S To Career Development For Employees
Are you in tune with your employees goals and aspirations? Todays workforce expects more guidance and feedback than ever before. As their employer, you should be exploring plans surrounding career development for employees.
Taking this step can be good for everyone. Learn why career development is important to both your employees and your business.
Improve Your People Management Skills
An important component to generating innovation in your workplace is being able to collaborate with your team. Despite your assigned level of leadership within your organization, being proactive in leading by example in your willingness to be a team player and actuate progress in the people working with you is essential to the success of your team.
Therefore, being an influential employee who can manage peopleeven if its not done in an official manneris a significant skill to have in todays work environment. Effective people management skills are necessary for both current and future leaders who want to improve efficiency and communication at work. Building the skills that are required in order to effectively manage others can help you uncover your strengths as well as find areas in which you could improve.
How to Achieve This Goal
Here are a few examples of how you can practice your people management skills, even if you arent their designated manager:
Here is a video that explains some more ways you can improve your people management skills.
Make 10 Meaningful Connections Within Your Industry
Having a strong network of persons within your industry can help with your career development. This will ensure that you are interacting with like-minded individuals.
Alternatively, this interaction will keep you up to date on what is happening within your industry.
You can explore meetup.com or joining organisations such as Toastmasters to connect with professionals in your field.
Additionally, you can explore events hosted by organisations such as the Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
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Tips For Choosing Training Topics
Because there are training classes focused on almost every topic related to the workplace, it can be challenging to decide which ones are the best use of your time. If you have the opportunity to suggest a training topic for your team or pick out a training class for yourself, try using these tips to decide:
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Consider your passions: Consider topics that interest you, regardless of whether they fit traditional expectations for your job. Many companies offer training materials that use unconventional or creative subjects to enhance workplace skills.
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Review past training: If you’ve already participated in professional development training, look at the schedule to determine what topics you’ve already addressed. You can pursue follow-ups to a class you enjoyed or look for gaps in the issues you’ve already discussed.
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Browse your performance reviews: Look at past performance reviews or perform a personal inventory of skills to see what areas you could improve on, and look for topics on those subjects.
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What Are The Essential Employee Development Areas
The most effective way to run an employee development program is to follow a plan that covers transferable skillsets across a broad range of topics:
- Leadership management skills, strategic planning, mentoring
- Communication conflict resolution, collaboration, public speaking
- Creativity brainstorming, critical thinking, pattern identification
- Organization time management, prioritization, scheduling)
- Flexibility cross-training, knowledge sharing, improvisation
In addition to the areas listed above, a good employee development program can also include topics that promote health and wellness, such as fitness, mindfulness, stress management, and even personal finances.
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Make The Workplace Inclusive
One key element to consider when seeking to promote employee growth and development is to work towards having an inclusive workplace.
It is quite common in many workplaces to find that certain employees will not come forward, speak up, or take opportunities such as training or mentoring because they do not feel truly a part of the team.
Inclusive Leadership training can be a great idea, particularly for managers.
It is the managers and team leaders who need to generate an inclusive environment so that each employee feels that they have a voice and confidence to step forward.
You can click on the image below to read our post onhow to create an inclusive workplace for all employees.
Encourage Mentoring And Job Shadowing
Establishing a formal mentoring program might be one of the smartest moves a company can make at any time for itself as well as for its workers personal and professional growth. Mentoring can also be an effective tool for onboarding remote staff.
Though often seen as a transfer of knowledge from tenured team members to less-seasoned employees, mentoring in the workplace is a two-way street. While senior staff members can offer hard-earned insights and professional guidance to less-experienced colleagues, they also can benefit from the fresh perspectives and technological know-how of up-and-coming employees.
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What Is Career Development And Why Is It Important
Career development is the process of aligning your personal learning and development with career advancement opportunities. Career development is important because work plays a vital role in our lives, so your work should align with your values and uplift and fulfill you.
Both you and your employer play a role in career development. While its ultimately your responsibility to take charge of your professional life, many employers offer opportunities to employees because when they learn and enhance their skills, everyone benefits.
Learning new skills can help you succeed in your current role, it can help you prepare for promotions, or it can let you test and trial pivots into new career pathways. And there are benefits for companies as well. Companies with the best training programs:
- Improve employee retention
- Improve employee engagement
Examples Of Development Programs For Employees From Award
Real-life examples of learning and development programs to promote growth in the Year of the Tiger.
Astrologists say the year ahead will be filled with changes and risk-taking, adventure and enthusiasm. After two long years of pandemic life which has felt far too much like Groundhog Day that sounds like just what we all need right now.
This is most certainly true for employers navigating the new normal of workplace culture.
How do you help employees grow while theyre working remote or hybrid?
How do you ensure equal opportunity for staff with differing personal goals?
And how do you keep employees on an upward career path within your organization, so they wont succumb to the Great Resignation?
If these sound like tall orders, its because they are. But in the Year of the Tiger, the best workplaces are harnessing that energy and using it to help their employees thrive and make their company cultures even better.
How do you help employees grow while theyre working remote or hybrid?
We are inspired by the growth programs of Certified great workplace. Here are 5 great examples of training and development programs for employees that you can look to for inspiration in your own workplace.
1. Cultural classes and language lessons: Abbott Laboratories
Their Cultural Navigator is an online tool that provides guidance on business practices, management tools, social etiquette, cultural norms and customs for more than 100 countries.
3. Career coaching: Mutual of Omaha
Fortune
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Companies With Awesome Training And Development Programs
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If youre looking for a career and not just any old job, set your sights on a company that invests in its employees by offering training and development programs. Research shows both companies and employees reap the benefits, including increased job satisfaction levels, internal promotion opportunities and better retention.
According to a report by Training Magazine, companies in the U.S. spend an average $4.5 billion on training and development programs for employeesso make sure you cash in on this opportunity. Check out these 10 companies offering programs that will help train you to be a better leader, manager and team player.
Explore Mentorship Programs And Develop Leadership Skills
The next employee development idea involves finding a corporate senpai!
Just kidding kind of.
What I really mean here is to establish a mentorship program in your organization. The close supervision and one-on-one learning experiences offered by such can greatly benefit employees along their professional path.
In a mentor-mentee relationship, the mentor shares their experiences and expertise, providing guidance and support that a mentee can utilize while going about their assigned tasks. This is particularly useful for leadership training.
And beyond managers and supervisors, senior or other higher-ranking employees can also participate in peer mentoring.
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Evaluate Your Efforts And Solicit Feedback
Depending on the material, the immediate benefits of employee development can be difficult to gauge. You probably wont see new deals close overnight as a result of sales training, but you will see substantially higher close rates and employee retention in the long run.
The strongest indicator of success will be your employees responses. Because professional development opportunities are drivers of employee engagement, conducting regular employee engagement surveys is an effective way to measure your team members interest in and happiness with your professional development offerings.
Ensure managers routinely check in on their direct reports progress. Is additional training required to master a particular skill? Did they discover a more efficient way to tackle their responsibilities? Which learning opportunities did they enjoy the most, and which did they dislike? Managers should adjust the individual employees development plan accordingly and communicate big picture ideas to leadership so they can modify the company-wide strategy.
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Consider A Peer Mentoring Program
A peer mentoring program can do a lot for your business and your team, from providing a powerful employee training resource for newbies, to building employee loyalty and fostering a culture of belonging. A mentoring program can also help build leadership skills for both junior and senior employees, so tap into your resources! Employees helping their peers strengthen their skills is a concept thats tough to pass up.
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Use Technology To Your Advantage
Its crucial for employees to keep pace with societal and technological developments. Since rapid technology advancements impact most industries, professionals armed with diverse skills and abilities offer more flexibility and value to employers than those whose learning has stagnated.
With the advent of technology and online learning, its easier and more inexpensive than ever to foster a culture of learning in the workplace, Ridner said.
Motivation To Meet Goals
When a company expresses clear goals and standards, it may motivate employees to meet those goals to make progress in their career path. For this reason, it’s important for an organization to provide employees with ongoing support, training and development opportunities. These opportunities motivate and inspire employees to improve their professional skills and organizational knowledge so they can meet their goals.
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Provide Resources And Tools
To prepare employees to make progress on their career paths, provide resources and tools for professional growth. You might incorporate training sessions or development opportunities for employees to expand their skills. It’s also helpful to create projects that challenge the employee to practice using the skills they’ve learned in their current role.
