Intra-Company Employee Growth & Development

Sarah Lifestyle

Companies are often happy to pay for their employees to get up-skilled through courses related to their profession. However, the challenge is that these courses are not free and you can end up paying up to 20% of the salary for these courses. The cost of doing so for a junior, mid-level, and senior-level employee adds up to a few thousands per employee. The situation is different for startups, where, to meet the challenge of tech advancement, they have to adopt best practices from other parts of the world.

Highly skilled employees are not only expensive to hire but expensive to retain as well. Hence, the business has started investing a lot in the acquisition and development of knowledge and skills for its employees. They are constantly upgrading employees with emerging technologies. This is not just a trend in the tech and IT industry. Sectors like hospitality and healthcare are also trying to upskill their staff and provide them with advanced software and technology to streamline work and improve efficiency. As an example, you can take a look at care management and scheduling software, which could be employed by in-home care and elderly care organizations to schedule and manage caregivers’ shifts, along with providing other facilities like log-in and out, location verification, expense management, and more.

Similarly, hospitality staffing and tracking solutions could be used by hotels and other businesses for the ease of managing employee working hours, increasing productivity, and automating most of the data collection and analysis. However, the limited technical expertise of a large chunk of the workforce results in a poor overall experience for the business. Knowledge and skills acquisition through external courses may help in developing employees for specific roles, but it won’t be a regular process and have its limitations.

The most important problem in the acquisition of knowledge and skills through external courses is that it is a one-time exercise. It may solve your immediate problem, but when it comes to retaining knowledge and skills, the fact is that external knowledge and skills will not be useful for a period of time.

Companies pay a huge sum to hire employees with expertise but as the employees gain experience, the benefits of acquiring those skills in the initial years of employment are quickly lost. Hence, when it comes to achieving an optimum balance between acquiring knowledge and developing skills, organizations have to focus on better development training. The benefits of upskilling your team could be far more since improved knowledge means your employees will be capable to take on other responsibilities while keeping up their productivity and work quality.

Think about the following key points while developing employees:

Do not just focus on acquiring knowledge. Develop skills which add value for your company.

Spend the bulk of your employee development budget in learning and development.

Shoot for a mindset that sees knowledge and skills acquisition as the only mode of employee development.

These are the key aspects to achieving excellence in employee development and employee engagement. Organizations that take these principles seriously will enjoy both.

Team coaching is an excellent way to enhance performance, increase productivity and collaboration, and foster an environment of trust and respect. If you don’t have prior expertise in coaching, you can learn from online resources like “how to coach a team at work“. With team coaching, you can help your team reach its full potential and create a positive and productive work culture.

Quantity is not important in learning and development. Quality of knowledge and skills will ultimately determine the outcome of training for your employees.

Employee mentorship programs can be an effective way to support employees in developing the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. Sophisticated and advanced mentoring software can help employees connect with mentors easily, track progress, and ensure they receive proper guidance.

Designate a new employee development team in your organization. Keep track of who is learning what and when. Utilize tools such as attendance or skill-deposit cards to track training progress and record it in the system. These are the best tools to track the progress of training progress of your employees. Make sure the implementation of new knowledge and skills is tracked, for instance if you’re part of the group of employees who’ve been funded to complete botox courses, take the initiative within the organization to propose creating documentation based on the newly-acquired knowledge.