Continuing Education and Employee Development
Continuing Education and Employee Development
As a follow-up to my article on How to Effectively Select and Onboard Staff, I want to examine how adding a continuing education program can strengthen an organization’s capabilities, improve performance and create differentiation versus competitors. Having a formal program will provide continuity of knowledge management (training resources), create advanced skills and increase staff enthusiasm. Starting with a curriculum, a continuing education and employee development program will provide employees with opportunities to learn new skills and increase their market value internally as well as externally if employees are to move on to other organizations to further their career.
Having programs that offer teams the ability to learn new skills adds to organizations’ culture and boosts team morale. Studies have shown that organizations that provide continuing education and employee development programs have better reputations among their staff and those staff members are more likely to perform their task better for such organizations. The required time and resources to build a program that will directly benefit your most valuable assets, your staff, is well worth the investment and should provide great returns.
Benefits of Training and Development Programs
The benefits from a continuing education program can be significant as both employees and the company gain value. Employees can increase their market value with additional skills whether they are preparing for a promotion with their current organization or if they move on to a new organization at a higher level. The overall skillset of a team is elevated through structured learnings and employee development that improves a firm’s collective talent capabilities. A fun and engaging strategy for training and development programs is to create opportunities for your team members to facilitate trainings. This strategy can lead to the development of subject matter experts across many areas of your firm’s business.
It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, you can create a thriving program simply by including your team/staff in the development of the program. Give your team a voice in what they will learn. Another important component of a program is creating a schedule for trainings to ensure maximum participation and allow staff to plan work around the trainings. The more staff that participates in trainings/classes on a regular basis, the more effective the continuing education and employee development program will be.
Leaders Must Buy-In
For these programs to actually work, it is imperative that the leaders of an organization completely support the idea of structured learnings and employee development as part of the organization ethos. The commitment from the top of organization to increase the overall skillset of their teams will cascade throughout all levels. From the CEO to staff, everyone must be committed to the mission to ensure a program is effective.
There is no one way to develop and implement a continuing education and employee development program. But there is significant research that shows these programs have an overwhelmingly positive impact on organizations and their employees. Choosing the right program and training/courses should be different for every firm, team and its culture. Starting a new program can be daunting task, however, there’s no time like the present to create a competitive advantage for your firm through strengthening your team’s capabilities.