizational Actions during Late Career
1. Understanding older employees
2. Performance standards and feedback
 3. Education and job restructuring
4. Establishment of flexible work patterns
5. Development of retirement planning programs
6. Early retirement

What is a career plateau?

A career plateau is a position from which someone is unlikely to move to a higher
level of work responsibility.
- The point in a career where the likelihood of additional hierarchical
promotion is very low
- A plateaued employee may not desire additional responsibilities
- Plateauing becomes dysfunctional when the employee feels stuck in a job
that offers no potential for personal growth.

Assignment:
1. What is work-life balance?
2. Know the minimum wage in Region II across industries and identify the
mandated benefits both for government and private employees.