As telecom giant Ericsson announces another 20,000 job losses, we are once more reminded that there are now very few occupations that can offer "jobs for life." In this arena of uncertainty, is it still wise to implicitly trust your company, or is it perhaps time you took charge of your future once and for all?

Organizations are no longer comfortable with employees who are equipped only to perform narrowly defined job roles. They need workers who can work within and adapt to a more fluid and ambiguous work environment.

The response - employees
The employee response to the changed employment world includes having to "trade off" stability and job security for future employability. Many have had to become multi-skilled as a result of flexible work practices and this could be seen as increasing marketability. It is clear that future career prospects will depend increasingly on a willingness and ability both to learn and unlearn, develop and change.

Hall (1987) defined a career as an evolving sequence of a fairly random set of experiences over time. Career success therefore encompasses subjective and objective aspects of achievement and progress of an individual through an organization or occupation. Longitudinal studies traditionally defined career success as the number of promotions or amount of salary increases over a set period of time, but if the opportunities for progression are becoming increasingly limited, this definition will need some redrafting. Career-minded individuals within organizations will increasingly have to look to options such as parallel or sideways moves, project management, temporary secondments, geographical moves, or any other opportunities that arise to heighten their profile. It almost goes without saying that any opportunities to update and enhance skills must be grasped by the career-conscious employee.

'Portfolio' workers
A more adventurous and, some would argue, risky development is to look again at the possibilities for a non-organizational career. Options for self-employment and temporary assignments can all be woven, albeit with difficulty, into a recognizable career pattern. Handy introduced the concept of the "portfolio worker" as an effective response to the uncertainty of single organization employment. The portfolio worker gathers experience from projects in a number of arenas and effectively defines their own career path as they progress from organization to organization, relying heavily on effective networking skills.

Career management at a personal level presents further challenges to aspiring managers. According to Durcan and Oates, managers must be clear about their own potential and the extent to which they believe in that potential, and how they can develop that potential. The aspiring senior manager may have to face up to a critical personal analysis of skills and abilities more than ever before, in order that an effective assessment of the crucial career moves can be made. Perceptual accuracy in this case can be improved when employees divulge weaknesses and elicit feedback from 360 degree feedback including peers, managers and in some cases suppliers and customers. There is also a growing interest in the evaluation of personal qualities by specialist counseling or career coaches from outside the organization.

Armstrong offers a wider view, seeing career management as a vehicle that plans and shapes the progression of individual's within an organization in accordance with assessments of organizational needs and the performance and potential and preferences of individual members. This more integrated approach which necessitates the involvement, if not control, from the organization's HR function might well be shown to be a thing of the past.

While a written employment contract states the terms agreed between the individual and the organization, there is also the widely recognized concept of the psychological contract. This is a set of expectations held by the individual employee that specifies what the individual and the organization expect to give and receive in the working relationship (Rousseau, 1990).

Traditionally this defined what employees were prepared to give by way of effort and loyalty, conformity to requirements, commitment to the employer's goals and trust in their employer not to abuse their goodwill. Employees exchanged this for something they valued from their employer, such as job security, fair rewards, good career prospects and training.

The response - employers
From the employer side of the equation an interesting development could be a reluctance to recruit into middle or senior management from outside. Logically, as the organization's environment becomes increasingly turbulent, and the potential for risky (and costly) decisions increases, organizations might understandably seek out the safe option by appointing people who have a visible history and a track record within the organization. A change such as this is very much a double-edged sword as far as career management is concerned. Employees may benefit from any such restrictions placed on outside applicants' opportunities, but they must also be able to highlight their own achievements within the organization to put themselves in the frame for any promotional or career development opportunities.

Since the recession of the 1990s, the emphasis has clearly shifted. The relationship between the parties is now viewed as more of a short-term economic exchange arrangement instead of a long-term, mutually beneficial commitment. The employer can now typically demand longer hours, broader skills, a willingness to take on more responsibilities and an acceptance that change is the norm from its career cadre. In return, the employer offers (to some) good pay and rewards for high performance while for the vast majority it offers simply a job.

"From the survey, no one identified non-work activities as contributing to the concept of career development. This is very different from the USA where almost every other adult works at least three - and often five hours a week as a volunteer."
Too cavalier an attitude by employers may have a detrimental long-term effect on the health of the organization and its ability to attract and retain talented managers. Employers will need to take action to counter any "dent" in morale resulting from reduced career opportunities creating a barrier to high performance and an exodus of talented people.

A survey
To gauge further the realities of the current situation a survey was conducted by the use of a questionnaire to elicit the views of around 100 middle to senior managers from a broad range of organizations. The purpose of the survey was to investigate the scope of career management initiatives currently being undertaken and attempt to establish where responsibility for career management rests.

Survey responses were divided 60/30 between private and public/not-for-profit sectors. The span of control of the respondents managed ranged from 2.5-200 people although the average was 24 people, six respondents had no direct line responsibility because they managed projects within a matrix structure. The management experience of the respondents ranged from two to 19 years, the average was 8.5 years.

Results
Some managers indicated that tiers have been introduced within their organization because they wanted to improve career opportunities and therefore motivation amongst managers. Another commonly cited reason for this was to make teams smaller, individual members more accountable and to generally improve business communications.

Around three-quarters of the managers surveyed reported a significant decrease in the tiers of management within their organizations in the last three years. Organizational and managerial responsibility for career management of others via performance appraisal was a common feature in both public and private sector organizations.

In addition, the use of coaching and mentoring was found to be a significant way that managers were able to improve career management for their staff. In-house training, self-managed learning and cross-project teamworking were rapidly becoming the most common tools for managing careers in the public sector. While in the private sector the most significant tools were found to be in-house training, qualification courses and self-managed learning featuring strongly.

The least common tools for career management in both sectors were reported as new approaches to reward management, secondments and career breaks, and learning resources centers. All of which might be claimed to represent some of the more revolutionary approaches to HRM. Significantly more managers reported using empowerment as a career development tool in the public sector than in the private sector.

From the survey, no one identified non-work activities as contributing to the concept of career development. This is very different from the USA where almost every other adult works at least three - and often five hours a week as a volunteer. Drucker (1995) contends that these volunteers see this work as being a parallel career to their paid jobs, insist on being trained, being held accountable for results and performance and on career opportunities for advancement. He says that above all, they see in volunteer work, access to achievement, to effectiveness and self-fulfillment.

One of the major ironies of the new career management situation lies in the fact that the career-conscious employee is being asked to offer more and more, while the employing organization finds that it is in no position to offer the scale of rewards or opportunities that might have been available in the past. Not surprisingly, given this set of circumstances an increasing number of managers are considering seriously the prospect of taking the responsibility of career development entirely into their own hands and turning their back on the "comfort zone" of organizational employment.

23rd April 2002

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This is a version of an article entitled "Whose career is it anyway? Options for career management in flatter organisation structures" which was originally published in Career Development International Volume 4 No. 2, 1999.

The authors were Kathryn Whymark and Steve Ellis of Luton Business School, University of Luton, UK.

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