Career Planning and Development: The Realities in Nigerian Organizations

Abstract

Abstract: Employees are veritable sources of competitive advantage and planning and developing their careers is beneficial to both the organization and the employees. This study focuses on whether organizations in Nigeria give premium to career planning and development activities; the programmes engaged in and the perceived effectiveness of programmes generally. The investigation, which adopted a cross sectional survey and utilized structured questionnaire and interviews, centred on 10 firms in Rivers State, Nigeria. Data generated were analysed using descriptive statistics, specifically percentages and means, and simple regression. The results indicate that organizations recognize the need to invest in people and do embark on career planning and development programmes but employees do not perceive programmes as overly effective. Also, although firms recognize employees as important assets for organization success, they do not give as much attention to personal needs of employees as they do corporate needs. This is potentially counterproductive. Thus, we recommend the full incorporation of employees needs in career development activities so as to address the issues of employability of employees and long term competitiveness of organizations. Key words: Career planning resources; Career development programmes; Investing in people; Personal needs of employees; Employability; Perceived effectiveness; Nigeria organization