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'Meeting workplace skill needs: the career development contribution' was a three year project with the aim of providing employers, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with practical and effective career development programs that would contribute to employee motivation and retention. Career development programs are traditionally not widely used in SMEs (organisations with less than 500 employees) or in Canadian workplaces more broadly. This study explored the impacts of innovative career development programs as human resource tools and the benefits to both employees and to the SMEs themselves. The project involved extensive research and the development and evaluation of the impact of three career development programs: (1) Assessment and Development of Competencies; (2) Career Conversations; and (3) My Career GPS.

Career conversations are considered as being a type of career development intervention that occurs between managers (in this paper the term is used synonymously with the term supervisor) and employees. The literature on this topic is summarized in this paper starting with an overview of how career-related dialogue between managers and employees are conceptualized and defined. A particular type of career related dialogue (mentoring) that occurs between employees rather than between a manager and employee, will be discussed and compared to career conversations. The general value of career conversations will be discussed along with the identification of specific outcomes. The issue of whether career related conversations are relevant for particular groups of employees and the issue regarding who is responsible for employee career development will be considered. The processes utilized during career related dialogues between managers and employees will be summarized along with the types of manager training programmes that have been offered. Lastly, research conducted to evaluate the effectiveness or value of this type of workplace career intervention will be discussed.

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