A career is defined as a sequence of related jobs and work activities over a person's lifetime. It involves progression to roles with increasing responsibility, status, and rewards within an organization. Career development is the systematic process of planning one's career path and developing necessary skills. It involves different stages - exploratory, establishment, maintenance, and decline. The goals of career development programs are to attract, retain, and motivate employees while allowing them to advance their skills and roles over time.

1. What is career
Definition
Important elements
Career development
Objectives
Types
stages

2. MEANING & DEFINITION
.
 Career is a sequence of attitudes & behaviors associated
with the series of job & work related activities over a
person’s lifetime.
 It can be defined as a succession of related jobs, arranged in
hierarchical order & through which a person moves in an
organization.
 Career can be identified as an integrated pace of vertical &
lateral movement in an occupation of an individual over his
employment span.
 Career planning is a systematic process of establishing
career objectives for an employee or by the person himself
& developing planned strategies to achieve them

3. IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF CAREER
 It is a proper sequence of job related activities which
includes role experiences at different hierarchical levels of
an individual which lead to an increasing level of
responsibilities, status, power, achievements & rewards.
 Career is often defined as external career & internal career.
External career refers to the objective categories used by
society & organizations to describe the progression of steps
through a given occupation.
 Internal career refers to the set of steps or stages which
make up the individual’s own concept of career progression
within an occupation

4. CAREER DEVELOPMENT
 Career development means the process of increasing an
employee's potential for advancement & career change.
 It is the systematic process of planning the series of
possible jobs which an individual may hold in the
organization over time & developing strategies designed to
provide necessary job skills as the opportunity arises.
 It is different from career managements as career
management focuses on specific human resource
management activities such as recruitment, selection,
placement, & appraisal to facilitate career development.
 Poor career development program may affect an
organization badly by creating high employee turnover &
decrease in employee involvement.

5. OBJECTIVES OF CAREER
DEVELOPMENT
 To attract & retain effective persons in an organization.
 To utilize HRs optimally.
 To improve morale & motivation level of employees.
 To reduce employee turnover.
 To make employees adaptable to change.
 To increase employee loyalty & commitment to the
organizations.
 To maintain harmonious industrial relations.
 To provide equal career progression opportunities to
women & minorities.

6. TYPES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT
PROGRAMMES
 Organization Development Programmes - are
planned & managed from the top to bring about
planned organizational changes for increasing the
organizational effectiveness.
 Management Development Programmes – are
concerned with upgrading the manager’s skills,
knowledge & ability of the employees to enable them
to accomplish the additional process of guiding the
movement of human resources through different
hierarchical levels.

7. DIFFERENT STAGES OF CAREER
DEVELOPMENT
 Exploratory
 Establishment
 Maintenance
 Decline

8. EXPLORATORY STAGE
 It starts when a new employee joins an organization with
his qualification & knowledge . He finds himself in some
incompatibility which will take little time to be adaptive .
 After proper training he will be comfortable with the
organization & job assignment.
 It is always advisable to allow the new entrant to perform
some specific jobs & to confer freedom in functioning. This
will help the new entrant to gradually develop according to
the requirements of the organization.
 Some companies prefer job rotation for a reasonable time
period.

9. ESTABLISHMENT STAGE
 After a new entrant chooses his career from different
given alternatives, he needs to be provided with
regular feedback on his performance.
 It enables a new employee to understand the
effectiveness of his performance & he can take
corrective actions to rectify his mistakes.
 This stage is very important as it motivates employees
on the basis of performance feedback & develops a
sense of loyalty & commitment.

10. MAINTENANCE STAGE
 This is also known as mid-career stage for employees
who strive hard to retain their established name &
fame. At this stage employees need to put their efforts
continuously for self development.
 At this stage employees need to update their skills.
 This stage is very crucial & unless the organization
adopts suitable career development programmes, it
may face high employee turn over.

11. STAGE OF DECLINE
 Employees at this stage, being prepared for retirement.
 It is associated with old age of the employees.
 It should aim at helping the employees to get mentally
prepared for retirement rituals, particularly to prepare
them to accept a reduced role & responsibilities, so
that they can accommodate with their family & the
society in the later part of their life.