Organizational Potential Assessment Process
Assessment programs consist of methods for evaluating employees potential for growth and development in the organization.
Organizations want to ensure that there are individuals available who are ready to fill key positions when these positions become vacant.
To this end, many organizations evaluate the potential or promotability of managerial, professional, and technical employees.
This is judged as high potential employees can then be groomed for these positions.
Some important methods under this category are as follows:
Development Musts For Todays Workplace
The days of all-day seminars led by droning instructors who subject participants to death by PowerPoint are gone. The world of employee learning and development has changed permanently for a few reasons:
- A growing dominance of Millennials and Generation Z employees in the workforce, who bring a more collaborative, interactive mindset and want information quickly and in short bursts. In general, they reject recorded, lengthy presentations.
- With the rise in virtual and hybrid workplaces, and the lingering reluctance of people to gather in person in large numbers, formal conferences and seminars are less popular than they were before the pandemic.
Companies simply cant use traditional employee development ideas and approaches anymore and expect a desirable return on investment.
Today, the most successful employee development initiatives align with these characteristics:
- Enhance employee engagement and boost retention by making them feel valued and supported
- Convey that your workplace is dynamic, receptive to new ideas and committed to forward progress another boon to retention
What works for employee development has undergone significant changes in recent years. Today, its all about being brief, focused, employee-centric, agile and relevant. All the employee development ideas presented here align with these trends. Better yet, theyre low-cost or free and easily within the reach of resourceful business leaders.
Opportunities For Human Resource Development
There are several accessible or affordable short courses that employees can take to build their skill set or polish existing skills.
These are video presentations that can take the form of workshops or lectures. The great thing about them is you do not need to book a big space or spend time, money, and person-hours planning them. They are also highly interactive and can be saved for those who missed them or even further reflection for those who attended. This makes them an evergreen form of content.
Employees can also pursue further studies by enrolling in degree or certification programs. In many cases, organizations offer tuition assistance.
Sometimes training is done during work hours. For example, working near a supervisor who watches new employees and guides them where necessary. Also, this can be through submitting assignments to a supervisor who offers constructive criticism.
Management can also organize workshops for their employees. These can be facilitated by the more highly trained employees or even hired consultants or facilitators. These workshops can be week-long so that facilitators can tackle several topics.
This can take the form of mentoring or coaching, as detailed above. These are the more informal or traditional kinds of human resource development.
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Dont Be Afraid To Revise
Dont worry if on reviewing your progress you find that things are moving slower than you expected or certain parts of your plan havent come together as planned. Your professional development plan will never be final or complete, and thats okay. Follow the plan as closely as possible, but dont be afraid to revise or update it as you go its all part of the learning process.
How Do You Plan Employee Engagement Activities
To plan employee engagement activities, you must first decide on an objective. Perhaps you want to foster employee bonds, encourage on-time office attendance, or make staff feel supported by leadership. Once you know your aim, find an activity that accomplishes that goal. For instance, perhaps you host a competition or launch a new benefit program. Be sure to announce the exercise through multiple methods, such as email, flyers, and manager mentions during meetings to attract maximum participation.
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Employees Need Professional Development To Reach Their Full Potential
According to ClearCompany, 74 percent of employees say that a lack of professional development is preventing them from reaching their full potential. That leaves many employees set up to feel undervalued and underdeveloped, inevitably resulting in a disengaged workforce and high turnover rates. Investing in people development allows your talent to feel good about growing their skills, and learning opportunities can translate into integral promotions that allow you to retain top talent.
How To Support Career Development
- Annually, conduct an individual development plan and career discussion with employees and require other supervisors in your department to do the same.
- Hold supervisors in your department accountable for supporting employee development efforts.
- Create programs and activities to provide skill development, such as job rotation, cross-training, mentoring, internships, coaching, and career strategy groups.
- Recognize that your role includes providing support and/or release time for staff members’ development beyond their current jobs.
- Support requests for flexible work arrangements from staff members.
- Serve as a role model by participating in career and professional development opportunities yourself.
- See staff members’ applications for other positions as a healthy sign of a dynamic workplace.
- Support lateral moves within your organization.
- Create job vacancy listings that allow for the most diverse applicant pool while honoring transferable skills.
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Celebrate Occasions In The Office
An effective way to keep employees engaged with their teams is by celebrating occasions in the workplace. These may be personal occasions, such as birthdays, work tenure anniversaries, or welcome parties. Teams can also celebrate public holidays or have small parties, but ensure you celebrate the holidays of all staff members to include everyone. You can even host parties for milestones of achievements individuals or teams reach in their roles. Celebrating accomplishments builds pride in staff members and motivates them to keep working hard.
