In an ideal world (and according to the research), organisations and their employees would share career development and planning.  Practices such as sharing employee feedback, raising awareness of company objectives and goals, making managerial responsibility for career development mandatory and introducing coaching etc can be much more effective than annual performance reviews.  They also make it easier to link individual performance goals to organisational aims.

We live in the real world however, where even though managers are charged with developing their team, they receive no training.  Similarly employees feel that the focus is always on meeting the needs of their company and their own goals are not important. It’s a missed opportunity for businesses.  Why wouldn’t you want to know more about your talent pool as you go into a very uncertain time and when pretty much every business is having to change the way they work? 

As we go into a recession the ‘luxury’ of discussing career plans and personal development will be replaced with talk of organisational restructure, redundancy and doing more with less.  Most companies will look to cut back, reduce ….basically to survive.

It would be easy to sit still, to wait, to keep your fingers crossed and ‘see what happens’ but where will that get you?  In our experience the answer to that is often ‘in a complete panic’.  Avoidance is a common behaviour when things get tough – we use phrases like ‘battening down the hatches’, ‘keeping my head down’ etc,…  It’s a common survival strategy and we all do it when the going gets tough to an extent.  

But imagine another scenario: you have identified your career goals, you know what you are good at and enjoy.  You also know what skills you need to develop in order to get where you want to go. How would that feel?  Taking control of your own career planning is at least 50% your responsibility.  If you do the work, you will be ready and able to take advantage of any opportunities that come along.

Career planning does the following:

• It allows you to consolidate what you have learned throughout your career to date
• It identifies your key skills, strengths and values
• It helps you to develop a vision for the future
• It investigates the resources you have available e.g. time, money, support, network
• It shows you the steps it will take to go to the next stage of your career plan

If faced with uncertainty or redundancy, the value of knowing what you have to offer is huge.  Take the time now, (when everyone is trying to work out what to do), to focus on your career plan and feel energised, focused and ready to face future challenges.

Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash