Employee development is encouraging employees to acquire new or related skills, knowledge, and viewpoints, by providing learning and training facilities, and avenues where such new ideas can be applied (businessdirectory.com).
Employers must allocate sufficient resources to employee development or they risk creating the impression that employees are not valuable to them. Development provides another means of achieving engagement of employees and engaged employees gives high level performance on a more consistent basis.
Development planning involves the ongoing collaboration between leaders and their employees. Leaders support the employees in determining their career goals, assessing their strengths and identifying their developmental needs.
Before Drafting Your Plan
Ensure you understand the process. The process involves:
Identifying Goals
Begin by thinking about where you are now, where you want to be and how you’re going to get there.
Work on getting to know your skills, knowledge, behaviours, interests and values as well as your opportunities.
You can ask yourself the following questions:
At the end of this step you will have a clearer idea of your work or learning goal and your individual preferences. Your personal preferences are very useful for helping you choose your best option.
Assessing Your Skills
This step is about exploring the occupations/roles and learning areas that interest you. Once you have some idea of your occupational preferences, research the specific skills, competencies and qualifications required for those occupations/roles.
At the end of this step you will have a list of preferred occupations/roles and/or learning options.
Review Competency Required and Available Options
This step involves reviewing competences required and comparing your options, narrowing down your choices and thinking about what suits you best at this point in time.
At the end of this step you will have narrowed down your options and have more of an idea of what you need to do next to help you achieve your goals.
Prepare Plan, Take Action and Review
Here you plan the steps you need to take to put your plan into action.
Use all you have learnt about your skills, interests and values together with the information you have gathered about your options to create your plan.
Your development is your responsibility. It is primarily owned by the employee and supported by their leader. This means that it’s the employee’s responsibility to ensure that the plan is prepared and implemented according to the above processes. It also requires ongoing coaching and feedback between leader and employee to evaluate the progress.
Take action immediately and watch your performance rise to the next level. For assistance in completeing this process, feel free to contact us immediately: sabgfuturesolutions.com.
Sherraine Gardner, MBA (Management Consultancy) is the owner of SABG Future Solutions.
Fill in the form below to send this blog to a friend: