Professional development options for happy and engaged employees

As a business owner or CEO how do you ensure your team are receiving the training and opportunities they need? Are you doing enough to keep your staff engaged?

When it comes to training and development there are plenty of options. But what is best for your team and your business?

• Who should be doing which training?
• What sort of professional development would be most suitable?
• How do you make sure the training is effective?
• Should you even worry about personal development opportunities?

It can get confusing.

Make no mistake… there is a definite impact on your business from either providing, or not providing, professional and personal development for staff.

Stuart Ayling

Research into the Millennial (Gen Y) cohort clearly shows that staff who don’t feel as though they are improving their skills won’t stay around in your business. At least the good ones won’t!

And it’s not only Gen Y who feel like that. Many people want to improve themselves and feel more productive.

Unsatisfied staff = disengaged workforce

If your team don’t feel like they are valued or aren’t getting a sense of achievement from their work (including their professional and personal development) you can expect to see classic symptoms of a disengaged workforce such as:

• No initiative, lacking motivation to do their job
• Lack of interest in helping others
• Finding fault with others, or with the way the business operates
• Poor attendance
• Lack of learning

From experience working with many businesses here are a few thoughts that are probably relevant for you and your team. Of course, the idea is to review the options and choose the ones that best suit your team and your style of business.

(1) Offer a dual track development journey

A practical approach to maximising the employee experience, as well as creating a high-performance team, is to implement a Dual Track Development Journey. The dual track is:

Role-Based development combined with Career-Based development

 Role-based development includes essential and advanced skills and knowledge required to improve performance in the role the team member now holds.

Career-based development addresses a selected number of development options drawn from a suite of capabilities deemed important for the career path of the individual.

Here are some learning options you could include in a development plan:

• Studying an online course (e.g. a training session on LinkedIn Learning or free MOOC from a university).
• Attending external training courses.
• Signing up for ecourses delivered via email.
• Individual activities focusing on specific skills.
• Receiving mentoring from a suitable colleague.
• Attending specific industry events to learn from industry leaders and others considered to be influencers in their field.
• Reading relevant books or ‘thought leader’ resources (and sharing their insights with others).
• Receiving regular on-the-job coaching from their team leader.
• Learning more about the business and your clients by shadowing colleagues in various parts of the business or spending time onsite with clients.

Create and balance expectations

Within the development journey it’s important to create and maintain the balance of expectations for team members. It could be easy for them to develop a sense of entitlement; that they should be able to access every development opportunity that is available.

However, some opportunities, especially career-based options, should be available to those who earn it. That is, to team members who are reaching predefined performance standards.

(2) Create escalating leadership opportunities

If you have a team of suitable size it could also be a good idea to establish a variety of leadership-related development opportunities. Keep in mind that ‘leadership’ doesn’t need to mean only the higher level decision-makers in your business. Think about opportunities that could help an individual get some experience managing the team they are now a member of, or having the responsibility of contributing to a broader company project.

For example, this path could provide opportunities with increasing levels of responsibility, such as:

Level 1: Outstanding performance in own role (an essential first step)
Level 2: Participate in company projects
Level 3: Take the lead on certain projects
Level 4: Influence future projects

Want to discover more?

If you would like to discuss these ideas further or get some professional insight into how you can introduce these ideas into your organisation please get in touch to request a complimentary discovery session. Contact us to find out more.