Employee development is a crucial aspect of any organisation, and managers play a pivotal role in ensuring that employees grow and improve their skill sets. Many businesses use tools like performance management software to manage their employees.
When roles and responsibilities are set in combination with learning and training, good performance management software can enhance an employee’s capacity to complete the requirements of their work responsibilities.
Besides using software to monitor employee development in the workplace, managers can do so in other ways.
Individual Development Plans
Individual Development Plans, or IDPs, map out a path to success for each employee. They identify each person’s interests, career goals, and current roadblocks. Following that, management assists the employee in developing measurable goals and establishing realistic timeframes for achieving each.
Frequent reviews are essential for IDP success; consider implementing a quarterly review rhythm so that employees can comprehend criticism or praise more often and adjust as required.
Provide Openings Outside of Job Scope
Daily tasks can sometimes be rewarding, but with mastery or excessive repetition, they can become tedious. To shake things up, managers should try coming up with projects that require employees to learn new skills or that allow them to collaborate with people from other departments.
Opportunities like these encourage employees to raise their game, which increases engagement and provides the cross-training required to foster growth.
Implement a Feedback System
Self-awareness is just as important as, if not more important, tangible work skills. Employees should receive feedback from both their manager and their peers regularly.
Managers can create a brief survey that focuses on identifying strengths and areas for growth. Then, if appropriate, distribute the survey to the employee’s coworkers, other leaders, and customers. Compile the findings to keep them anonymous, and then present key themes that will assist them in becoming more well-rounded.
Concentrate on Manager Training
Managers have a significant impact on organisational outcomes. It is a big mistake to invest in employee development while failing to provide specific development opportunities for management training. Many workers become managers because they excel at their jobs and advance through the ranks, but an excellent manager must have exceptional people skills to be a leader and grow an impactful team.
All employee development should focus on training managers, particularly first-time managers, and providing them with the skills they need to help their teams succeed.
Cross-Training
Cross-training is the method of preparing employees to perform tasks other than those that are normally assigned to them. Cross-training can be a onetime, ad hoc fix or an ongoing, planned process.
Cross-training does not always result in immediate advancement, but it shows that an employee is eager to learn new skills. This variety of skills may assist him or her in meeting qualifications for future career advancement.
All cross-training should start with two simple steps:
1) Identifying the knowledge and skills required for each position
2) Cross-referencing that list with an inventory of current employees’ proficiencies. These steps expose gaps between employees’ current skills and those required by the organization.
Conclusion
Engaging in employee development can pay dividends tenfold in the long run. It helps an organisation attract and keep outstanding employees.. Many organisations are increasing their investments in employee development, but they are uncertain how to ensure that the investment pays off.
Using performance management software can provide many advantages to companies, with modules such as scheduled reporting and performance management processes, so things don’t have to be time-consuming within the business.
