Lack of development opportunities is cited as one of the major reasons employees choose to leave their jobs.
And whilst developing your staff has huge benefits for your business, it’s not simply about improving their performance – development opportunities are a powerful way to improve job satisfaction and are less likely to leave.
With that in mind, these are just three ways to improve employee development opportunities within your business.
- Create a nurturing company culture
Company culture plays a huge role in the overall contentment of your employees.
And a positive company culture encourages not only productivity but motivation too – when your staff are happy and secure in their roles, it gives them the confidence, and the incentive, to aim higher.
Encourage openness and honesty with your staff in conversations about job satisfaction and progression, and create goals in collaboration with teams and individuals to set metrics for improvement and achievement.
And the most important thing of course is to deliver not only constructive feedback but positive and rewarding feedback too when relevant to assure your staff that their efforts are noticed.
- Encourage soft skills
Soft skills are a valuable asset to your company that will improve your overall efficiency. Soft skills include communication, organisation, and problem-solving.
Many of these can be monitored in measurable ways – for instance, time-tracking software such as Clockify can help boost employees’ time management skills.
Meanwhile, team-building exercises are a great way to bring people together and improve overall communication and unity in projects. While the mention of these types of exercises can tend to elicit an eye-roll from staff, exciting experiences such as escape rooms, event days and even pub quizzes can generate renewed enthusiasm to help get everyone involved and onboard. Those who are operating with remote teams can also organize these exercises with the help of companies like Escapely, offering virtual team bonding events in various options.
Developing these soft skills—such as time management or teamwork—will help to improve your employees’ efficiency, yielding positive short-term results and laying the foundation to tackle bigger development opportunities in the long run.
- Offer training and development opportunities
Learning new skills can be done internally, but often staff will seek specialist training to broaden their industry knowledge and progress.
The chance to gain a qualification through the workplace can be a major development incentive, and many employers choose to work with schools and universities to offer their staff courses for learning and growth.
A great example is ARU Distance Learning, whose teaching model is designed for students to study primarily (and sometimes entirely) online. They offer a range of qualifications across industries, and their courses can be studied in the students’ own time, so it fits flexibly around working life and office hours.
Whilst this can be expensive, this type of investment in your staff not only equips them with new skills but assures them you care about their career growth, development and ambitions, making it a mutually rewarding experience for both your employees and your business.
These are just three ways to foster employee development within your company.
Are you a small business owner? How do you encourage employee development? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
