Importance of Career Planning in industry.

Career planning involves efforts on the part of the organizations to provide avenues for growth to its employees. Certainly this growth should be accompanied by development. The other side of the coin is the role of employees in career planning. It involves effort on the part of employees to clearly think through and decided areas in which they would like to make a career for themselves.
When employees have assessed their career needs and have become aware of organizational career opportunities, the problem is one of alignment. The crucial role has to be played by HRD in ensuring this alignment to build up morale in the organization. A systematic choice of development techniques like training, special assignment, counseling and rotational assignments should be made to ensure this alignment.

Employees are often uncertain as to the type of work that would suit them best. There are a number of evaluation instruments available to determine basic aptitudes. Human Resource Development Managers should be able to guide employees by administering these instruments on them. Employees should also find out whether they are loners or socially active. These exercises with some assistance from HRD Managers should help in career need assessment.

Realizing that employees have definite career needs, organization should chart different career paths. These should be made known to all employees. As every employee wishes to see bright future for himself, these career paths do provide the hope to achieve success.

At certain stage the upward mobility stops for many employees. This is inescapable in view of pyramid organizations structure. This phenomenon is called plateauing. It takes place around the age f 40. Some suggested measures to deal with such employees are:· --
Mentors should be assigned measures to deal with such employees are:Depending on the maturity of such mentors, good results can be achieved in assuaging the hurt feelings of plateaued employeesAdditional career ladders could be established to retain some valuable resource.Giving them importance by assigning them to some important task force or committee.Assisting them to choose a new career. Some organizations assist their plateau executives to start their own business.