6 - Employee development

Question 1

What is employee development?

Answer 1

Combination of formal education, job experiences, relationships, and assessment of personality and abilities to help employees prepare for the future of their careers.

Question 2

What is development about?

Answer 2

Development is about preparing for change in the form of new jobs, new responsibilities, or new requirements.

Question 3

What is a protean career?

Answer 3

A career that frequently changes based on changes in the person’s interests, abilities, and values in the work environment.

Question 4

What are the four approaches to employee development?

Answer 4

Interpersonal relationships, formal education, job experiences, assessment.

Question 5

What is formal education about?

Answer 5

• Workshops
• Short courses
• Lectures
• Simulations
• Business games
• Experiential programs

Question 6

What is assessment about?

Answer 6

Collecting information and providing feedback to employees about their behavior, communication style, or skills. Information for assessment may come from the employees, their peers, managers, and customers.

Question 7

What are the assessment tools?

Answer 7

• Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI)
• Assessment centers
• Benchmarks assessment
• Performance appraisal
• 360-degree feedback

Question 8

What is MBTI?

Answer 8

Psychological test that identifies individual’s preferences for source energy, means of information gathering, way of decision making, and lifestyle, providing information for team building and leadership development.
Most popular test for employee development.
Poor psychometric qualities (e.g., low reliability). Test should not be used in practice.

Question 9

What are assessment centres?

Answer 9

An assessment process in which multiple raters or evaluators (assessors) evaluate employees’ performance on a number of exercises, usually as they work in a group at an offsite location.

Question 10

What are benchmarks?

Answer 10

A measurement tool that gathers ratings of a manager’s use of skills associated with success in managing.

Question 11

What are performance appraisals?

Answer 11

1. Appraisal system must tell employees specifically about their performance problems and ways to improve their performance.
2. Employees must gain a clear understanding of differences between current and expected performance.
3. Appraisal process must identify causes of performance discrepancy and develop plans for improving performance.

Question 12

What is 360-degree feedback?

Answer 12

1. Raters identify an area of behavior as a strength of the employee or an area requiring further development.
2. Results presented to employee show how rating on each item and how self- evaluations differ from other raters’ evaluations.
3. Individual reviews results, seeks clarification from raters, and sets specific development goals based on strengths and weaknesses identified.

Question 13

What are job experiences?

Answer 13

Combination of tasks, relationships, problems, demands and other features
of an employee’s jobs. Most employee development occurs through job experiences.

Question 14

What do key job experience events include?

Answer 14

• Job assignments
• Interpersonal relationships
• Types of transitions

Question 15

What are the steps in the career management process?

Answer 15

Data gathering, feedback, goal setting, action planning & follow-up.

Question 16

What is data gathering?

Answer 16

Use of information by employees to determine career interests, values, aptitudes, behavioral tendencies, and development needs.

Question 17

What is feedback?

Answer 17

Information employers give employees about their skills and knowledge and where these assets fit into the organization’s plans.

Question 18

What is goal setting?

Answer 18

Based on information from self-assessment and reality check, employee sets short and long-term career objectives:
- Desired positions
- Level of skill to apply
- Work setting
- Skill acquisition

Question 19

What is action planning & follow up?

Answer 19

• Employees prepare an action plan for how they will achieve their short and long-term career goals.
• Any one or a combination of development methods may be used, depending on development need and career objectives.

Question 20

What are the development-related challenges?

Answer 20

Glass ceiling, succession planning, dysfunctional managers.

Question 21

What is glass ceiling?

Answer 21

Circumstances resembling an invisible barrier that keep most women and
minorities from attaining the top jobs in organizations.

Question 22

What is succession planning?

Answer 22

Process of identifying and tracking high-potential employees who will be able to fill top management positions.

Question 23

What are dysfunctional managers?

Answer 23

Manager who is otherwise competent may engage in some behaviors that make him or her ineffective or even “toxic” – stifles ideas and drives away good employees.

Question 24

What must employees do to remain marketable?

Answer 24

To remain marketable, employees must continually develop new skills.

Question 25

What are the approaches to employee development?

Answer 25

Job experiences and interpersonal relationships.