Employee development is one of the key factors in retaining employees in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If done poorly, you’ll have to constantly hire new people and teach them from scratch. However, if you invest time, money, and effort into developing and grooming your employees, your company will flourish.
Let’s take a look at 8 talent development actitives and methods to help you keep your employees.
1. Plan Individual Talent Development
As a manager, you should create individual growth and development plans for each of your employees. This will help you determine which training and development activities a particular employee should undertake and when.
The creation process should involve the employee it pertains to. Some topics to discuss during the sit-down could be:
- Current skills and strengths.
- Skills they want to develop.
- Career ambitions and what they would like to achieve in the company.
Explore your employees’ strengths, skills, and affinities, and tailor their personal development plans accordingly. After the talk, create a set of measurable goals for the employee and set a realistic timeframe within which each development goal should be achieved. You should periodically revise the plan and discuss it with the employee to make the necessary adjustments.
2. Assign Tasks that Support Career Development
Different employees have different skillsets and different strengths. It is in your and your company’s best interest to play on those skills and strengths. Place your employees in positions where their talents and skills can contribute to the company’s growth and their personal development.
If one of your employees is struggling with a task, you can advise or point them to resources that can help with their learning process. We will talk more about learning activities in point 3 to 5.
3. Encourage Networking
Seminars, roundtables, and conferences are great training mediums for employees. Some industries hold annual events where practitioners globally are invited to get up to speed on the best practices and the latest innovations. Likewise, those events represent great opportunities to network, meet new people, and establish new personal and professional contacts.
In between annual conferences, you may encourage employees to attend smaller industry talks. These events are frequently hosted in various coworking spaces. Whenever an event discusses a topic related to your business, give your employees the option to join as part of their learning.
4. Pair Up New Employees with a Mentor
Instead of sending your inexperienced employees to courses and classes, you can opt to pair them up with more experienced colleagues. This way, the younger employee will receive hands-on training and practical knowledge, as well as an opportunity to establish closer contact with senior staff.
At the same time, you will show your senior employees that you appreciate their skills and knowledge. You will also provide them with another way to contribute to the company.
Over time, this might even grow into a full-fledged learning and development program.
5. Leverage on Online Learning Tools
You should not discount the value of quality webinars and podcasts as training tools, either. You may provide a list of must-watch webinars and podcasts as part of their training. Some webinars are free, while some aren’t — this is where you can step in to provide additional support. The key here is to encourage your employees to actively build their skills and knowledge from other practitioners and experts.
Some popular sources for webinars:
- Coursera
- Udemy
- Codecademy (specific for coding classes)
- LinkedIn Learnings
Tools to discover podcasts by topics:
- Listen Notes
- Google Podcasts
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
6. Schedule Regular Feedback Sessions
Feedback is a very important and powerful tool, hence feedback should not be limited to employee reviews. That’s too rare and it could be overwhelming to receive tons of instructions at once. Shared calendars like Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar make it easy to schedule regular feedback sessions, either after a task completion or through weekly wrap-ups.
Your feedback should never be overly critical, disapproving, or demeaning. Instead, it should be constructive and contain specific recommendations employees can use to further up their game and develop knowledge and skills.
Don’t forget to commend your employees for well-absorbed feedback, as it will encourage them to develop further.
7. Revisit Talent Development Plan
Employee growth and grooming is truly a team effort. Managers should evaluate the execution of the career development plan with employees. Some areas to revisit could be:
- Strengths and weaknesses.
- How employees respond to feedback and perform in various situations.
- Goals and ambitions, as well as the challenges and obstacles they are facing at work.
- Ways to best use their potential and achieve their career goals.
8. Discuss Promotion Alternatives
Owing to their size, SMEs can’t always rely on promotions to keep the employees motivated. If that’s the case, get creative and come up with alternatives that will help your employees grow.
Instead of classic vertical promotions, you can offer your employees horizontal promotions by expanding and tweaking their tasks and responsibilities to better suit their skill set. You could also try tweaking their schedules a little bit to give them more time to focus on developing their skills and talents.
For example, skilled programmers could overhaul the company’s site or develop an app that you could add to your services. Similarly, sports-oriented employees might start a fitness or yoga club.
Satisfied Employees Make a Successful Company
If you manage to motivate your employees to grow and develop their skills and talents within your company, you are bound for success. Hopefully, these seven career development ideas for employees will help you get ahead and grow your organisation and your staff.