The Glass Ceiling Research Paper Example

The Glass Ceiling Research Paper Example The Glass Ceiling Paper The Glass Ceiling Paper Despite the advances that have been made in creating equal employment opportunities, discrimination still exists. Minorities, women and the protected class members rise only so high but go no further; this may be described as the Glass Ceiling an invisible but real barrier to upward mobility. The Glass Ceiling is constructed from organisation culture, stereotype thinking and managerial attitudes. When an organisation precludes an individual from advancing as far as they can, both the organisation and the individuals lose. Shattering the glass ceiling would allow for the organisation to develop effective ways of eliminating foregoing mobility barriers, make greater use of selection plans and by moving away from casual, subjective methods (such as typical promotability ratings, quick reviews of personnel files, supervisory informal recommendations) and also pay close attention to the types of KSAOs necessary for advancements and establish programs to communicate these KSAOs to those employees. Disadvantages of the glass ceiling could be excessive turnover this may be a result of employees who find themselves in dead-end jobs or who discover that there are severely limited promotional opportunities, as a result employees are prone to leave the organisation. Another disadvantage would be increased recruiting costs, in that excessive turnover increases recruiting costs: constant and sometimes intensive efforts are required just to keep the position filled, if a companys reputation states that it lacks interest in the career of its employees, the recruiting task becomes more expensive and more difficult. Underutilization of talent may be another disadvantage, in that the absence of career-centered developmental activities that are available may not be used efficiently. Employees may be hired to do a particular job, with little or no thought given to other jobs for which they could be trained and developed. Employee dissatisfaction is also a disadvantage of the glass ceiling; this is a result of the employment expectations not being filled and so employees become de-motivated, unsatisfied and their productivity declines. Another disadvantage could be poor promotional decision based on favoritism, politics and other inconsequential factors rather than on performance, preparation and organisational needs. Moreover, when the wrong persons are promoted for the wrong reasons, it will place a negative impact on the organisation, due to their job performance. Other disadvantage includes Potential Discrimination where in the absence of formulized career planning and development, promotion decisions may tend to be made on the basis of non-relevant job factors (such as stereotype and friendships). Stymied Progression, where for every employee whose upward mobility is precluded, one or more other employees cannot progress because the employee whose progress is stymied blocks the promotion channel.  The consequence of not engaging in career planning and development has underscored the need for a formulized program. Career management should not be left to chance because the organisational risk of doing so is too great. Conclusion The selection of internal candidates follows a process very similar to the selection of external candidates as both methods includes a logic of prediction which states that indicators of a person degree of success in past situations should be predictive of how successful he or she will likely to be in new situations. This is applied and based on this information a selection plan is developed and implemented. One area in which there is a huge difference in internal and external methods is the nature of the predictor. Predictors used for internal selection tend to have greater depth and more relevance and are better suited for verification as a result there are often different types of predictors used for internal than for external selection decisions. The methods that were in selecting the internal candidates were the Initial Assessment Methods, Substantive Assessment Method and Discretionary Assessment Method, which occur at different stages in the selection process. The initial assessment methods that were used to narrow down the applicant pool to a qualified set of candidates were skills inventory, peer assessment, informal discussions and recommendations. The next method in the selection process is the Substantive Assessment method. This assessment is used to select finalists from the list of candidates. The predictors used for making this decision were seniority and experience, job knowledge tests, performance appraisal, promotability rating and lastly interview simulation. In order to narrow down to those who will receive job offers the discretionary assessment method is used. Multiple assessors are generally used with internal selection, simply put not only the hiring managers opinion are used to select who will receive the job but the views of others such as previous manager or top management.  In making job offers there are legal issues to be taken into consideration. Two areas for internal selection are the Uniformed Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedure (UGESP) and Glass ceiling. The UGESP ensures that internal selection methods are valid if adverse impact is occurring. Reference List Dessler G., (2005). Human Resource Management, 10th edition. Prentice Hall.  Heneman H. G. III Judge T, A., (2007). Staffing Organization, 5th edition. McGraw- Hill Irwin.