The More is Applied, the Better Results are Reached? Empirical Lessons Learned from the Usage of Career Management Tools

Abstract

According to certain career theories, although the employees are responsible for their own careers, they need the help of the organizations, as they cannot realize their career aims without the support of the employer. For this reason organizations should take an active role in the career management process of their workforce in order to retain them as long as it is possible. This concept requires partnership between the employers and the individuals in which the participants are not only aware of their own needs and aims but also the expectations of their partner. The aim of this paper is to analyze the usage of the career management tools and to find the most commonly used solutions. The study also points out the techniques applied by successful organizations. Furthermore, the authors examine the relationship between the organizational performance and the application of career management tools. Our other goal is to prove that the usage of career development techniques has a positive impact on the organizational achievements. The investigated database for this purpose comes from the 2014/16 round of the Cranet survey, consequently represents different part of the world (e.g.: from America, Europe and Asia). The applied statistical methods are frequency queries and variance analysis. For further analyses two career management indicators are created, which are intended to show the number of different career development tools used by the respondents. The paper designates some interesting points of the lessons learned from the analyses: e.g. organizations should not necessarily use complex career development systems where it may also be appropriate, if they use only some techniques consciously. Some of the most popular career management tools among the surveyed companies are related to the organization (e.g. on the job training, project work) and some are individual techniques (e.g. mentoring, coaching).