Careers and Organization

The CIPD (2014) factsheet states that Employee Engagement is a concept that ‘is generally seen as an internal state of being – physical, mental and emotional – that brings together earlier concepts of work effort, organisational commitment, job satisfaction and ‘flow’ (or optimal experience)’. An engaged workforce willingly demonstrates discretionary effort within their roles; their goals and values reflect that of their employers/organisation; they express a passion for work, feel valued and that their work has meaning.

In the passages “The Surgeon as Priest” by Richard Selzer and “Traveling Bra Salesman’s Lesson” by Claudia O’Keefe reflects upon how jobs or careers are being performed. A career shows advancement over time. Though a job is where there is usually no success and no stableness. There are many elements that distinguish a career and a job.

Others want a sense of importance throughout the day or gain through service of the people in this world some want to make a difference in life. The progress and actions taken by a person throughout a lifetime, especially those related to that person's occupations. A career is often composed of the jobs held, titles earned and work accomplished over a long period of time, rather than just referring to one position. While employees in some cultures and economies stay with one job during their career, there is an increasing trend to employees changing jobs more frequently. For example, an individual's career could involve being a doctor, and he provides service to the sick. He is than able to have financial stability for his family and self.

According to Career vision (2004), “Career management is the lifelong process of investing resources to achieve your career goals. Career management is not a singular event but a

1.3 Compare and contrast employee engagement with other related concepts; ‘flow’, organisational commitment, job involvement and job satisfaction

There comes a time in life where individuals have to leave school to join the world of work whereby they will work their way up to the top. This is where career development comes into place. Career development is defined as progress through various stages in a career (Schreuder & Coetzee,2011). These are stages one goes through in order to mature in a career and for development to even exist, one has to start with making a career choice then developing it .A career choice can be defined as the relation between people’s personality types and their different occupational environment in which they work in.

A brief background overview on a few career development theories will help direct this literature review and give a foundation to current theories in career development. Career development is a complex, lifelong process that is influenced by a variety of factors. Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey (2005) defined career development as “the lifelong psychological and behavioral processes as well as contextual influences shaping one’s career over the life span” (p. 12). Although there are many career development theories, this literature review will focus on just a few. Donald Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space Career Theory highlights the “complex and multifaceted nature of career development” (Niles & Hutchinson, 2009, p. 69). Super’s theory builds upon 14 assumptions and supports three key aspects of career development: life-span, life-space, and self-concept (Niles & Hutchinson, 2009). Life-span focuses on the development over one’s life through growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and

According to Mondy and Noe (2005), career is a job that has been chosen to be accomplished during one’s working life. Career is the progress and actions of the person’s occupations or sequence of jobs held by someone throughout a lifetime which is until that person end up the careers. Most of the situations, people do not just referring to one position only but often looking for another jobs which composed of the jobs held, titles earned and work accomplished over a long period of time. There is an increasing trend to employees changing jobs more frequently, while employees in some cultures and economies stay with one job during their career. For example, an individual's career could involve being an engineer, though the

The author talks about the reason for working and doing jobs and writes about the importance of work. In this book Mr. Novak ties these fundamental queries by describing the meaning of work as a calling.

When one thinks of meaningful work, generally they think of labor that accomplishes a certain goal. They think of a prestigious job or occupation that has meaning to it. But meaningful work can mean a lot more than just a prestigious job or having meaning to something you do. Meaningful work can be as simple as feeding the birds in the park on a Saturday morning. It can be helping someone out or looking out for someone in need. Meaningful work can be defined as enjoyment of the worker, dedication of the worker to the job, and involvement that the worker shows toward his job.

Many people think that their jobs define them as a person. In Robert fulgham's essay he discusses how your job doesn't define you and the activities you do are. I agree with Robert fulgham's because I think the activities you do outside of work are the ones you love so I think that defines you. I think they feel that way because they have to choose something they think will satisfy them. They work many hours to become very successful to provide for their families. But then they are not fulfilled with their work and it is hard to enjoy what's the they do everyday. People also can have many opportunities outside of their work, by having other activities.When they have other activities this can create a more meaningful life. Personally, besides

While some aim at such career for the fortune and are utterly blinded by affluency, they are guaranteed a life of dissatisfaction when it comes to their everyday job. In my perceptive, a career shouldn’t be any job or obligation, but rather the pursuit of lifelong ambition and interest.

In 1980, Donald Super introduced a theory that described career development in terms of life stages and life roles. Super was one of the first theorists to discuss the constantly evolving nature of career development, and the importance of finding a balance between career and personal life. Super’s developmental model emphasized how personal experiences interact with occupational preferences in creating one’s self-concept. Super discussed how each of us progress through various life and career development stages, including growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement. He also discussed that each of us take on different roles as we go through life, such as a child, student, leisurite, citizen, worker, parent, and spouse. Each of these roles has an impact on our personal and professional development, and on our work/life balance. Finally, his “archway” of career determinants detailed how both personality characteristics (intelligence, needs, values) and societal characteristics (labor market, school, family) influence our career choices and have a major impact on our career development.

Employees are at work, but are they actually engaged in their jobs? In October 2013, The Gallup Organization conducted a survey with 230,000 full-time and part-time workers in 142 countries which consisted of 12 questions. According to Gallup’s latest findings, 87% of workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” and are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces (O'Boyle & Harter, 2013, p. 11). Most studies have broken the various types of workers into two groups, engaged and disengaged, but Gallup’s study has broken it down even further. They have determined that there are three types of employees: engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged (O'Boyle & Harter, 2013). The terms actively disengaged or not engaged are not

Career progression is the aim for most workers, but career development is not something most of us think regularly. But without proper understanding of what we want from our career and how we can achieve our goals quicker, we can quickly end up dissatisfied with our jobs.