How a New Career Development Program Ruins Careers, Case Study Example

Every organization prides itself in developing best training programs for its existing and prospective employees. This is more valued especially when the training program is developed by the company’s employees. This paper seeks to review the new development program that ruins careers case. This is a case study on training department of AMEX Corporation, which has ten thousand employees. It seeks to analyze the strategies and tactics on how a new career development program can be instituted, and how to avert ruining it especially when several employees aspire to head the program. This is exemplified through how the Director of Training Department Jane Johnson who is in a dilemma choosing the leader of the program implementation handles the selection.

The first strategy is to make a presentation sensitizing the staff members about the importance of the program, who should spearhead the development and implementation of the program, and how work responsibilities ought to be divided to provide time to for development of the program (Schokley-Zalabak, 2008).  For every training program to be successful, senior staff members should be in consensus on these issues. Choosing a leader to overlook program development is a sensitive stage and; therefore, it ought to be democratic. In the case of AMEX, Jane Johnson was torn between choosing a leader from two qualified personnel, Denise Giles and John Martin. The two of them had overseen different, successful training program implementation. Jane, however, allowed a democratic breathing space for the staff to air out their sentiments. This allowed her to ease the tension existing among the staff.

Experience also matters when it comes to choosing a lead role in the training program (Patton & McMahon, 2001). Though, in this case, both staff vying for the post had the qualifications, it rendered it difficult for Director of the training program Jane to choose the leader out rightly. The issue of choosing one to be a leader just because she has been holding the post previously cropped up. Jane resorted to adjournment to avoid making a rush decision.

A new training program can be a noble idea for every organization, but if implementation programs are not well managed, then it might have damaging effects to an organization.

References

Schokley-Zalabak, P. (2008). Fundamentals of organizational communication: Knowledge, Sensitivity, skills and values, 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Allyn & Bacon.

Patton, W. & McMahon, M. (2001). Career Development Programs: Preparation for Lifelong Career Decision Making. Camberwell, Vic.: ACER Press.