Management And Leadership Training
According to the report, 32 percent of respondents said they were most interested in management and leadership training. Though this is a broad category, the effect of fostering confident leaders is unmistakable good managers can improve employee engagement and overall retention.
One of the best ways to encourage manager development is by offering online courses. At University of Massachusetts Global, for instance, professionals can enroll in classes like and . In addition to reviewing relevant case studies, students engage in interactive assignments and receive support from dedicated instructors. Webinars also offer an effective learning opportunity that allows employees to engage from their desks. For an in-person option, try hosting internal workshops that are run by high-level managers who share insight and offer practical tips.
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Ideas For Employee Development In 2022
Employee development is a critical driver of every business success. It keeps your team up to snuff with the industry trends and techniques, preventing your company from rolling downhill and being defeated by your direct competitors. Embracing a culture of continuous learning and development also attracts the best and brightest talent within your industry and ensures that they stick around for the longest time possible. But, as we all know, planning and implementing an effective employee development program isnt exactly an easy process. To help you out, weve done a little bit of research for you and compiled a list of 10 best ideas for employee development in 2021 that you can use as a guide to provide growth ideas for employees.
Supervisors And Career Counseling
Supervisors are increasingly being called upon to play a greater role in managing the career progress of their employees.
They may serve as a coach, advisor, performance appraiser, and referral agent.
To be effective in these roles, they should be trained as career coaches and mentors to help subordinates develop and implement their career plans in one on one counseling sessions.
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Why Career Development Training Programs Are Important
Ideally, learning and development should be a win-win. They can help your employees be more productive and streamline your processes, resulting in a better bottom line. Training also shows employees you value them enough to invest in their development, fostering a sense of validation that can translate into higher levels of satisfaction and retention.
Career Development Activities For Employers
Career development for employees helps people identify their skills and interests, learn how to use those skills in different situations, and develop new ones.
Despite the many benefits of career development activities for employers, many people are still confused about how to approach potential employers.
What career development activities are right for them? Luckily, there are many ways to get started.
These include stretch assignments, internship programs, skills inventory and Cross-Departmental Collaboration, etc.
The post explores some career development activities that employers should consider for the benefit of their employees and their organisations.
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Plan Specific Skills Training
Beware of training for trainings sake. Do not blindly throw training at your employees, just so you can check off a box on their annual review. It should have quantifiable value.
What is your vision for your organization? Your key initiatives for this year? What about individual employees career goals? When presented with a professional development opportunity, cast an analytical eye. Make sure the content and performance outcomes align with your organizational goals and your employees development plans.
Focus On Learning Soft Skills
Activity Level: High
Many of us spend so much time focusing on hard skills that we don’t think about the soft skills that make us a great employee. Skills like teamwork, empathy, and dependability can take us far in our careers.
The problem with learning soft skills? It isn’t as tangible as learning something like coding or interviewing. Soft skills take dedication, practice, and often it’s not easy to show how you’ve grown in these skills.
Take your time and focus on one soft skill you aren’t great at. How can you practice this skill weekly at work? What are some simple tasks that would make you a team player or more empathetic at work? Once you come up with a few activities, implement those strategies at work. Keep practicing, and you will see how your colleagues take notice of your work.
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Employee Development Ideas That Guarantee A Successful Workforce
Insights and ideas for people leaders
Stay informed with the biggest trends in workforce education.
Employee development has changed. In the past, it meant a company might encourage their employees to attend a conference or build new skills on their own time and with their own money.
However, forward-thinking businesses now recognize the need to invest additional time and resources into developing talent as a means to improve retention and advance the organization as a whole. Modern employee development programs are grounded in true career advancement opportunities that make a difference in the professional and personal lives of their people.
Dont let your business fall behind the curve. Below, we outline several employee development ideas that are guaranteed to help take your workforce further.
What Is A Career Action Plan
A career action plan is a detailed document created and maintained by young people to show their growing career development knowledge. Young people can use the plan to help them develop objectives. Specify the steps that must be taken to attain these objectives. Make a commitment to participate in the events that have been planned.
References
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Conflict Management And Resolution In The Workplace
In the workplace, disagreements are a normal part of the team development process and can be beneficial. Leaders and workers should manage conflict effectively so it does not negatively impact corporate operations or the teams relationships. Understanding the other partys viewpoint and coming up with solutions that benefit both parties is vital in conflict management. Taking a stand for what is morally correct and ethical might lead to conflict in the workplace.
