Every business has its set of priorities to help continue success and growth, but what makes a company successful and differentiates itself from the rest is not the products or services it offers but the people running it. However, taking care of employees doesn’t only mean you should offer happy hours or additional break time — you must ensure each staff member is cared for, regardless of their rank or position.
The best way to do that is by committing yourself to support their professional development and personal growth. That said, here are seven strategies to improve employee development in your company.
Improve Cross-departmental Collaboration
Having a cohesive workforce excelling at cross-departmental training can bridge the gap between department cultures, giving employees the chance to learn about different parts of your company, encouraging more empathy within your organization. However, most employees aren’t great collaborators, and not having suitable structures in place can risk your team falling flat.
For instance, if your marketing team wants to improve your brand with fresh content but doesn’t talk with those in the sales or customer service department, their message won’t resonate.
Alternatively, you can hire a third-party digital marketing company to develop the best marketing strategies based on your company’s customer information, stats, and metrics. It’s a great way to improve your marketing without worrying about team collaboration since they’ll do the job themselves and provide you with detailed reports.
Offer Professional Training to Employees
Setting your team for success in their careers begins with providing them with the professional training needed to do their job immaculately. You can practice this strategy from a worker’s first day and beyond by building a knowledge base of crucial information and the best practices for new hires as you expand your team.
Focus on Manager Training
It’s no secret that managers significantly impact organizational outcomes and influence at least 70% of your team’s engagement. The reality is, good managers need to have top people skills to be a great leader and grow an organized and impactful team, benefiting your business and the employees themselves. That’s why all employee development should focus on training managers, especially first-timers.
Invest in Personal Development
Remember that your workers don’t merely exist in a professional capacity to serve your company. They’re still human beings, so to help them evolve professionally and personally, you need to make sure your employee development program is holistic, including factors such as:
- Emotional Balance — Ask your employees how they’re feeling about work lately and see where they’re struggling to help them get through it.
- Intellectual Growth — The learning materials and seminars you conduct doesn’t need to be solely about business, as you can continue education regarding financing or fostering healthy relationships.
- Physical Health — Encouraging employees to step away from their desks and cubicles when the workday’s complete and enabling them to practice more self-care lets them show you care for them as people — and not mere workers.
Make Learning More Accessible
Many companies haven’t internalized that extensive and one-time workshops aren’t as practical nor effective as people would believe to be for most businesses. Plus, numerous employees often get intimidated by them and struggle to remember what they’ve learned — making them a relatively expensive and ineffective investment.
To help your employees thrive, you must make your workers learning needs be more accessible and continuous. That means that there should be more chances in place for your staff to engage in their development regularly. Doing this makes it easier for your team to imply employee development into their daily life in the workplace.
Emphasize Soft Skills
Soft skills are crucial for each great and adaptable employee, but these essential competencies are usually de-emphasized in corporate workplaces. They’re complex skills that can take years to learn and are regularly changing in their scope. After all, businesses are a collection of humans working together, so encouraging workers to build core relationship skills, such as collaborating and communicating, is ideal for any business.
Establish Transparent Learning Pathways
Workers want to learn and advance in their careers, but most don’t want to be solely responsible for putting on a face for their growth progress on the job. They’ll likely want to see a transparent pathway for how they’ll be developed. A successful employee development program follows a particular learning trajectory, like flowing through different topics building on one another.
Just make sure to be more transparent regarding these learning pathways. Workers can see how their employee development efforts fit into your strategy and what they’ll achieve if they invest time participating.
When workers are provided with the necessary tools, resources, and training to advance their careers, they’re likely to feel more motivated to offer their best work. The strategies mentioned can help your employees and your company thrive — attracting the best and brightest talent to join your team.