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Why Do You Need To Continuously Develop Your Workforce
All employees benefit from continued development regardless of their specific skill set, specialty, or focus, their roles and responsibilities are constantly changing, and thus require the employee to evolve and adapt to these challenges.
This guide will not cover any of the technical skills mainly because technical skills can contain many different sub-skills, and all of these sub-skills are equally important.
Organizations benefit just as much as the employee, if not more, from continued development.
The need to be competitive with similar organizations and remain profitable is what drives companies to invest in their employees because of the rapidly changing environment and technologies, the only way to achieve that is to constantly develop employees through Continuous Learning.
While some organizations want people with very basic skills and others are looking for people with lots of experience and expertise, both types of employees reap the rewards, thanks to a focus on much broader areas of development for employee growth.
Imagine a creative and flexible team with exceptional work ethic, capable of solving problems, communicative and able to prioritize and multi-task! Everyone wins the employee AND the organization.
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Regular And Continuous Training
An effective training program increases efficiency in the companys work and gains aprofitable output. Moreover, it reduces the investment in the program and helps the employees to excelin soft skills training, thereby improving employee behavior and interaction with their colleagues.
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Wake Up 30 Minutes Earlier
Waking up early, energized, and with a purpose is a huge key to success. The most successful people are known for waking up early and getting a strong start to their day. Because of this, a great personal goal that could really enhance your life in all domains is to start waking up earlier than youre used to.
Set your alarm to get up earlyat least 30 minutes before usual. There are many benefits to being an early riser, such as giving yourself time to eat a healthy breakfast, get some exercise, or complete some productive work before other people are awake and the chaos of your day begins. Waking up earlier than is necessary gives you quiet time to focus on anything that is important to you.
Studies have shown that people who wake up early tend to procrastinate less and get ahead of the game as opposed to their later-sleeping counterparts. So, if you want to get ahead, this is one simple change you can make that can give you a head start.
How to Achieve This Goal
The first step to being able to wake up early is to make sure youre going to bed at a reasonable time and getting a good nights sleep. If you try to go to bed at the same time every night, you will eventually start to wake up at the same time each morning, without needing an alarm clock.
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Stage 2 Exploring Options
The second stage of the Career Development Plan comprises analyzing the gap and examining the appropriate career options.
1. The gap
To complete the gap evaluation process, you need to research your goal career intensively. You can consult leading professionals at your workplace or in other circles you might have access to for the appropriate advice.
What Is Staff Development
Staff Development is a process of improving someones skills, experiences, competencies to make them better employees so they can take on greater responsibility at work.
The purpose of developing staff is to make them more valuable and productive within the organisation.
The development of staff can be achieved through career pathing which is a structured system that identifies how employees move from one level to another within an organization.
It can also be achieved through developmental assignments such as rotational programs, training, coaching mentorship and feedback.
The role of the manager in the development of staff is to be a facilitator and coach. A manager can help employees develop skills, self-awareness, and confidence that will make them grow to become more productive members of your team.
The best staff development ideas are those that are tailored to the individuals needs and team requirements.
You cant just put all employees in a seminar or training room and expect it to work for everyone in your team because every employee has a different set of needs which should be addressed individually.
Here are 15 ideas for staff development that will expand their skills:
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Pursue Ongoing Professional Development
This is another personal development goal that will keep you on top of your game at work. Employers are often reluctant to invest the money in sending their employees to seminars or conferences, but engaging in professional development will help you maintain your competence in your field and excel when faced with the competition.
This continuing professional development can take the form of listening to the best business podcasts and reading the best business books.
Ensuring that your professional skills remain up-to-date in our rapidly changing world is critical to your long-term success. Your education certainly doesnt stop with your diploma, and staying abreast of changing trends in your industry will help you be an in-demand candidate for prospective future employers.
How to Achieve This Goal
You can engage in continuous learning on your own by seeking out opportunities for webinars and new research and things of that nature. You can also look for senior executives at your job whose job may be your goal to obtain one day and ask if you can spend some time shadowing them to learn what they do on an everyday basis.
Idea #: Invest In Your Career
Investing in your career is one of the best things you can do for your future. It can help you develop new skills, advance in your career, and earn a higher salary.
There are many ways to invest in your career, such as taking courses, attending conferences, and networking. You can also invest in your career by developing a strong online presence.
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