life transitions, career decisions, and the workplace plateauing case of the plateaued performer...

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplacePlateauing

Case of the Plateaued Performer

Cast

• Benjamin Petersen: President and Chairman, 61

• George Briggs: VP Marketing, 53

• Tom Evans: National Sales Manager, 34

• Victor Perkins VP HR /Personnel, 39

• You are Victor Perkins, head of HR. You have asked to see CEO Benjamin Petersen because you are concerned about the increasing tension between George Briggs and Tom Evans? What advice will you give Petersen ?

• You are Benjamin Petersen, CEO. After thinking about the Evans/Briggs situation, you have asked to see George Briggs. You want to respond to his request to transfer Tom Evans to HR. You are looking to provide him some support and direction.

• You are Victor Perkins, head of HR and you have scheduled a meeting with George Briggs. You know he has been mulling over the situation and is waiting for Petersen to provide an answer to his recommendation that Tom Evans be transferred to personnel. What will you try to accomplish in that meeting?

• You are Victor Perkins, HR. Tom Evans has asked for your advice on how to deal with Briggs who seems to be over-managing recently? What would you like to accomplish in that meeting? What points would you like Evans to walk away with? What would you like to learn more about?

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceAge and Generational Influences

Plateaued Performer Discussions

Proposed Solutions

• Move Tom Evans to personnel, engineering, or finance

• Focus Briggs’ attention on VP of Marketing job

• Coaching for Briggs to focus on long-range, strategic aspects of marketing and coordination with other functional groups

• Send Briggs to an executive program

• Send Petersen to an executive program

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceAge and Generational Influences

Life Transitions, Career Decisions, and the WorkplaceWork and Family

Individual Responses to Plateauing

• A developmental perspective about work helps one become psychologically prepared for plateauing.

• The need to shift attention from how one is doing in comparison to others to recognize economic, demographic, and organizational forces that create plateauing.

• Acceptance of limits frees up energy and sets the stage for experimentation.

• An opportunity to change a definition of success.• Productivity and generativity often follows a period of stagnation.• Distinguishing between letting go of illusions and not giving up

hope, and a quest for new challenges, ambitions.


Organizational Responses to Plateauing

• Culture that provides opportunities not dependent on promotion.

• Candid feedback

• Visibility in the organization

• Job redesign to create flexibility

• Learning / training opportunities

• Use projects and project teams for development

• Creative use of reward and recognition systems

• Develop more generalists

• Job rotation programs

• Network in other departments

• Mentoring systems

• Communication channels and processes to address plateauing

• Line staff as instructors


The Business Case - (1989)

• Work force demographics have changed resulting in competition for workers\

• Employee perceptions and expectations are changing.

• Evidence that inflexibility has an adverse effect on productivity

• Growing concern about health and education of children

from “Business and the Facts of Family Life” (Rodgers & Rodgers)

Workforce Trends – (2007)

• Shrinking pool of skilled labor

• Changing family structures

• Increasing number of women

• Changing expectations of men

• Evolving expectations of Gen X and Gen Y

• Increasing impact of technology

From “Mass Career Customization” C. Benko, A. Weisberg



Responding to Social Diversity (Lotte Bailyn, Working with Careers)

• Changing view of “non-traditional” worker

• Traditional organizational assumptions about employees

hinder response to a diverse working population.

• Concept of “negotiated careers”


Evolution of Non-Traditional Employees

• Initially applied to employees of “wrong sex” moving into traditionally sex-segregated occupational roles.

• We now accept that interests and skills within sexes is at least as great as work-related differences between the sexes.

• Today, the “non-traditional” employee has more to do with different roles and different expectations brought to the workplace.

• Men in dual-career families are just as “non-traditional” in technical and managerial roles as women.


Traditional Organizational Assumptions

• Family Patterns Are Traditional

• Employees Should Be Totally Work Involved

• Everyone Wants to Move Up• Within a Given Job Role Category, Employees Orientation

to Work and Career Are Similar and Unchanging


Family Patterns Are Traditional

• Employee families comprise a single wage earner with home support.

• “Fast trackers” are developed with the assumption that the employee has a family support system.

• There is a basic conflict between establishing a career and establishing a family. The resolution of the contradiction is that the two tasks belong to different people in the family system.

• An alternative view is the “slow burn” or apprenticeship model (L. Bailyn) in which slow but continuous movement through a career is more productive than initial surges followed by plateaus.


Employees Should Be Totally Work Involved

• Effective performance means a primary commitment to work with other involvements having to take a secondary role.

• For jobs lacking clear measures of output, there is a tendency to look for measures of “commitment.”

