Assignment 2: Required Assignment 2—Career Development Plan

In this assignment, you will recommend the components of a career  development planning program and explain how the plan will integrate the  organization’s mission and value statements.

Consider the following scenario:

You work in the HR Department of an electric power company in the  southwestern region of the U.S. The company was founded in 1940 and has  an excellent reputation as a provider of electricity. It is also  considered to be an outstanding corporate citizen and known to be an  excellent place to work. It has been ranked among the top three  employers in the community for several years.
Its mission is to serve customer’s needs for electric power in ways  that provide exceptional value to all stakeholders including customers,  shareholders, employees, and the communities in which it operates.
Its values include providing a safe work environment; fairness and  respect for customers, employees, shareholders, and partners; honoring  commitments to use resources wisely; providing a high quality of work  life for its employees; and striving for excellence and having fun.
Given its long history, many of its current employees are children or  grandchildren of former employees so there are close family ties to the  company as well as a sense of loyalty.
However, technological advancements in the power generation business  over the years have resulted in jobs being either redesigned or  eliminated. For example, in the past, the company had many employees who  read meters, which showed the amount of electricity used by households.  Meter readers traveled from house to house each month to log the  information for billing purposes. Now meters are read automatically and  data is transferred to the billing department via computer. This  technological advancement eliminated the need for many employees who  were required to resign, be laid off, or be retrained for other  positions in the company.
The company faces a challenge as it strives to maintain its  reputation as an excellent employer in the community, and, yet leverage  advances in technology, which help it increase efficiency and remain  competitive.
As a member of the HR team, you have been tasked with the  responsibility of drafting a plan for a career development program for  the company which will help managers effectively guide their staff in  developing individual career development plans that are integrated with  and support the company’s mission and values. Your report will be  reviewed by senior HR managers as well as executive directors.
The HR department will have conducted a needs assessment as part of  its strategic planning process to determine how the company will achieve  its goals and objectives over the next 5–10 years. This assessment  identifies areas where employees with new skill-sets will be required as  well as areas where current employees with skill-sets may need to be  either maintained or reduced (laid off).
As part of their annual performance appraisal, all employees will  draft a personal and professional development plan on their own which  will then be discussed with their manager. This plan should cover a  five-year period and be reviewed and adjusted annually. It should  include both formal training programs and individual initiatives to  support personal and professional development interests.
By combining information about the company’s needs from the needs  assessment and employees’ interests from the personal and professional  development plans, it will be possible to develop a career planning  program for the company that identifies the overlap between the  company’s needs and employees’ interests and also detects gaps which  could become opportunities for growth in the future. Overlapping areas  indicate where the company needs skill-sets and the employees want to  develop them while gaps indicate where the company needs skill-sets and  there are no current employee interests in that area.
This process should help the company achieve a greater return on  investment (ROI) from its training budget thus improving the bottom  line. It should also result in lower employee turnover since employees  will see that their personal and professional growth and the company’s  needs are in alignment so they will be able to stay with the company and  meet their personal and professional development goals.
 

Instructions:

1. Develop a six-to-eight-page document in Word format detailing how  you would approach and organize a program to address needs for  development of the company as well as individual employees. Be sure to  clearly explain how you would create the plan, but do not create the  plan itself. Use the following file naming convention:  LastnameFirstInitial_M5_A2.doc.

Address the following in the plan:

1. Identify the information needed to develop a template that will be used to complete the individual employee’s learning plan.
2. Identify the information needed in order to develop the company’s needs assessment.
3. Explain how you would coordinate both the individual employee’s plan  and the company’s needs assessment into a comprehensive development  plan. Be sure to identify overlaps or gaps.
4. Explain how you would use this information to create a roadmap for development of a career development program for the company.
5. Identify other factors that should be considered in this program’s development.
6. Explain how the proposed plan would help managers effectively guide  their staff in developing individual career development plans that are  integrated with and support the company’s mission and values.
7. Next, create a PowerPoint presentation for the senior management  explaining how this proposed plan would contribute to the resolution of  HR issues facing this company. Use the following file naming convention:  LastnameFirstInitial_M5_A2.ppt.

Utilize at least three scholarly sources in your research. Apply APA standards to citation of sources.