One of the biggest challenges that organizations are facing right now is the ability to attract the top talent and retain existing employees. Throw in the ongoing skills gap, and you have a lot to contend with.
Despite this, not enough organizations are prioritizing employee development as a way of attracting and retaining staff. In fact, a recent study found that 59% of employees weren’t being offered any training or development opportunities at work, with most saying that their skills were self-taught.
This is worrying given that over two-thirds (68%) of professionals consider training and development opportunities as an organization’s most important policy. Plus, 70% would be tempted to leave a job that didn’t offer these important opportunities.
It’s clear that organizations need to be doing more if they hope to attract and retain talented professionals. This is where employee development plans come in.
Employee development plans help professionals to progress in their careers, but they also help whole teams can work better together to reach shared goals.
In this article, we’re going to look at what an employee development plan is, why your business should invest time and resources into these processes and how to create these plans for the best results.
An employee development plan, also known as an employee growth plan, is a roadmap designed to help individual employees improve and expand their skills. They will use this plan to acquire new competencies and knowledge so they can progress in their career and take on new responsibilities.
Every employee development plan must be tailored to the individual employee; this is not a one-size-fits-all process. It must be created with their specific abilities, interests and needs in mind.
Employee development plans can be used to help employees move up within an organization or to take on a bigger leadership role. However, this doesn’t always have to be the case. These plans can be created simply to help bridge the talent gap, encourage employees and boost efficiency across the workplace.
We’ve already briefly touched on some of the benefits of development plans above, but we’re now going to take a deeper look at why you need to be implementing these within your organization.
Employee development plans are mutually beneficial for both individuals and their employers; these can help employees to progress in their careers while ensuring organizations have the most skilled and efficient teams. Some of the other key benefits of development plans include:
For all of these reasons, you should implement employee development plans across your organization as soon as possible. Or, if you already have a development process in place, consider how you can strengthen this for better results.