How Employee Development Links Achievement to Success

Employees are rethinking their relationships with work, looking for a deeper meaning that transcends the workplace by aligning their job with personal value and purpose. In response, many leaders and businesses are adopting a more people-centric approach.

But there’s a weak link between employee desires and the good intentions of human resources (HR) and organizational leaders.

In a recent survey, the vast majority of upper management and executives (85%) told McKinsey that they feel fulfilled by their work. Among front-line workers—the ones who often have the most direct impact on your customers—just 15% felt the same way. It’s a staggering gap that can undercut an organization’s best efforts to create the connections their workers are asking for.

Employee development can be a bridge between individual achievement and organizational success.

In this article, we’ll explore how individual career planning both empowers your team members and can also help draw a direct line from their aspirations to the organization’s most ambitious goals.

What is employee development?

Employee development is a strategy that uses training, guidance, and professional skill development to lift organizational success through improved individual performance.

Also referred to as talent development, the focus on continuous improvement helps your team get the support and experience to strengthen their skills, thrive in their current position, and challenge themselves to reach their potential.

Why is employee development important?

Investing in employee development sets standard business practices for some of the most essential parts of employee engagement, such as:

• Setting clear expectations
• Making sure employees have everything they need to work effectively
• Encouraging personal learning and growth
• Aligning each employee’s work and career goals with the mission and purpose of the company
• Recognizing progress and good work

Employee development is also an organizational commitment that can have a big impact on employee retention: in a global survey of nearly 4,000 professionals, 94% of employees said they’ll stay longer at companies that invest in their careers.

But there are two sides to employee development, and employees aren’t the only ones who get a boost.

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When an organization lacks the talent it needs to meet current demands, short-term strategies—such as filling technical skill gaps with independent professionals—can take priority. However, a long-term perspective on talent development is critical for sustainability. Employee development helps strike a balance between the two.

“Unfilled jobs cost companies productivity and money; internal strategies like upskilling and reskilling can end up saving companies on both,” said Jaimie Francis, vice president of policy and programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “Business cultures that support life-long learning to upskill and reskill their workforce will be those that remain competitive and relevant.”

What are some of the most effective employee development methods?

Different people have different learning styles, and different skills are easier to grasp when introduced in different formats. Consider the full range of options when it comes to expanding your team’s skillset.

On-the-job training

Getting insights into their day-to-day work can help an employee gain confidence, learn new tools or skills, and make more effective contributions to the rest of the team. Training can come from peers inside the organization or from external subject matter experts.

Work-based learning experiences

To give employees deeper insights into your organization, broaden their skillset, and potentially spark new ideas and innovations, look for opportunities to expose them to other parts of the business. This can be approached in a few ways, including:

• Job rotation. Employees are periodically moved from one job to another.
• Cross-training. An employee is assigned tasks that wouldn’t normally be within the scope of their work.‍
• Job shadowing. An employee follows team members in other departments or leaders within the organization.

Internal relationships

Building relationships within your company can help employees expand their knowledge of the organization, learn how other teams and functional areas work, and build a critical internal network.

These interpersonal relationships can be built through a number of programs, such as:

• Mentorships. Typically a match between a newer employee (the “mentee”) and a more experienced or senior employee, mentors share experience, insights, and guidance to support the mentee in a personal or professional context.
• Coaching. Sometimes forming part of a mentorship, coaching typically involves an expert—someone internal or from outside of the organization—who can guide an employee to improve their performance or reach goals in the near term.
• Peer-to-peer relationships. Colleagues at roughly the same stage of their careers share information and help each other solve challenges as each pursues their career goals.

Team members can then look to these networks when they get stuck on their next project or as they move up in the company.

Online learning

Online learning or web-based training allows employees to learn from anywhere, often with a flexible schedule that enables them to go through the information at their own pace. There are many ways for employees to pursue online learning, including:

• Learning management systems (LMSs), platforms used by companies to create and manage online learning programs
• E-learning platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning

AI-driven tools

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a catalyst that’s actively transforming how we work, live, create, and interact. There are already use cases that show it might be an effective training partner.

For example, NPR’s “The Indicator” podcast highlighted a company testing AI as an upskilling tool in its call centers. After six months, the AI support helped boost productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and decrease employee turnover—especially among less experienced workers.

AI may prove to be a valuable information resource, a source of inspiration, or even a coach that can help people work better. Your organization just needs to be open to the potential.

Formal educational programs

Formal education is a structured and systematic approach to teaching new skills and information. These educational programs are often offered through traditional institutions such as universities and colleges, or through other recognized credentialing organizations, such as professional or industry-specific associations.

Informal learning and networking opportunities

There are countless other ways for your team to gain new skills, experiences, and best practices. These include conferences and industry events, webinars, workshops, books, podcasts, and e-newsletters.

The ideal approach to employee development will depend on a number of factors—not the least of which are the organization’s needs, what each employee is driven to accomplish, and how those two streams meet in the middle.

