The HR Juggler

Day 3 of my blogging experiment and this is a topic that has got me thinking. I find to hard to disagree with the overall statement that this blog is based on: to my mind, an individual should always be accountable for their own career development and make the decisions that are right for them.  Who looks after your career if not yourself?

But it’s also true that none of us operate in isolation. And if we examine this more closely, we may find that there are other stakeholders involved for each of us. These may be family or friends, colleagues or mentors…individuals whose opinions we trust and listen to. Charlie Judy (@HRFishbowl) wrote a great article on ensuring that you develop your own personal board of directors – a hand-selected group of trusted advisors with diverse perspectives dedicated to furthering your career. So, just because we take personal accountability for our own careers, it does not mean that others will not help you look after and nurture it. 

What of an organisation’s responsibility towards its staff? How much of a role does it and should it play in helping individuals to further and develop  their careers? Succession planning, skills development and employee retention are all good reasons why companies should take an active stakeholder role in the careers of their staff, however I suspect that whether the individual feels invested in, valued and listened to in this way varies enormously by organisation and also potentially by sector.

The only person that really looks after your career is yourself? On face-value perhaps, but there is much food for thought here in how we manage our own careers and also how our organisations provide a supportive environment for learning and development. 

I would love to hear what you think.

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This post is the third of my blogging experiment, where all of the post topics have been generated by others and there has been voting taking place on which topic I should blog on each day. If you haven’t voted for a topic yet, please do – I will be tackling the topic with the most votes every day for the remainder of this week. In the event of tie-break votes, I will make the final choice between the two most popular myself