Ways your company can promote employee development

Employee development isn’t only beneficial for your company’s bottom line, but also South Africa’s economic growth. For a stable and growing economy, employment is an essential component as it ensures there is a low unemployment rate. Low unemployment enables more businesses to gain valuable products and services from their employees, and in turn, business blooms. But, it also ensures people receive their salary and can contribute to the economy. An economy can only flourish when supply and demand are achieved, and there are consumers who are able to make purchases. 

Now, for you to give back and help, you need to have skills development in your business. So, even if you have programmes and skills training, read this article. Who knows, you might find new ideas or improve the ones you’ve already established. 

Teach people in management positions to be better coaches 

The key step in ensuring employee development continues to grow is by fostering a work environment that promotes this. This starts with making sure your management wants to grow and develop their teams. Because, if the mentor does not have the same enthusiasm and does not create an environment where learning and development can take place, then nothing will succeed. So, encourage your managers to become better coaches by offering sufficient management skills, and finding out the following:

• What obstacles they may be facing?
• When are they the most productive? 
• Additional workplace skills they would like to learn before taking on this role. 

When you have the right conversation, you can pick up on what needs to be done, resolved and included to ensure they become the best managers and can pass down that information. 

Teach your employees the value of career development 

Many people start their careers and automatically assume that they will grow in whichever company they work in. But, that’s not the case. With these competitive times, your employees need to realise that growth and development are as much as their responsibility as it is of the business’. So, enforce this so that they can get into the habit of taking control of their careers. For example, if they know they lack communication skills, then it is up to them to find ways to improve so that they are heard and seen in the company. 

Make professional training a norm 

Training and development should be the norm in your business. And the only way employee development in South Africa can be effective is by ensuring all your staff have required certifications. You can have a rule that they’re required to do so when they start working for your company. There are many free online courses your staff can learn to better themselves from the onset. 

Create an environment with trust and respect

When you go about mentioning skills development, do not make it seem as if they aren’t able to do their jobs. Or to highlight their weaknesses as this will cause a hostile environment. But, to successfully incorporate development, you need to ensure you build trust and respect so that they can see where you are coming from. This will help inspire them to work towards greatness and want to invest in themselves. 

Find out what they are interested in

As a business owner or someone in a management position, you can’t always assume you know what’s best for all your employees. So, ask your employees where they want to develop in their careers. Who knows, some of your employees may see where their weaknesses lie and are ready to take the next step to change them into strengths. So, ensure you add them into your employee development plans so that you ensure success rather than failure. 

Focus on personal development 

Personal development is crucial in any aspect of one’s life, especially in the work environment. Because at the end of the day, your staff are people who come from different backgrounds and have their own issues to deal with. And, sometimes they aren’t equipt with the knowledge of dealing with it. So, this is where you come in. Offer them personal development skills that will help them develop emotionally, intellectually and physically. Because when your employees are in the right headspace, you will see it in the quality of their work.  

Final thoughts

Improving employee development might be the best thing for your business in the long term. But, this is also beneficial for developing countries like South Africa. Because unemployment is a big issue that continues to affect our economy and the standard of living for many South Africans. But, if each company could work towards developing their employees, South Africa will truly reap the benefits.