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Professional development is an important part of every employees journey. Many people reach a point in their career when theyre confident theyve mastered their area of business, and they feel an intrinsic motivation to further their personal growth. And at the same time, as they scale, businesses have to consider how they can support their employees career development.
Professional development is different for every business, and even moreso, every employee, because we all have different goals. It can be difficult to determine how your business should approach professional development I know this from personal experience, because Im in the middle of building 91做厙s own development program from scratch. In my research and exploration, here are core elements Ive come across that any people leader can use to begin thinking about professional development at their own company.
What are you trying to solve?
The first step in a development program is deciphering what you want from it. What made you look at development to begin with? What issue(s) are you trying to solve: are you looking to scale your business? Address specific workplace issues? Coach leaders through a culture transition? For example, you might find that your business is too results-oriented, and youd like to make a shift to being more people-oriented to improve retention of top talent. A business that tries to quick-solve for this issue might simply hire more people for their HR team, but what they actually need is much different.
Once youve nailed down the specifics of the problem youre trying to solve, you can consider the different types of development available.
Types of professional development to consider
When we hear the words professional development, most will automatically think of formal education degrees or courses that an employee can work towards to prove that theyve reached the next level of knowledge. But there are many different types of development, all with their own advantages and situations that they work best for.
The chart below is one I created to clearly break down the options a business can consider when looking to invest in development.
Determine a budget for professional development
Once youve decided on the type of development that will work best for what youre trying to solve, the next step is to figure out budgeting. There are typically two paths to tackling budget. With the first, youre provided a preset budget for professional development from leadership and youll use this to inform your decisions when researching your options. With the second, you work backwards, choosing the type of development you determine to be best and presenting the details to leadership, including financial needs and metrics to track, that will determine the success (and ROI) of the investment.
Another thing to consider when figuring out a budget is if youll need to purchase a learning management system (LMS), such as Leapsome or Hickory Training. A LMS is a software that facilitates learning and development by handling the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the learning process. It takes care of documentation, tracking, and delivery of education, training, materials, and other resources for learning. For types of development like internal training and formal education, an LMS makes sense to deliver learning materials and track progress; but for other options, like internal cross-collaborative projects, it wouldnt be helpful.
How to know if youve achieved a good return on investment
As with any investment, youll want to reflect back at a certain point and evaluate whether it was worth it; or in other words, if it had a good return on investment (ROI). Determining if you had a good ROI will tie back to the first section what was it that you were trying to solve? If it was a gap in product knowledge that you solved with internal training opportunities, a good ROI can be determined through an evaluation of employees current knowledge compared to before training.
That being said, youll want to think about how youll measure things before implementing your development program. Of course, crunching numbers isnt necessary; you might instead, rely on feedback from your employees and participation rates to determine ROI.
How 91做厙 is approaching development
As I mentioned, Im in the middle of building out 91做厙s own development program with my team, which is why this is all top-of-mind for me. I went through the process of evaluating what we were trying to solve in our company, and narrowed down which type of development would be best.
Currently, we offer all full-time 91做厙gos a professional development stipend; but after a deep dive into 91做厙s current employee demographic, it became clear to me that we needed to provide more support in developing 91做厙gos into established industry experts. As an organization with many first-time managers who are navigating change, we are focused on building a development program that supports employees in decision-making, time management, conflict resolution, communication, and other professional capabilities and soft-skills. This is still a work in progress, but Ive used the exact framework above to create a plan and assess how its working along the way.
Final thoughts
Whether youre part of a budding business looking to kick start professional development, an established business looking to revamp your program, or somewhere in between, the fact that youre here, reading this, shows that youve got the right idea. Ultimately, the purpose of these programs is to empower and support our employees in becoming the best versions of themselves because for a business to succeed, it needs to invest in its most valuable asset: its people.