• Signs of commitment and involvement can be judged by time spent at work (“face time”) and willingness to take on assignments.

• These factors are substitute indicators of good performance.

• These assumptions have predictable and negative consequences for “non-traditional” employees trying to balance work and family.


Everyone Wants to Move Up

• Organizational norms, culture, and reward systems are based on idea that progression up the hierarchy is the definition of success.

• Some performance evaluation systems reinforce this assumption with an emphasis on potential for advancement.

Within a Given Job Role Category, Employees Orientations Are Similar and Unchanging

• All employees in a given job role have the same career orientation and aspirations.

• One’s interest and commitment to an occupational role is constant.


Case Background

• Recent business history at Sayer Microworld

• John Edmonds management style

• Charles Foley work and family background

• Staff profile at Microworld

• Lisa Walters background and work style

• Kathyrn McNeil: background, expectations, job duties

• McNeil – work and family challenges

• The meeting

• Performance management and escalating problems

• Charles Foley’s concerns



Case: Kathryn McNeil

1. What assumptions do you see operating in this case inthis company?

2. As a work/family consultant what observations and recommendations would you have for:

a. Charles Foleyb. Kathyrn McNeilc. Lisa Waltersd. John Edmonds

3. Specifically, what would you recommend that Charles Foley do regarding Lisa’s request to fire Kathyrn?

4. What are some other creative ways that this problem could be solved or avoided?


Impact of Assumptions

• Assumptions about homogeneity (sameness) rather than diversity result in inflexible organizational responses and policies.

- life circumstances- expectations- motivations- ways to meet the requirements of a job role

• Assumptions that work behavior is solely determined by personal traits and competencies means that it is unnecessary to question organizational policies and procedures when “inappropriate” responses occur.


Workplace Barriers

• Rigid Adherence to a 40-hour work week

• Career paths concept inconsistent with life cycle of individuals with serious family responsibilities

• Beliefs about equity from different era

• Performance evaluation systems that confuse efforts with results by equating hours of work with productivity

Business and the Facts of Family Life – Rodgers & Rodgers


Organizational Challenges

• Dependent care– Infants– Children– Adolescents, – Elderly

• Greater flexibility– Hours and location of work– Career paths that allow for family and professional development

• Validation of family issues as an organizational concern– Company statements

– Manager training


Negotiated Careers• With varied life patterns developing, no way of relating family

to work receives the support that the traditional pattern once did.

• Are there ways to bring employee preferences and organizational needs together in differentiated ways?

• Need to match level of occupational investment with level of job complexity and responsibility.

• Shift to thinking about careers as distinct “chunks” rather than a continuous line.

• Periodic negotiation of careers at different stages would create more discontinuity in career paths, but make them more responsive to the cycle of family needs.

L. Bailyn 1989

Mass Career Customization


Pace: choices regarding rate of career progression

Workload: options related to quantity of work output

Location / Schedule: choices about where and when work is done

Role: options regarding position and responsibilities

Benko, Weisberg 2007

FWA or Systemic Change?


Flexible Work Arrangements

• Flex-time• Reduced hours / part-time• Compressed work week• Job sharing• Telecommuting• Banking of hours• Leaves, sabbaticals• Gradual retirement

Mass CareerCustomization

• Dial up – dial down• Career “lattice”• Adapt career progression• Variation in:

o Paceo Workloado Roleo Location

Focused primarily on hours and work location

Incorporates a career and talent management perspective

Piloting Mass Career Customization

• Consistency doesn’t necessarily mean

• Requests go both ways

• Enablement not entitlement

• Learn a new language

• Time and trust

• Integrate with talent processes

• Success is relative to current goals

• Measure

From “Mass Career Customization” C. Benko, A. Weisberg



Key Questions About Balance

Ongoing IntegrationBalance as an integrated process throughout one’s career ?

PhasesBalance achieved in phases of work / life ?


Dual Career Patterns(Sekaran and Hall)

Sequential Pattern– Motherhood-follows-employment

– Employment-brackets-motherhood

– Employment-follows-motherhood

Simultaneous Pattern (parenthood parallels employment)

– Pre-launching stage

– Young married childless couple stage

– Young parenthood stage

– Mature parenthood stage

– Empty nest stage


Asynchronism (Sekaran and Hall)

The experience of being “off schedule” in relationship to an organization’s or society’s timetable for development

• Organizational Asycnhronism– Age and time expectations about career progress

• Couple Asynchronism– Career progression in relationship to each other

– Careers starting later, or, progress at different rates

• Family Asynchronism – Establishing family in relationship to cultural expectations

life transitions, career decisions, and the workplace plateauing case of the plateaued performer...

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