7 Ways to Improve Employee Development at Your Company

The company is as good as its employees. When you focus on the development of the employees you are also investing in the future of the company.
7 Ways to Improve Employee Development at Your Company
By
Kristin Savage

Employee development also helps with nourishing a better employee-employer relationship. Why is that? Well, if the employees see that a company is supporting their personal and professional development it will lead to increased loyalty, advancement opportunities, and improved performance.

According to LinkedIn’s report, 94% of employees claim that they’d stay longer in the company if it invested in their development. Retaining your employees and building a team of dedicated and engaged employees can be accomplished through employee development.

If the employees see that a company is supporting their personal and professional development it will lead to increased loyalty, advancement opportunities, and improved performance.

If you want to improve the employee development process, here are a few suggested ways.

1. Add Online Training

With the growing number of online course possibilities, it would be a shame not to take advantage of it. Forget about expensive trips or waiting for a workshop leader to come and help you out. You can find everything you need online.

Online training can provide the employees with a complete training program for a new member of your team or it can help current employees to learn or perfect a certain skill.

Online training doesn’t have to completely replace in-person training. However, it can be a simple, versatile, and more affordable solution.

2. Start with Mentoring

Mentoring can be beneficial to the company in many aspects. It can help with welcoming and educating new employees but it can also help with strengthening employee loyalty.

Mentoring or coaching programs shouldn’t be reserved just for newbies. Whenever an employee gets transferred to a new position or maybe when they get a new project to work on, they should be provided with assistance.

Asking the employees some simple questions regularly can be very helpful. The questions can be:

  • Are you having trouble with some aspect of your work?
  • Is there anything new that you want to learn?
  • What are your current accomplishments within this project?

👌 Pro tip: set up pulse surveys to get this feedback from your employees on an ongoing basis.

Through such questions, the employees will know that they have someone to turn to. Besides, they’ll have an opportunity to get to know their strengths and weaknesses.

3. Deploy Cross-Departmental Development

When employees have an understanding of how every department has a meaningful contribution to the company, the workplace relationships will be better. They will no longer argue with the co-worker who has some troubles, because they’ll know which problems can occur in that sector. This is why cross-departmental development is important.

Not only will employees develop more understanding, but you’ll have back up for every department. If a crucial member of the team is unable to perform their part at some point, you can pull an employee from a different sector to help you out.

Cross-departmental development can be highly beneficial for improving tolerance between employees and creating a safety net in case some of the employees get sick or leave the company,” said Charlotte Wright, an HR specialist at SupremeDissertations.

Charlotte also added, “The employees will feel better about themselves when they are competent to change departments and have increased knowledge about company business.”

4. Encourage Personal development

Happy and satisfied employees cultivate a healthy work environment, which is necessary for productivity. Managers need to support the emotional, physical and intellectual development of employees.

Ways to support personal development of employees:

  • Supply healthy food options
  • Provide rewards in the form of gym or wellness membership
  • Organise different physical activities within team building
  • Ask questions such as “How are you?”, “Are you struggling with your work?”, “Do you need help with anything?” and similar supporting questions
  • Gift the employees with self-development books or encourage self-development seminars

“Employees need to feel that they are heard, validated, and valued within the company. Get to know your employees and learn about their personalities. Maybe you have an aspiring writer within your team who can contribute to your content department, but you don’t know because you’ve never asked.

“When you take care of the employees, they will take care of the company and give an extra effort to retain their job position,” shares Owen Simmons, a learning and development manager at WritingJudge and IsAccurate.

5. Educate Yourself

Personal and professional development isn’t reserved just for employees. Managers should invest in their education. Working on employees’ development will be more effective if you know what you are doing.

You can acquire the best tactics that will speed up the development process and make it more successful.

Masterclass programmes can power up your people management skills, which are necessary for creating a holistic and integrated employee development strategy.

6. Send Employees to Conferences

Get your employees to move outside their comfort zone by attending conferences. Industry conferences will give them insight into the newest trends and provide them with networking opportunities.

Most conferences have organised workshops that can help the employees to improve their skills and learn something new.

By acquiring all that knowledge they can bring a new perspective to the company. The professionals who they meet at those events can get the company some powerful cooperation and relevant friendships.

7. Reward Employees Who Show Extra Effort

In order to motivate continuous development and show the employees how improvement benefits them in multiple ways, start a reward system. Employees who show extra effort and actively use recently-learned skills should be rewarded.

These rewards can come in different forms, such as:

  • gift cards or digital rewards
  • training opportunities
  • certification opportunities
  • raises
  • promotions

Through regular reviews, learn about employees’ contributions to the company as well as the development they engage in their free time. Ask them about the books they read, the online courses they take, and so on. Recognise their personal effort and count everything in.

The rewards will motivate other employees to give their best and dedicate themselves to further development, too.

Soma Final Thoughts

The opportunities for employee development are many, you just need to determine which direction you want to take.

When you consider that through employee development you can mould the employees into highly professional and loyal workers, it is worth every penny and minute you invest in that process.

By retaining all the skilled individuals at your organisation, you can ensure that the company is handled by the best people who can lead you to success.

About the Author

Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. Now she works as a freelance writer at WowGrade and BestEssayEducation. Kristin runs her own FlyWriting blog.

Try our Pulses survey tool to get feedback from your employees on an ongoing basis 🙌