Deck 14: Career Planning and Development

Question 1

What are the advantages and potential liabilities of hiring two-career couples, beyond those noted in the case?

Answer 1

Nowadays, the dual career couples are so common and many people choose their life partner based on their education and job. Hence, both having a job becomes priority as well as obsession.
The advantages of hiring two-career couples are listed as below:
1. It will become easier to resolve the work related issues in offline especially if both work in the correlated departments.
2. The spouse can be used as associate to discuss their thoughts to get different opinions.
3. Both will be able to relate the problems and issues that they coming across their work.
The disadvantages of hiring two-career couples are listed as below:
1. There are chances for discussing more confidential or sensitive issues with the spouse.
2. The coworkers will not trust the person because he or she thinks that, whatever the information that one spouse knows, the other will also know about it.
3. There will be conflicting views on issues which are related their team.

Question 2

Many of the services for dual-career couples and parent employees are provided by large corporations that have far greater financial resources than smaller companies. Identify and discuss potential ways in which a small company's HRM function can alleviate the challenges facing employees who are parents and employees with working spouses.

Answer 2

Nowadays most of the women are giving much importance to both family and career. In today's workplace forty percent of the employees are dual career couples and they are earning income together.
Smaller companies have challenges in retaining dual career couples due to salary or working facility they can offer to employees. But these companies should try to offer employee friendly working environment like giving motivating talks and offer them permission to leave office immediately after daily work. Dual career is likely to affect women the most who always have difficulty to manage job at office as well as at home because of her commitment in family.
The challenges faced by dual career couples at organizations are listed as below:
1. Stress at workplace and lose concentration in the tasks being handled.
2. Imbalance between personal and work life leading to stress especially during business travels or on long term training programs.
3. Challenges faced if anyone among husband or wife is subjected to transfers or asked to relocate.
4. Concerns over managing the sick family members, which can lead to arguments among both over not finding time to take care of family members.
5. Managing kids will be rising concern as and when they grow older, right from schooling until they complete higher education.
Smaller companies should adopt following methods to overcome the challenges faced by dual career couples:
1. A well supported work environment should be facilitated such as flexible working pattern and opportunities for the career growth. Flexible work timing provides working from home facility and provide opportunity to visit families at needy times. Such opportunities should be provided for people working in middle level positions, so that they can grow in their career ladder will lot of self-motivation and focus on their work.
2. Teamwork approach will help one person to hand over the responsibility to other during emergency in families.
3. The smaller companies can provide workplace daycare or can get partnership with schools or daycare nearby the company. It will help the parent employees to spend more time with the kids. It decreases the anxiety of parents and improve their focus in their work.

Question 3

Suppose that a dual-career couple involves spouses who are at different career stages. Does this situation pose problems for the couple? For the organizations employing them? Discuss.

Answer 3

The dual career couples can also be referred to as dual earned couples. Here, both husband and wife follow their career and both are more committed to their work and also have development in their job.
Organization do not permit dual career couple with spouses to work for the same organization. But there are rare cases when couples are from same team will exhibit better performance. Yes, dual career couple involving spouses working in same organization pose lot of challenges working in same organization. Some of the challenges are mentioned as below:
1. Spouses working in same organization will not be able to concentrate on work if there are any family issues. Either they have to leave work or be at home taking care of grand parents or kids at home. Under such circumstance companies will not be able to quickly deploy an alternative resource to meet project deadline or daily targets.
2. Under circumstances of relocation companies will find it difficult to get it done, if spouses have some difference of opinion. During such instances husband and wife should discuss among themselves and come to a joint conclusion. So that company do not lose resources due to one leaving the job to support another's career.
3. Couples working in same organization but at different team will tend to have personal and professional self-esteem which will push them to perform better at the same time can lead to differences of opinion in their personal space. This will affect their performance in their profession. Dual career couples will some time favor each other especially during promotional transfers or relocation.
4. Such couples will not be able to do extended work during demanding occasions, due to personal commitments and sometimes difficulty on commuting at home.

Question 4

Objective
Reaching dilemmas or plateaus in a career is quite common. Feeling "stuck" can be very emotional, as well as motivational. Even if you are not stuck it is healthy to examine, first hand, your career. The purpose of the career audit is to carefully review where you are today and where you would like to be in the future.
Steps in the Audit
The following steps are intended to help you acquire an up-to-date picture of your career.
1. Recall the objective you had for your first (or most recent job). Use this job to take each of the next steps.
2. Identify three projects that you worked on that made you feel good. Why did you feel good?
3. What unique attributes do you offer an employer? Come up with at least six distinct attributes.
4. What weaknesses do you have? Identify at least three weaknesses and be specific. How do you plan to minimize or eliminate these weaknesses? Develop a plan, schedule, and monitoring system.
5. Establish five specific career goals for the next five-year period. Write the goals out and have a good friend critique and rate them on clarity, challenge, specificity, motivational value, realism, and importance. What is your grade? Try again until you receive five "A+" grades.
6. Prepare your work portfolio, which includes the positive contributions you can offer an employer. A portfolio is a record of specific contributions and proof that you can and have made these value-added contributions.
7. Compare your audit with that of a friend in the class. Are you in excellent shape or do you need some rework? Honesty will help you survive in the career marketplace.

Question 5

Do you believe that it is possible to ask people to serve as mentors or become mentees? Why?

Question 6

Why do recently retired people need to be prepared for the differences between work and retirement?

Question 7

Certainly not all Gen Xers, baby boomers, or Generation Ys want the same things from a career. What generation are you in, and what do you want in terms of a career?

Question 8

What defines career success to you?

Question 9

Why are some people satisfied with what is identified as a midcareer plateau while others at the same point experience career burnout?

Question 10

Should organizations be concerned about dual-career issues such as career conflict, relocation, and differences in salary? Why?

Question 11

Have you made a career choice? What is it, and do you have the skills and personality for the particular career? How did you determine this?

Question 12

John Holland proposes that career choice is an expression of personality and that what one derives from career depends on the congruence between his or her personality and the job. Which personality type best describes you? Does this personality type match well with the career you will pursue?

Question 13

Women and minorities often face what is called a glass ceiling. Why would some individuals hinder or block the advancement of people up the management ladder?

Question 14

How should the manager evaluate the effectiveness of outplacement service?