A managers ability to deal with sensitive issues is crucial, and this training will help them learn:
- Proper communications in stressful circumstances and being courteous yet persistent to reach a peaceful resolution.
- Self-assessment of an issue to device tactful solutions
- Vital qualities like self-discipline, fairness, understanding, tolerance, and empathy to handle difficult circumstances while also demonstrating a strong work ethic.
Managers that are proficient in these three areas will be ableto cope with more complex problems that need collaboration, interpersonal skills, and clear communication.
Here is a list of conflict-resolution activities.
Join An Online Community
Technology has made networking easier than ever before, and online communities and platforms have become important tools for professional development.
For instance, joining a specific group on LinkedIn or signing up for online forums and discussion boards will allow you to exchange ideas with likeminded individuals and participate in relevant discussions, while Twitter can help you to connect with key people in your industry and track relevant hashtags to see whats trending.
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Start It Right With A Good Onboarding Experience
Never underestimate the power of a great onboarding experience. After all, it is the prime and perhaps the only opportunity to impress your new employees to convince them to stay for long in your organization. According to the most recent statistics presented by UrbanBound, companies with an inclusive onboarding program benefit with 50% higher new hire retention. Plus, they also experience a whopping 54% greater new hire productivity. What these numbers tell the L& D communities is to dedicate a lot of attention to their onboarding program and make it their top priority for their employee development in 2021.
First things first, establish open lines of communication as soon as your new hires accept the job offer. It is essential that you inform them right away of your companys goal, mission, policies and procedures, and most importantly, your expectation from them. You can also improve their onboarding experience by leveraging modern technology to share pertinent information with them. For this purpose, look no further than EdApp, a free LMS that takes pride in its advanced and user-friendly interface. You can use its drag-and-drop authoring tool and Canva integration to create engaging, beautiful onboarding training materials, instead of simply handing them over mountains of boring modules and long PDFs.
Company Culture Is Key For Development
You probably noticed that there were some activities that applied to both managers and employees, like values, accountability, feedback, training, etc. Thats because those activities are important components of company culture. Organizations that want employees at every level to own their career development need to create cultures that engage both managers and employees.
When managers and employees are engaged, managers are coaching employees to perform at a high-level and employees are empowered to take the lead in their development. The organization takes action when feedback and suggestions are made to improve the working environment. Its a win for everyone.
P.S. If youre interested in learning how human resources can influence a culture where employees take ownership of their careers, the HighGround team is hosting a webinar on How HR Can Build a Self-Energized Workforce for a More Sustainable Business. Its scheduled for Tuesday, October 25 at 3p Eastern. You can find registration details here. And if you cant make it on Tuesday, the webinar will be recorded, so register to get a link to the archive. Hope you can join us!
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How Can We Ensure More Women Are Offered Professional Development Opportunities To Suit Their Needs
Craig: Gender equality really begins at the top. Unless the board, CEO and executive team genuinely believe in and drive gender equality in all its forms, usually companies will struggle to realise true equality. This also applies to professional development opportunities for women, who often need a sponsor in the executive ranks to help mentor them and pull them up through the organisation to help provide them with/recommend them to the right opportunities to advance their careers. Women also need more experience outside typically softer functions such as HR and marketing, and move more into harder business roles such as finance and operations to help them round out their business experience and advance into more senior roles.
How Do I Make Room For Career Development In My Life
When you look at this list, it might seem a bit overwhelming. Instead of getting overwhelmed, take a few minutes to block off an hour of your life every week for career development. During that hour, you can tackle one of the low activity tasks or start work on a medium/high activity task.
I would suggest picking the day/time you will do this career development and adding it to your calendar so that other people don’t schedule over it.
Before you know it, taking time for career development will just make sense for you. You might even want to increase the amount of time you spend on career development each week.
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Establish A Rotational Program
Rotational programs allow employees to work on various projects across departments for several weeks to a few months at a time. It is especially beneficial to new hires as they become acquainted with your company. The program helps new hires understand the different facets of your business and get to know their colleagues.
Still, a rotational program can benefit tenured employees. Temporarily working in a different department encourages knowledge transfer, which employees can use to improve processes between teams. Employees may also discover new interests or passions that they can nurture into valuable skills. Furthermore, a brief hiatus from their daily responsibilities can challenge and reinvigorate employees, encouraging them to flex different muscles and approach their role from a new perspective.
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