Chapter 9

Employee Development
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2010 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction

 Development - formal education, job

experiences, relationships, and
assessments of personality and abilities
that help employees perform effectively
in their current or future job and
company.

9-2
Table 9.1 - Comparison Between
Training and Development

9-3
Introduction (cont.)

 Why is employee development important?

 To improve quality.
 To meet the challenges of global competition
and social change.
 To incorporate technological advances and
changes in work design.

9-4
Introduction (cont.)

 Development activities can help

companies reduce turnover by:
 showing employees that the company is
investing in the employees’ skill development.
 developing managers who can create a
positive work environment that makes
employees want to come to work and
contribute to the company goals.

9-5
Approaches to Employee
Development

 Formal education programs include:

 off-site and on-site programs designed
specifically for the company’s employees.
 short courses offered by consultants or
universities, executive MBA programs, and
university programs.
 Tuition reimbursement - the practice
of reimbursing employees’ costs for
college and university courses and degree
programs. 9-6
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Assessment
 Collecting information and providing feedback
to employees about their behavior,
communication style, values, or skills.
 Used most frequently to identify employees
with managerial potential, and measure
current managers’ strengths and weaknesses.
 Companies vary in the methods and sources
of information they use in developmental
assessment.
9-7
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

 Most popular psychological test for employee
development.
 Identifies individuals’ preferences for energy,
information gathering, decision making, and
lifestyle.
 It is a valuable tool for understanding
communication styles and the ways people
prefer to interact with others.

9-8
Table 9.4 - Personality Types Used in the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment

9-9
Table 9.4 - Personality Types Used in the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment

9-10
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Assessment center - multiple raters or

evaluators evaluate employees’
performance on a number of exercises.
 It is used to identify:
if employees have the abilities, personality, and
behaviors for management jobs.
if employees have the necessary skills to work in
teams.
 Types of exercises used include leaderless
group discussions, interviews, in-baskets, and
role plays. 9-11
Table 9.5 - Examples of Skills Measured
by Assessment Center Exercises

9-12
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Benchmarks - instrument designed to

measure important factors in being a
successful manager.
 Items that are measured include dealing with
subordinates, acquiring resources, and
creating a productive work climate.

9-13
Table 9.6 - Skills Related to
Managerial Success

9-14
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Performance appraisal - process of

measuring employees’ performance.
 Different approaches for measuring
performance:
Ranking employees.
Rating their work behaviors.
Rating the extent to which employees have
desirable traits believed to be necessary for job
success.

9-15
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 The appraisal system must give employees

specific information about their performance
problems and ways they can improve their
performance.
 Managers must be trained in providing
performance feedback.
 Upward feedback - involves collecting
subordinates’ evaluations of managers’
behaviors or skills.
9-16
Figure 9.1 - 360-Degree
Feedback System

9-17
Table 9.8 - Development- Planning
Activities from 360-Degree Feedback

9-18
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Factors necessary for a 360-degree

feedback system to be effective:
 The system must provide consistent or
reliable ratings.
 Feedback must be job-related (valid).
 The system must be easy to use,
understandable, and relevant.
 The system must lead to managerial
development.

9-19
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Job Experiences - relationships,

problems, demands, tasks, or other
features that employees face in their
jobs.
 A major assumption is that development is
most likely to occur when there is a mismatch
between the employee’s skills and past
experiences and the skills required for the
job.

9-20
Table 9.9 - Job Demands and the
Lessons Employees Learn from Them

9-21
Table 9.9 - Job Demands and the
Lessons Employees Learn From Them

9-22
Figure 9.2 - How Job Experiences are
Used for Employee Development

9-23
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Job enlargement - adding challenges or

new responsibilities to an employee’s
current job.
 Job rotation - providing employees with
a series of job assignments in various
functional areas of the company or
movement among jobs in a single
functional area or department.

9-24
Table 9.10 - Characteristics of
Effective Job Rotation Systems

9-25
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Transfer - an employee is given a

different job assignment in a different
area of the company.
 Promotions - advancements into
positions with greater challenges, more
responsibility, and more authority than in
the previous job.
 Downward move - occurs when an
employee is given a reduced level of
responsibility and authority.
9-26
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Externships - employees take full-time,

temporary operational roles at another
company.
 Employee exchange is one example of
temporary assignments in which two
companies agree to exchange employees.

9-27
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Volunteer assignments offer employees

opportunities to manage change, to
teach, to take on a higher level of
responsibility, or to be exposed to other
job demands.
 Interpersonal relationships
 Mentor - experienced, productive senior
employee who helps develop a less
experienced employee (the protégé).
 Mentors provide career support and
psychosocial support to the protégé. 9-28
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Provide opportunities for mentors to:

Develop interpersonal skills, increase feelings of
self-esteem and worth to the organization, and gain
knowledge about important new scientific
developments.

9-29
Table 9.11 - Characteristics of
Successful Formal Mentoring Programs

9-30
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Interpersonal relationships
 Purposes of Mentoring Programs
To socialize new employees and to increase the
likelihood of skill transfer from training to the work
setting.
To enable women and minorities to gain the
experience and skills needed for managerial
positions.
To develop managers for top-level management
positions or to help them acquire specific skills.
 Group mentoring programs - successful
senior employee is paired with four to six less
experienced protégés. 9-31
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Interpersonal relationships
 Coach - a peer or manager who works with
employees to motivate them, help them
develop skills, and provide reinforcement and
feedback.
The best coaches are empathetic, supportive,
practical, and self-confident but do not appear to
know all the answers or want to tell others what to
do.

9-32
Approaches to Employee
Development (cont.)

 Interpersonal relationships
 Three roles that a coach can play:
One-on-one with an employee, providing feedback
based on psychological tests, 360-degree
assessment, or interviews with bosses, peers, and
subordinates.
Help employees learn for themselves by putting
them in touch with experts who can help them with
their concerns and by teaching them how to obtain
feedback from others.
Provide the employee with resources such as
mentors, courses, or job experiences that the
employee may not otherwise have access to.
9-33
The Development Planning
Process

 It involves:
 identifying development needs.
 choosing a development goal.
 identifying the actions that need to be taken
by the employee and the company to achieve
the goal.
 determining how progress toward goal
attainment will be measured.
 investing time and energy to achieve the goal.
 establishing a timetable for development.
9-34
Table 9.12 - Responsibilities in the
Development Planning Process

9-35
Company Strategies for Providing
Development

 The most effective development

strategies involve individualization,
learner control, and ongoing support.

9-36