Career Development in HRD:
Your Plan for Establishing a Career Development Function in an Organization.
Option #1
Assume that you are in a leadership role in an organization, e.g., HR, Safety Management, or Health Administration. You can use your own organization, one that you are familiar with, or use a fictitious organization if you wish.
Given all that you have learned in the course, describe the process you would use to create a career development function within an organization.
Explain each step and the sequencing of the steps you will take.
Explain how you will acquire the expertise you will need to become a credible subject-matter-expert in career development.
Option #2
1. Conduct a review of at least three of the resources provided on Blackboard/Course Resources/ Resources for Creating a Career Development Function in an Organization. Write a 3-5 page analysis discussing the following:
2. Name of resources you have chosen.
3. Provide a synopsis of what the resources say about implementing career development for employees in an organization.
Question: It will be very helpful to see a few example papers of this project that have been done in the past. Otherwise, I feel as though I will not know where to begin.
Instructor’s Answer: Sample exemplary papers from prior semesters have been included with this assignment on Blackboard.
Question: What exactly do you mean by career development function?
Instructor’s Answer: The Society for Human Resource Management defines human resource management as the formal structure within an organization responsible for all the decisions, strategies, factors, principles, operations, practices, functions, activities and methods related to the management of people. An HR Department might include all, or some of the functions represented in the wheel below. The purple circles are the HRD functions with an HR Department.
In organizations that are large enough to have a Human Resource Management Department (usually 100 or more employees), most do not have a formal career development function. So, this assignment is concerned with how you would establish a career development function within an organization if you were the Human Resource Manager.
Question: What kind of organization are you wanting us to lean towards? Could you provide us with an example organization?
Instructor’s Answer: By organization I mean employer, e.g., company (G.E.), hospital (Union Hospital in Terre Haute), university (Indiana State University), government agency (Internal Revenue Service), non-profit organization (Boy Scouts of America), etc. I am not leaning toward any in particular. Rather, what we are learning in the course applies to all organizations.
Question: In the rubric, the first item mentions professional level of writing, organization, and formatting. Do you want us to use a particular format for this? Can it include tables/ graphs/ PowerPoint, etc. or is it strictly a sentence by sentence Word document well organized?
Instructor’s Answer: I cannot stress the importance of professional writing skills enough. I know from the school of hard knocks…my HR profession…that there is a lot of writing in professional careers and those who can’t write well suffer the consequences.
For this assignment, I will be looking at what you turn in as if I were your boss. Would I be happy with it? Would it enhance your reputation or hinder it?
In the HRD major, we use APA Style. If your writing is consistent with APA Style, it will certainly be perceived as professional level writing.
If you would like to use tables, graphs, PowerPoints, etc., wonderful, so long as it fits the definition of professional writing.
Question: Where does the part in the instructions about explaining how we are acquiring the expertise fit into the rubric?
Instructor’s Answer: It would fit this rubric criterion: Demonstrates excellent use of career development concepts and principles. My thinking behind the question is that career development, as all of you are becoming aware of, is much more complex than people think. In order to establish a credible career development function within an organization, an HR professional must acquire the skills and preferably professional certification through a respected career development organization such as the National Association for Career Development.