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Get the company and its employees moving in the same direction

Employee development has to strike a careful balance. On one side are the desires of each employee; the most thoughtful talent development strategy will stall if employees aren’t motivated to follow it. On the other side are the company’s strategic requirements: the company is heading in one overall direction and needs talent to reach it.

If these two considerations don’t align, the result is a disconnect that can knock everything off course.

Ladder employee goals to the overall mission, vision, and strategic objectives

Employee development planning doesn’t happen in a vacuum: your company develops an annual business plan and each team creates a strategy in support of that plan. Employee development is a rung further down on that ladder—it should help your team meet its commitments to the rest of the company.

Having each of these strategies aligned will help foster collaboration, shared accountability, and collective responsibility for the organization’s success.

Take stock of skill requirements

To build a successful team, you’ll need to clearly identify the requirements for every position. Then, strengthen your teams’ competencies in these areas to help them perform at their best and stay competitive moving forward.

To get a clear overview, it helps to undertake a thorough skills assessment. This may take the form of a talent review or skills matrix—data-driven processes that make an inventory of existing capabilities and identify critical gaps.

You can then use a process, such as a skills gap analysis, to layer that catalog over your team’s performance data and the skills required for each position or desired career path. This will let you see where each team member can expand and improve their proficiency.

Create employee development plans

Once you’ve collected the information and insights you need, turn the employees’ intentions into a solid action plan called an employee development plan.

An employee development plan blends the strengths and weaknesses of each team member into a highly individualized career path. It’s designed to help each employee excel in a way that’s meaningful to them and beneficial for the organization.

As part of this introspective process, you may want to discuss:

• Whether the plan should be annual, bi-annual, or quarterly
• How often the two of you should connect
• What the employee can move forward on their own, and where you can offer support

While the thinking behind a development plan can be complex, formal documentation should be as simple and concise as possible. An employee development plan is a map with specific waypoints that can be used to make sure efforts are still on track. That means it should be easy for an employee to see where on the path they are and what their next steps should be.

Get employees involved from the start

Writing for HBR, career coach Rebecca Fraser-Thill and workplace expert Shuba Gopal explained that everyone has a different perspective on career development:

“Many managers assume that everyone has goals tied to extrinsic rewards (upgraded titles and higher salaries). While these are important, for many people, they are not sufficient. In fact, most employees seek ‘meaningful work’—a combination of contribution, belonging, and purpose that is completely subjective. Given that meaningful work is highly specific to the individual, the key to supporting career development is getting to a person-centric understanding of each of your direct reports.”

If an employee development plan is going to have any meaningful impact, getting your team members involved from the start is important.

Ask each person on your team to take stock of their career and the results they want to achieve. Then schedule a time to discuss their self-assessment as well as their personal and professional ambitions.

Your conversation might include questions such as:

• What aspects of your work do you enjoy the most?
• How do you envision your ideal work-life balance?
• What areas would you like to improve?
• Does your position align with your personal interests and values? How can we better support those connections?
• How could you make a bigger impact?
• Are there positions within the organization that you’re interested in?
• What skills or experiences would help you get there?
• Are you open to new challenges, like job rotations, that might help you progress?
• What resources, education, or support do you need?

The foundations of an employee development plan are centered around the individual—their dreams, their opportunities, and the things that light them up the most. Will everything you discuss go into their career path? Not necessarily. But if their desires aren’t accounted for or reflected in the goals an employee sets, you may end up with a nod and a smile while they look for something else.

Measuring employee development effectiveness

Employee development progress should be reviewed regularly to make sure everything is on track and still relevant. That cadence may vary depending on the employee’s position, changes within your industry or field, personal preferences, or the plan itself.

If you have regular one-on-one meetings with team members, you can also use these planned check-ins to informally:

• Track progress
• Address challenges
• Update and adjust development plans as needed

The review process isn’t just about hitting targets and getting things done. You may be working toward high-level goals, but keep your focus on your team members and whether they continue to be engaged by the work. You can do this by:

• Soliciting feedback on the effectiveness of the development process. How is it going? Are they getting the resources and support they need?
• Encouraging self-assessment. Is the employee seeing the improvements or benefits they were hoping for?
• Fostering a culture that encourages continuous learning in any format.

Set up a win-win situation for employees and the organization

An employee development plan enables your team to thrive as they contribute to a sustainable organization that has the talent it needs to stay competitive. This helps individual employees feel more fulfilled by their day-to-day work, while also building a stronger connection to the organization that can boost productivity and performance, retention, and even recruitment.

Working with your team to create individual learning paths builds:

• A better relationship with the employees on your team
• A stronger understanding of your organization’s requirements
• A more sustainable business with a talent pipeline to provide the expertise the company will need to get ahead

Prioritizing employee development can be a key strategy for your company’s success! If you need help getting started, browse Project Catalog^™ for expert assistance with employee learning and development or organizational development, or post a job to the talent marketplace to find a professional with the specific skills you’re looking for.