Career Development and Job Satisfaction
- File photo | Credit The Washington Post JobsOpens in new window
Career Development: An Enabler for Job Satisfaction
Human resource managementOpens in new window is the process of acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating employees while attending to their labor relations, their health, safety, and equity concerns. The endeavor for human resources function is to have practices which have an impact and make a positive difference in the lives of employees. An important practice is career development.
Caree development programs enable HR managers, managers and their stakeholders to work together to plan, organize, formalize, lead and monitor career programs to develop not only employees’ jobs but the whole stage process, attitude, behavior and state of affairs relating to employees’ work life.
Successful organizations exist because of a competive edge in the global economy. In order to maintain the status, firms need talented and engaged employees. Several recent research studies have focused on the importance of retaining valuable human capital in today’s competitive world of work. The extant literature suggests that there is a widespread acceptance of the value of career development activities and that, in the years to come, more and more organizations will be required by various internal and external pressures to develop and expand career development services.
Career development is in the interest of all generations, yet it is mostly sought after by the millennials, and thus, it plays a major factor in their job satisfaction.
Locke defined job satisfactionOpens in new window as the pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the overall evaluation of one’s job or job experiences. Employee satisfaction can be achieved by making a good career development system and giving an understanding of how important the system is that is designed by the company for managerial and professional employees.
Having mentioned job satisfaction and career development and the importance of the effect of one on the other, it is time to discuss the relationship between these two variables.
Lee mentions that companies who participates in career management are going to enhance their employees’ job satisfaction. Gregson mentions that job satisfaction is the state of emotion that the employee feels fulfillment in after his/her performance management review and experience in the organization.
Chay and Bruvold state that job satisfaction is the positive reaction of the employee to different phases of the job. Job satisfaction happens after the employee experiences emotions of self-actualization in his/her career.
Career development programs were found to have a positive inspiration on job satisfaction, professional development, and productiitey in a research conducted by Chen, Chang, and Yeh. Moreover, in a research study conducted by Schein, it was found that career development plays a major role in employee effectiveness and creativity over the long term. Moreover, a well-orgnaized career development will allow employees to pursue improvements in their career that will actually lead to the employees’ job satisfaction.
Moreover, Schein adds that employees will have different career developments according to their preferences, goals, and, most importantly, the external factors such as global business changes. Schein elaborates more to state that employees should take into considereation the career needs of their employees in each stage to satisfy their career development and increase the organizational effectiveness and cope with its needs as well. Each specific stage of career development has different goals and different mission from the next one.
Furthermore, organizations should be responsive and open to career developments of their employees because modernization and improvement is the field where each company differentiates itself from its competitors and, at the end, it is the responsibility of the employee to gain the knowledge through his/her experience when everything is provided to him/her by the organization. Although the managers with the guidance of the human resources departments set the career development plan for the employee, each employee enters the company with a career development plan in his/her mind that he/she wishes to obtain through his/her experiences within the organization. In fact, many career plans suggested by the employees are considered by the managers and are accepted to be beneficial for them.
Additionally, any company that implements career development plans for its employees will in fact reduce its employees’ turnover rateOpens in new window. Hoon mentions that career planning, management, and development that are respective with human resources guidance influence employees’ job satisfaction. Robbin mentions that if there exist a gap in the career needs of the employee there will be stress and anger between coworkers, which in fact impacts the job satisfaction level in employees.
Chen, Chang, and Yeh study in their research ther relationship between job satisfaction and the gap that exists between career development programs and career needs.
In the case of Taiwan, where organizations are working to increase their competiveness and become more involved in high tech production and development, the gaps existed between career development programs and expected career needs of production, and development has improved the job satisfaction in R&D employees. Moreover, the gap changes in each career stage influences the job satisfaction differently. In addition, as the gap widens, employees that are on the establishment stage of their career will get lower job satisfaction, and those what are on the maintenance stage will get higher job satisfaction than those on any other career stage.
Several changes in the company such as downsizing, rightsizing, and flattening affects the career development of employees in the company for the future. Moreover, employees are more satisfied with their jobs and give it their best when they sense well-organized development career plans that support their best when they sense well-organized developmental career plans that support their development and advancement to reach high levels and learn more through this career path. In addition, career development for employees aids in the competitiveness of the company in the market by addressing the organizational needs of employees when developing them.
Companies that implement a person-environment theory tend to have the best career development of their employees and foresee employees’ needs as much more important in order to know how to improve the interaction of the employee with his work environment. Career development and job satisfaction not only looks at how employees can develop their careers and create career paths that are meaningful for their lives, it also looks at keeping employees satisfied with their jobs.
