Employer take care of your employees' development!

What is employee development?

By way of introduction, let us briefly describe the theory related to the process of development in the broadest sense. Employee development is nothing more than a whole set of activities that lead to the improvement of employees' skills. These include, training, both external and external, individual work with a trainer or simply an experienced colleague, the so-called "work buddy" - a term very often used, when implementing projects for a new member to the team. However, training alone is only a component of the whole process of improving skills. Let's look at all its components.

Learning, training and development.

These terms are quite often used interchangeably. In reality, they do not mean the same thing. In the case of training (training), we are dealing with the transfer of skills, knowledge and attitudes - and these can be put into practice right away. The directions of training also vary. They can be aimed at improving performance in a given position or, for example, facing future changes.

Learning is simply the acquisition of knowledge, mastery of skills, and appropriate modeling of attitudes in the work environment.

Development (development) is a long-term process. It includes elements of acquiring new knowledge, skills and also changing attitudes. Especially the latter change takes time. A person has to "mature" to the changes and this takes time. The development of the ability to cope with tasks of varying complexity and independence also takes time, as well as the acquisition of the right tools - in this case, knowledge.

Employee development in a company - what for?

In the World Economic Forum report published in 2020, as many as five first places were taken by those belonging to the group of soft competencies. They are very often called "work-life skills". This name did not come by chance. Both at work and in our personal lives, soft competencies find their application. Let's take the example of communication. Consistency of communication regarding the content of our spoken messages and the body language that goes along with them is extremely important, in view of the fact that non-verbal communication provides our interlocutor with 80% of the information.

In the WEF report we also read about two important aspects. The first is so-called social/collaborative learning. This term refers to the growing importance of working and developing in groups, not just individually. Interpersonal skills are therefore key to an employee's optimal movement within his or her team.

The second is that by 2025, as many as 50% of employees will require retraining. Many organizations are already facing a shortage of qualified staff or talent acquisition. This means actively supporting ways to develop their employees with whom they are already connected. Retraining an employee within a company is quite a challenge. It requires a great deal of effort and smart thinking on the part of the employer as well as flexibility and an attitude open to innovation on the part of the employee himself. The three issues I described above - namely training, teaching and development perfectly support activities such as retraining (and this is a challenge that is gaining momentum) through:

• Flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.
• Increased employee retention.
• The attraction of attracting new talent.
• Increased engagement.
• Achieving improved employee performance.
• Leaders with the listed competencies are leaders for the new times.
• With qualified personnel, the attractiveness of the company is increased.

Entrepreneur: you can clearly see the benefits of employee development. Take care of him as well as your company! The holiday season is the perfect time to take stock of the whole year and plan the development path of your employees.