The well-being of any company is dependent on how engaged and motivated the employees feel at the workplace. One of the excellent ways to achieve this is by nurturing employee skills and to actively & consistently promote their professional development activities.
Driving professional growth in employees also helps you build loyalty in your teams as it shows your willingness to contribute to your employees' growth and success.
Importance of Professional Development Programs
Professional development is nothing but ongoing training, certification, and education that employees need to succeed in their careers. Also known as professional learning or continuing education, professional development programs are primarily designed to teach workers/employees the skills needed to succeed in their respective profiles.
There are numerous benefits of professional development initiatives, such as:
- Apart from the supplemental training benefits for an individual's role, professional development programs help the employees to enhance their value and ensure they remain relevant in their respective career fields.
- Employees that continuously engage in professional development feel much more confident and enjoy higher chances of success in their line of work.
- Professional development can open multiple doors to new opportunities for employees.
- Ensures that employees' capabilities keep pace with the current standards of peers in the same field.
- Allow participants to make a meaningful contribution to their team, such as assisting them in advancing in their career and moving into new positions where they can lead, influence, manage, coach, and mentor others.
- Based on the profession, continuous professional development training ensures that the employees maintain and enhance the knowledge and skills needed to deliver professional services to the clients and the community at large.
However, the fact that the modern workforce comprises of multiple generations makes a one-size-fits-all approach completely outdated for employee enrichment.
What is imperative today is the availability of both formal (such as training, coaching, mentoring) and informal (D2C conferences and ecommerce conferences) professional development opportunities to suit the needs of the modern workforce.
The two most essential elements of a viable professional development program include:
- It must allow participants to determine the pace of their development and give them complete control over their educational path.
- It must offer continuous development.
Different Ways To Impact Professional Growth
Here are some of the ways you can use to impact professional growth –
1. Promote Knowledge Sharing
One of the excellent ways to impact professional growth is by organizing monthly meetings where you take the lead to teach lessons for employees to learn new skills.
It could either be soft skills such as leadership development, interpersonal communication, or hard skills like advanced excel tips. Irrespective of the organization you work in, the employees always appreciate the opportunity to learn new skills, programs, and diversify their knowledge/ capabilities.
2. Attend Event and Industry Conferences
To hone their skill sets, employees must attend a variety of industry events and conferences such as d2c conferences to learn best practices that they can directly apply in their job roles.
Attending such events and conferences allow employees to keep up with the latest knowledge, research, etc. to stay relevant in today's fast-paced business environment. They not only boost employees' professional growth but also help them acquire the necessary tools to be successful in their professional careers.
Among the other reasons to attend the best e-commerce conferences and driving professional growth include:
- Offer networking opportunities: Meeting new people and building relationships is an essential aspect of personal as well as professional growth. Forging partnerships and having conversations with clients and vendors can help you gain the required knowledge to be more efficient and productive in your existing roles.
- Opportunity to become an expert: Attending these events and conferences allows you to gain more expertise in your respective fields and work on new ideas to be more successful in your jobs.
- Learning new things: The other benefits of attending professional development workshops include learning about new and effective ways to accomplish difficult work tasks and gaining more knowledge on a variety of business subjects.
3. Employee Coaching and Development
The importance of employee coaching in promoting professional growth is huge. It is, therefore, essential to create a customized development plan for your employees to support their professional development during performance planning.
Start by identifying the areas or skills the employees would like to work on and accordingly schedule regular mentoring or coaching sessions for upskilling and discussing progress.
4. Cross-Training Work Assignments
Regular on-the-job training is one of the most effective methods of encouraging professional development at work. Cross-training allows employees to actively participate in ongoing tasks and make them valued by the employer.
The ideal way to do this is by offering them the opportunities to learn the skills of complementary positions once they master the tasks required in their roles.
5. Identify and Fill Soft Skills Gaps
While business productivity is essential, organizations need to take a proactive and well-defined approach to assess and develop soft skills for their employees and managers.
Soft skills are the non-technical attributes that are essential to succeed in the career. Some of these crucial soft skills include communication, time management, and active listening.
To promote the professional development of the employees, organizations need to identify and offer dedicated training and educational resources to develop this soft-skill development as it can directly impact productivity and morale boost of the employees.
Conclusion
The outcome of a well planned professional development program is that it safeguards the interest of the stakeholders involved, including the employer, clients, and the professional's career.
To ensure enhanced employee productivity and mitigate employee turnover, organizations today need to find creative ways to keep their employees engaged, loyal, and motivated.
The best strategy that can help employers to build the foundation of enhanced employee experience and retention rates is professional skill development training and various other employee growth initiatives.
If businesses want to invest in anything today to reap the dividends tomorrow, it should be their most essential resource-employees. Continuing professional development of the employees can play an indispensable role in defining the success of an organization as it ensures that the employees continue to be competent in their profession.
