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Employee Development: A Deep Dive

Employee development is the process of improving existing employee skills and developing new ones to support organizational objectives. It is important because employees with limited skills can cost time and money and negatively impact culture. Effective development improves performance, adaptability, culture, retention, and the leadership pipeline.

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82 views19 pages

Employee Development: A Deep Dive

Employee development is the process of improving existing employee skills and developing new ones to support organizational objectives. It is important because employees with limited skills can cost time and money and negatively impact culture. Effective development improves performance, adaptability, culture, retention, and the leadership pipeline.

Uploaded by

Acorn
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs (BY-NC-ND)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Employee Development

A deep dive into engaging learners


What is Employee Development?
At its height, employee development is the process of improving
and refining employees’ existing skills while developing new ones
that support organisational objectives. When an employee is
confident, they can deliver a higher quality work more efficiently.
Why is it important?
An employee with limited skills and/or interest in developing
them can cost their organisations time and money, and
negatively impact culture.
Letting these employees go can cost almost as much as keeping
them, whereas investing in their development negates these
issues and improves retention.
Employee
Development
Benefits
Improved Performance
Effective development will ultimately improve productivity
through both learned technical skills and soft skills by
helping employees understand the what, how and why of
what they’re doing.
Adaptability
The world around us is constantly changing in response to
massive forces of business called megatrends. An adaptable
employee is largely unfazed by sudden turns of events and
can respond effectively.
Attractive Culture
A continuous learning culture is highly attractive to potential
employees, especially the younger generation starting to
enter the workforce. Professional development is more likely
to attract the right prospects for the right job vacancy.
Increased Retention
The longer an employee stays, the more well versed they are
in culture and expectations. The simplest way to retain an
employee is to train them to fill skills gaps rather than
looking externally.
Leadership Pipeline
Finding the right person to lead is difficult. Training leaders
enables organisations to define the skills that are most
important to them.
How To Build
An Employee
Development Plan
Ask employees what they need
Employee development is only engaging if employees find it
interesting and useful. One-on-ones between managers and
team members are a good jumping off point to discuss what
skills employees would like to develop.
Define organisational goals
Assessing a workforce’s long-term goals is vital for
determining the crucial skills it is missing. Employees need
to understand why they’re being asked to develop skills in a
certain area, and may disengage with no explanation.
Create on-the-job opportunities
On-the-job training gives employees a chance to contextually
apply new skills, which creates a basis of experience they
can build for future circumstances.
Evaluate and adjust
Most of the benefits from employee development are long-term,
so it’s important to have metrics against which organisations can
evaluate success or use to determine adjustments.
5 Strategies To
Improve Employee
Development
Train from day one
Employees need the tools and resources to do their job well from the start. Onboarding
sets the tone for the rest of their careers with an organisation.

Train managers
Part of effective professional development training is to ensure managers lead by
example and champion employee development in their teams.
Encourage collaboration
Cross-departmental collaboration encourages employees to learn about different pain points
that could affect their work, other parts of the business, and how to create healthier dynamics.

Strengthen soft skills


Soft skills are those that can take someone from an average worker to a future leader. In
this age of automation, the critical skills of the future are not technical but behavioural.
Invest in personal development
Positivity inspires productivity, and this is the kind of environment where employees want
to come to work. If employees don’t feel their best, they certainly won’t perform their best.
You can learn more about this topic by
checking out the full article:

https://acornlms.com/resources/employee-development

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