3 Career Development Activities

Organizational commitment is a term used to describe the relationship between an employee and an organization. This commitment between both parties has for decades, predicted behavioral outcomes and productivity in the organization. A couple of factors contribute to an employee’s commitment; however, one of the noticeable factors incolves career development activities.

This means that employees are responsible for their engagement in opportunities for which their organization might provide. Therefore, as long as an organization provides career development activities, it is up to the employee to choose to be part of it and implement it as well.

No matter what degree of career development activities an organization offers, everyone is responsible for the outcome, whether positive or negative.

When an employee pays careful attention to their career development, they tend to easily identify their strengths, weakness, and work hard to improve their skills to become better in their career path.

Career development activities also involve learning about different roles and industries to find one what matches one’s ability, thereby, seeking out opportunities to advance, and maybe even changing careers altogether, if they find a more suitable one.

Although, there are a number of activities an organization may wish to engage in, relative to career development for their employees, these three activities are recommended to increase an employee’s commitment to their organization.

Mentoring Activities

Mentoring is one of the top career development activities that provide an opportunity to engage employees on a number of levels, including socialization and skill development, such as learning new technical skills from an expert or professional.

Before an expert is called upon to groom and mentor employees, proper background research should be carried out on such a person to ensure he or she is capable of mentoring employees.

These mentors serve as a role model, and at such, they must display the values they desire for every employee, and employees on the other hand must be willing to take on such responsibilities.

Generally, mentoring has been shown to be effective in career development of employees and it opens them to deeper ideas about their career, and sets them on the right path to career development or advancement.

Without a basic and improved knowledge of communication, it is almost impossible to develop or advance one’s career, this shows how important communication is to career development. It is not possible to know with certainty how much poor communication costs to a business.

Poor communication comes in various forms such as:

• Badly written emails
• Improper reading and listening to instructions
• Unread documents owing to poor design
• Presenting misleading information as a result of haste
• Careless Proofreading

Generally, this has a bad effect on productivity and career advancement, thereby, leading or inefficiency.

Thus, the career development of employees largely depends on their ability to interact with their coworkers as well as the management.

This training could include learning how to communicate ideas more precisely, how to be a good listener and how to be an effective team player.

Career Pathways

Here, the organization’s workforce planning deliberately come up with various trainings that involve mapping out a process for which employees will gain relevant skills to meet an organization’s needs.

Career pathways assist both the organization and the employee in clearly communicating beneficial needs and how these needs can be met within the organization

A career pathway model provides a bridge or collaborative framework for the organization and the individual for which the career development professional can help facilitate through needs assessment, gap analysis, and forecasting. Undoubtedly, training provides employees with the competencies they need to forge ahead in their career path.

In summary, organizations that take an active role in their employee’s career development will experience mutually beneficial outcomes, because of an engaged employee by way of an increased commitment to the organization.