In a world where employee welfare keeps on getting better and better, Employee Development plays an important role. To this day, employees are still the most valuable asset of an organization. Even with state-of-the-art machines, employees will always form the backbone of your organization. Rapid innovations across different sectors require organizations and its employees to be prepared for the things to come. With Employee Development, employees can grow with these changes for the better, making your organization future proof. Furthermore, Employee Development also increases the knowledge and skills of your employees so they can grow within your organization. Career development is an important reason for potential employees to join your organization.
How can your organization integrate Employee Development?
Employee Development is always a cooperation between an organization and an employee. It is meant to improve the knowledge and skills of the employee. Think of it as a way to improve your overall organization performance and ability to survive in the future. There are many different ways to apply Employee Development within your organization.
Personal Development Plan
Let’s start with the basics. Above all, a Personal Development Plan for every employee gives you a standardized approach for everyone within the organization. This plan contains a development roadmap for a specific period. For example:
| Target | Description | Resources | Target date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public speaking | Present in front of a large group | Follow a course for public speaking (€300) | Jan/22 |
| Job position | Grow to manager | Be responsible for a team of two | Jan/23 |
| Language | Learn spanish | Study at a Spanish language school (€2000) | Jan/23 |
| Commercial | Learn more about the new CRM | Follow courses and pass a test (€250) | Jan/22 |
With a Personal Development Plan, it is important to also pay attention to the growth of an employee within their current function. Not everyone wants to put everything into their career. The yearly performance review meeting is a great moment to plan the employees’ development for the upcoming year.
Take the time
You cannot expect a full time employee to fully focus on his career development outside the office hours. That is why a lot of employers dedicate working hours to the development of their employees. The amount of hours that would fit best for your organization depends on your business. For example, FourVision’s employees can spend a certain amount on training possibilities. Besides this, FourVision also offers a budget employees can spend on their personal development.
Stimulate innovation
A good example of a company that stimulates innovation is Google. For instance, Google encouraged their employees to spend 20% of their time on side projects. These projects were cross-department collaborations that resulted in for instance Google Maps and Gmail. Similarly, Slack, Twitter and Groupon also started as side projects.
Find the right tools
No matter how much attention your organization pays to personal development, you will always need the infrastructure. Therefore FourVision offers the right tools to keep track of your employees development. The Performance Management Web App enables personal goal-setting and easy tracking, combined with an automatization of the Performance Management review process. Click here to learn more about the importance of Performance Management. When your employees are ready to grow within your organization, it is important to identify the ones that have the most potential. With the Succession Planning Web App, your HR team can determine key roles and identify who will most likely thrive in those roles.
Don’t forget the soft skills
A classic mistake with personal development is an excessive focus on hard skills like knowledge of certain processes or items. Although hard skills are important, you may never forget the soft skills. To put it briefly, they increase the overall wellness of an employee. Therefore, think about offering classes for fitness and confident speaking to increase mental health. Employee Development is key!
