Career, as a series of upward moves of income, status, power and security has died long back.
In 21st century, career is seen as continuous learning and changes in identity due to experience and personal learning along with upward moves in income, status and power.
Employees, these days want a fulfilling career and organizations need to give them. The traditional psychological set up of individuals has changed and they no longer have the same interests. They desire for a boundary less, alive and flourishing career where they get a chance to shape their lives according to their requirements.
Organizations need to understand the desires and demands of their employees if they want to create a pool of talent for them and ensure better working all through. In order to strike a balance with continuous workplace changes, both employees and organizations have to come to the mutually beneficial terms so that both can meet their requirements and future aspirations.
Tips for Individuals to Handle Workplace Changes
- The main focus of organizations today is on the employability of individuals. They should not hold on to a specific job. Rather they should focus on developing skills and competencies that are portable and can be used anywhere and everywhere in the time crisis.
- Individuals must take care of their career needs, desires and aspirations. They need to take control of their careers and look out for their career interests. After all, they also have right to look out for their dream jobs.
- They must think of developing new and better personal skills in order to achieve their dream careers. Plus, they should make every effort to assess themselves and their competencies and plan their careers accordingly. Most organizations lack in employee career planning. In such a scenario, the entire responsibility comes on individuals to choose their own direction.
- Employees must invest in reputation building, networking, socializing and peer learning relationships so that they can fulfill their desires and aspirations.
- Individuals must be committed towards life long learning to keep their skills updated and relevant to increase their employability.
Recommendations for Organizations
- Although it is an employees responsibility to manage his or her own career but times have changed and it is now employer’s responsibility too to provide their employees with tools and techniques, professional career guidance and opportunities so that they can enhance their skills and re-invent themselves.
- It is employer’s responsibility to create an environment that supports continuous learning and overall development of individuals. It can be done through professional training, associations, workshops, etc. Organizations such as Motorola, Intel and Ford are known as people developers just because they offer supportive environment to their employees.
- The organizations must make arrangements to provide additional training such as orientation training, core training and computer training in order to increase employability of the employees. Along with this, they should support this with a proper reward system.
- Before hiring new candidates or outsourcing, organizations must try to redeploy their already existing employees and teach them new skills.
- They should assist employees in striking a balance between their work and non-work life so that they can produce better output at work.
