| | AUGUST - 2022MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM9HR needs to be able to change employees' paradigm, from "the company does not care about my development" or "my manager is responsible for my career and development" to "my career is in my handThey are the ones who should know where they want to go, what they want to become, which paths they want to take. The study above indicated that most managers believe employees must take responsibility for their career development: 98 percent say workers should continually update and improve their skills, 85 percent say they should identify job opportunities and career paths, and 80 percent say they should be responsible for building their job-hunting and career-planning skills.Even asking the manager "how is my career path?" no longer works in this fast-changing world. They can ask "what are the options?", but in the end, they are the one who needs to make decision which options they need to take and driving their own career advancement.Sounds like common sense, right? Unfortunately, common sense does not mean common practice. Not many employees are aware that their career is actually in their hand. This is why the study mentioned above resulted in disparities, and employees keep expecting company or their managers to take care of their career development.And this is exactly HR's big job.HRTurning common sense into common practice is HR's big job beyond providing all the career and development initiatives. As the hands of the company in employee matters, HR should become facilitator who stands between employees and their managers. And this takes another HR's job called changing paradigm.Changing paradigm is also common in HR terminology, it's usually called Change Management. However, HR practitioners also need to be aware that Change Management is not only series of campaign with nice quotes, and expect a change of behavior.HR needs to think beyond usual practices and provide tools and system for employees to be able to change their ways of thinking and working.As for changing paradigm in this career development mess, besides all the must-have learning opportunities, HR should also provide assistance in creating specific career plans, including timelines with milestones for achieving career goals.But how can we provide such customized assistance in a company with 3000+ people?My team and I had just launched this tool called Career Simulator. This tool works like Google Maps where you first input your destination, then the map will show you several route options and recommend the best route including the estimated time taken, but you can choose which one you like the best, then drive following the route you have chosen. Our Career Simulator also allows each employee to input their career aspiration, then the tool calculates how long it takes to get there, which options of career paths they can choose to take, and what are the competencies gaps they need to close before going to the next career milestones. The tool even recommends the type of learning interventions that employee should take to close each competencies gap. Learning interventions here does not always mean training, or learning from thousands of our digital learning contents. There are also guided coaching/mentoring, and projects or rotation and job assignments. In our company, projects and job assignments take the biggest part of employees' learning, in accordance with 70-20-10 Learning Model.This Career Simulator tool is a big help during manager-employee one-on-one conversation. It helps the employee to know what they want and how to get it. It also helps the manager to guide their employee to achieve each milestone towards their career goal. Most of all, it helps both manager and employee to take part in this career development shared responsibilities. Of course, it was not easy to change the habits of blaming and pointing others as responsible of employee's career development. HR can have a lot of learning and development initiatives in the menu, we can even provide the most advanced or prestigious ones. But most of all, HR needs to be able to change employees' paradigm, from "the company does not care about my development" or "my manager is responsible for my career and development" to "my career is in my hand".Changing paradigm is a lot harder than just laying out a lot of fun activities on career development, and posting it in social media so that people out there know how wonderful your company is.Changing people paradigm is HR's biggest homework today. Quick BytesThe Harvard Business Review concluded that well-designed employee wellness programmes led to an ROI of approximately $2.73 for every dollar spent
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