How to empower your best employees with a development plan that motivates them.
First and foremost, do you tie your company’s values to your management practice and planning? Employee development planning should always come back to your values.
Do you invest in your employee’s performance, continue investing in them, build on their strengths and provide ample opportunities for growth? Money lost in disengagement is far worse than investing some positive dollars into success.
Why do employees disengage?
Have you ever felt:
Uninspired…
Unsupported…
Like you are being watched…?
Ever felt like your job or the jobs of those around you was at stake? It’s interesting how human beings react in those situations. When we feel unsafe, we start working from our primitive brain and go into survival mode.
We become stressed and look for distractions. In todays’ day and age, we have way too many of these distractions to even comprehend.
An idle mind is the devil’s playground. Bored staff are a recipe for disaster. You end up with negative attitudes, sloppy work and damaged relationships with other employees and customers. Like a cancer, negative mindsets spread like wildfire.
Invest in positivity
On the flipside, when people feel supported and valued, they have mental space to feel creative and do their best.
When your employees can’t wait to arrive in the morning, their enthusiasm will show throughout the day. Invest in that. The positive cycle begins with your investment in them.
Invest in an employee development plan that accentuates skills and talents and invests in the opportunity!
Growing morale
Staff goals should be linked to how well they do at work. Realise their potential by investing in them.
Don’t do it just for that ‘nice fuzzy feeling’ but also to create space for greatness.
Performance is guaranteed to improve and morale will grow. Make your people excited to go to work and you will reap the benefits for years to come.
Increased productivity should the goal be for each and every day. Keep the best people for longer – people stay because they really want to be there! When we are doing something we love we are sure to want to stay.
Loyalty rules
Loyal employees don’t quit. Create promotable employees in-house, keeping in mind that hiring from within is ideal. Your current employees are already experienced and familiar with day-to-day business and with the current customer landscape. Of course, promoting from within cannot always be the case. Just keep the long term in mind and how you will create your future succession plans. Keep your staff informed of your plans for their greatness and support the steps they need to get there.
If people feel unsafe or unsupported they will never perform at their best. Make them more engaged and accountable and in turn attract the best new employees.
Investing in self development
As an example, offering employees a set amount Visa gift card and the choice of how and where to spend it, as long as it relates self-development and fits within the business’s plans for them, is the perfect self-development tool.
Allowing the employee to choose where they want to focus their own development is key to the success of a program.
Let the employee choose what motivates them! Employees are all different with different motivations and interests. Give them some choice over their destiny by allowing them to spend the Visa gift card themselves, on their development.
They can be proud of their achievements and present their learnings to their colleagues for further information sharing. Other team members can share and collaborate and support one another.
Encourage all kinds of mentorship within the organisation. Mentorship today has changed due to the digital boom. Baby boomers can mentor based on experience but now digital natives can also ‘mentor up’ on their knowledge of technology.
The correct employee development program will create a pool of capable workers that are ready for promotion. Employees will be far more engaged at work knowing that they are valued and are on their way towards greatness.
Employee development is a sure-fire benefit that weighs heavily in the ’pros’ side of the page when people are job hunting.
An employee development plan is the gift that keeps on giving. You’ll attract better candidates as everyone wants to work in a company that invests in them. The correct employee development program will create a pool of capable workers.