Many employees often experience tunnel vision when it comes to professional development. They yearn to learn, improve their skills, and climb the career ladder. Unfortunately, many employers overlook this. Encouraging personal development as a means to develop professionally is important. Personal development is, in fact, essential to professional development.
If business leaders want to see progress in achieving success in the business, they must start by treating employees as individuals outside of their professions. Surveys show that happy employees are more productive than those who are unhappy. One way to foster happiness at work is to invest in personal development. So, here are the top five ways you can encourage personal development.
Allow Time for Personal Development
One way to encourage personal development in the workplace is to schedule time for it. Find ways to incorporate self-discovery into the daily workflow. If you believe personal development is essential but will not give time for your employees to invest in themselves, then your words and actions do not align.
Give each of your employees a specific time each day to work on personal development. You can have it first thing in the morning before they start with their tasks or in the last few minutes before going home for work. The time you give them is a significant long-term investment for personal development. Making your employees feel that you care for them as persons and not just mere employees could transform the way they approach their roles in the company.
When implementing a professional development plan, make sure you also prioritise personal development strategies. Once an action plan is available, encourage the employees to implement the changes, and they can do this during the time allotted to them and with the support of their manager. It’s essential to have managerial support until they develop habits.
Bespoke Training Courses
Providing bespoke training is another way to promote personal development in the workplace. The one-size-fits-all approach may not work when helping your employees develop, companies should instead rely on bespoke training solutions.
Bespoke training is a training course specifically developed to fit the requirements and structures of the organisation, which come with many benefits. Since it is specific to the company, it is more cost-efficient and timesaving. In addition, bespoke training courses allow organisations to prioritise those areas and skills relevant to the business since they can be tailormade to suit your organisation’s needs without compromising the quality. Most organisations are able to identify the skills, tasks, and techniques their staff must develop or need to use to perform their respective roles. However, there’s no one who can internally deliver the required training, and this is where training companies who provide tailor-made training solutions can help.
With Bespoke Training, the course will be designed for your team and organisation only and customised according to your needs. Case studies and up-to-date examples may also be incorporated, tailored to your organisation’s needs. Since the courses are specific to the topic required, these training solutions are more time efficient.
Create a Culture of Learning
Personal development is often a result of learning. Thus, one of the ways organisations can effectively support personal development is by fostering a “culture of learning”. If a strong learning culture gets embedded into the organisation’s foundation, more and more employees will recognise the importance of continuous learning. Organisations can implement various mechanisms and strategies for personal development, but it starts by developing a learning culture.
So, what exactly is a learning culture? It refers to the kind of workplace culture that gives importance to learning. Developing a learning culture is essential since it helps you capitalise on the potential of your employees to grow your business. It also improves employee engagement leading to increased productivity.
But changing your workplace culture into something that encourages learning will not happen overnight. However, there are many things you can do to move in the right direction. Start by making learning your core organisational value.
Networking Events
Networking comes with many benefits, and one of these is personal development. Attending global networking events like IBTM World, a 3-day networking event taking place annually in Barcelona is the perfect opportunity to exchange business practices and ideas with other players in the industry and be updated with the latest industry developments.
Being visible in the industry and getting noticed is another way networking can be essential to personal development. Regularly attending professional and social events can help to get one’s profile known in the industry. It’s a great way to build your reputation as someone knowledgeable in your field by offering tips to people who need them.
Aside from being able to give advice, attending networking events is also a chance for you to gain advice from industry experts, which is also essential for personal development. During the event, you’ll have a chance to meet with some of the industry’s biggest players and discuss opportunities and challenges, which opens doors to valuable guidance and suggestions.
Make Managers Mentors
Mentorship is essential to support employees in personal development. Organisations should recognise that it’s important to train and develop potential leaders at every organisational level. While there are training courses, these do not always go deep enough into the specific skillsets or behaviours required to prepare people for the leadership position. In most cases, training is all theory with no practice involved.
Thus, managers should learn how to mentor staff members and determine how and why they want to develop. When it comes to this, they can ask questions like, what can you do to improve and achieve your personal career goals? Managers should facilitate their member’s development and help open doors for opportunities.
When mentoring staff members, managers should make space for mistakes and learning. In most cases, we learn due to failure, so employees need space to flop sometimes to help them grow. An effective manager helps staff members uncover learnings from their mistakes and consider these as an opportunity to develop personally.
