Why You Should Be Investing in Employee Development?

Employee Development is a Matter to Consider

Employee Development is often seen as an optional requirement by organizations and they tend to neglect it without realizing

its real potential. On the other side, employees are always eager to learn and develop and look forward to organization’s support and commitment towards employee development practices. Employee Development is equally or more beneficial for the organizations than it is for the employees and overlooking this can be detrimental for an organization’s growth in the long run.

What are the Benefits of Employee Development?

Employee Development Enables Learning Skills

Ortus research indicates that the biggest catalyst for employees leaving an organization is lack of career development (75 per cent). An employee development program enables learning and career growth for employees while remaining in the same organization. It makes them more skilled, knowledgeable and ultimately results in better productivity. Providing the platform to support and nurture your employees’ career development promotes employee loyalty and motivation. The amount of effort, time and money invested in a hiring process easily surpasses the efforts required for an employee development program. Organizations that focus on their employee development also attract best of the talent. Prospective candidates see it as an added bonus to their work positions.

Employee Development Keeps the Employees Engaged

Employee Development can be a powerful medium for organizations to keep their employees engaged and provide new challenges to them.  It gives employees an opportunity to learn new skills, take their career to next level or even take a new role altogether and all of this reduces the monotony of everyday work or role. It not only adds to their satisfaction at work but also improves their engagement and performance at work. With the right training and opportunities, their concertation and commitment towards the work automatically increases.

Employees Improve their Skills with Employment Development

Employee Development program broadens the skills set of employees making them technology and business experts. They will have the right expertise in their domain of work, which will add to company’s overall performance. Skilled workforce acts as a backbone for organization’s growth and innovation and employees’ skills, expertise can be leveraged to come up with innovative products/solutions, superior customer experience.  It can be used as an edge to compete in the market.

Employee Development Contributes in Productivity of Organization

Each employee contributes to an organization's overall performance. And, employee development programs aim at making them as successful and productive as they can be. Employee development does not have to start as an extensive or costly affair. At the basic level, organizations can involve and support managers to understand their subordinate’s skills and be their coach. It can be manager’s role to pass on, skills, knowledge and insights through coaching and mentoring. It can be added in to manager’s duty and there must be way to provide reward and appreciation. This approach can be further taken to create Individual Development Plan (IDP), where employees will be owning and taking charge of their own development. And, it will be organization or managers responsibilities to support and measure their plans. Overall, Employee Development should be seen as a business strategy and not another human resource investment.