One of the easiest ways to fast-track your company’s growth is to invest in employee development. When a company has skilled employees who are dedicated to accomplishing common business goals, it gains a competitive advantage over its rivals and achieves greater success.
Encouraging employee development not only benefits the company but also helps employees get better at their jobs. They stay abreast with the latest technological advancements in their industry and bring better results for the company.
So how do you encourage employee growth & development? Here are 8 proven ways to achieve this:
- Understand employee capabilities:
The number one step to encouraging employee growth is to first understand their individual capabilities. Without this knowledge, it will be fruitless to identify their plus points and push them in the right direction. Knowing your employees’ strengths and weaknesses allows you to tailor your approach for better results.
- Offer learning opportunities:
Helping employees enhance their existing skill set is a great way to encourage their development. By using platforms like an LMS, it is now easier than ever to deliver eLearning courses as well as virtual instructor-led training. Moreover, LMS like Performance Pro that is easy to use and comes with a host of responsive features ensure employees can learn quickly and at their convenience.
- Go mobile:
Employees today value flexibility over everything else as it is the key ingredient to maintaining a good work-life balance. Offering growth opportunities through mobile-based platforms allows employees to learn on the go. It also makes it easy for them to quickly browse through the learning content in between breaks or during transit.
- Prioritize one-on-one meetings:
Lack of communication often makes employees disengaged and reduces their performance. Managers must ensure they have regular one-on-one meetings with employees to share their feedback and discuss employee concerns. This makes employees feel valued and motivates them to work to the best of their abilities.
- Seek employee feedback:
Businesses that have a culture of asking for employee feedback enjoy higher employee engagement rates. This is because employees get a chance to share their opinions and put forward their needs. With employee suggestions, you can create a learning & development program that employees are excited to learn from.
- Support collaborative learning:
With the onset of the pandemic, employees are forced to work from home. This means L&D initiatives also have to be delivered remotely. But learning in isolation makes employees feel lonely and bored. To combat this, conduct workshops and webinars to help employees learn together. It gives them a platform to discuss and share their knowledge with each other.
- Personalize the training content:
Using readymade or off-the-shelf material for employee development may be cheaper but it fails to engage employees. The main reason behind this is the lack of personalization. Off-the-shelf courses are generic and fail to address specific employee learning needs. Moreover, they have to navigate through a lot of content to find what they are looking for. This makes it necessary to tailor the content based on their roles.
- Encourage informal learning:
Apart from the structured and formal learning initiatives, managers must encourage informal learning to enhance employee development. Learning from peers or gathering information from discussion forums allows employees to increase their knowledge in a stress-free way. There is no deadline to complete training assessments or to match up to other learners. Every employee has full control over their pace of learning.
Conclusion:
When employees are not offered development opportunities, the company risks its own growth. Investing in employee development encourages a culture of continuous learning and helps employees get better at their jobs. How do you support your employees’ development? Let us know in the comments below.
