Providing Professional Career Development: What to Offer to Support Growth

My first blogs on the Employee Training Life Cycle reviewed the importance and pieces of Orientation and Onboarding. Now it is time to get into how to further develop and train employees during their time with the company.

Our department is huge. The career ladders for 400+ people can be difficult to know but there are some basic principles we should keep in mind to continue to grow our team members and these should include any aspirations they have to be supervisors and managers.

As described by 15Five, providing training opportunities for professional growth can be offered from the get-go. This is part of the culture that should be set up from the organization in an effort to show the level of commitment being given.

"Each person, no matter their level or where they choose to work, wants to feel genuinely cared for. An impactful way to do this is through a commitment to support employee development (professional advancement and personal growth)."

15Five summarizes their top five ideas when thinking through the development part of an Employee Training Life Cycle.

1. Offer professional training from the get-go

2. Develop your managers into coaches

3. Enhance cross-departmental collaboration

4. Emphasize soft skills

5. Employee development = personal development

When reading through the development of the managers section, I was pleased to see the one question I ask at my weekly meetings, “What is your win this week?” I give my staff the opportunity to answer with either a professional or personal win. This helps build a relationship with these individuals that gives them a sense they are more than just the tasks or projects at hand. My own personal leadership philosophy is that you also need to celebrate every win you can find.

“Enhancing cross-departmental collaboration” is one of the hardest barriers to overcome. One of the ways we are trying to break through these silos is by establishing some Strategic Teams that overlap different areas. This is our inaugural year and it will take time to see if this initiative is accomplishing the goal of increasing collaboration.

These Strategics Teams are also meant to help with soft skill development. It is wonderful to see that we are aiming in the right direction when it comes to enhancing our development opportunities.

Businesses are a collection of human beings working together, so building core relationship skills, like the ability to collaborate and communicate, is one of the most important things that a company can encourage.

When thinking through pieces of the Employee Training Life Cycle, I also appreciated the list provided by SGE International.

1. Give New Hires a Head Start

2. Develop Frontline Employees’ Service and Sales Skills

3. Set Supervisors Up for Success

4. Motivate Middle-Management

5. Educate Executives

We have established Orientation and Onboarding previously which is how we are giving new hires a head start.

When reading through #2, Develop Frontline Employees’ Service and Sales Skills, it mentions Customer Service. This is a relatively new initiative in our department that has begun. We are now in the process of codifying our Customer Service Strategy and will also be putting together a training to educate our employees on the customer service expectations. Customer Service has the potential to be a whole blog series on how to get it established and set-up the right mindset of service within an organization.

It puts a smile on my face to read #3 because I know that is where we are in our Employee Training Program Life Cycle. We have a Strategic Team attempting to develop a proposal for our Senior Leaders and it includes a Supervisor training portion. It is imperative to prepare them for the scenarios they will encounter.

Our department does a good job of offering key leadership development courses. We schedule a workshop twice a year on the extended DISC communication styles in order to help our employees be able to recognize their communication style along with others. We also have an Executive Coach who does a 360 feedback and two one-on-one sessions with those in middle-management and executive positions.

There is one more list I enjoyed reading from 360Learning.

1. Leadership Training

2. Compliance Training

3. Onboarding Training

4. Technical Training

5. Product Training

6. Sales Training

7. Anti-bias and Diversity Training

Reviewing these helped me think through the other parts of the Employee Training Life Cycle. Although when using the term “Technical Training” this article is referring more to the technology side, my mind immediately went to our Trades Technicians. This light bulb leads to our next topic, Blue Collar vs White Collar.