Employee Development Methods In Hrm

[Colleen Bramham]

Morethan 57%* of employees want to participate in learning and development (L&D) opportunities to upgrade their existing skills, learn new ones, and advance in their careers. And that number increases to 71%* when employers dedicate working hours to L&D initiatives instead of requiring workers to complete them on their own time.

Employee development methods are sets of activities designed to help employees learn new skills, improve existing competencies, and put their knowledge into practice. The goal of implementing these practices is to engage your people, make work more fulfilling and meaningful, and enable team members to progress in their personal and professional lives.

A mentoring program is when leaders take more junior employees under their wing and guide them through the skills they need to acquire to advance in their careers. This type of employee development program is particularly helpful for team members who are looking to build more high-level skills like:

You can incorporate mentoring initiatives into your succession planning strategies and encourage junior employees to shadow their mentors to further support employees who plan on advancing to more senior positions within your company.

Unlike mentorship programs, where employees learn from leadership and management, peer learning practices establish a two-way training experience where employees can exchange knowledge and experience. This collaborative technique fosters company-wide collaboration and breaks down siloed work.

For example, you can boost cooperation between your marketing and sales teams by having the head of sales give a presentation to marketing associates on customer sentiments, pain points, and motivations. This practice also fosters a sense of understanding and empathy between employees, which contributes to a healthier work environment.

Another idea could be pairing new hires with more experienced employees to help them settle in more easily. Your seasoned staff members can use these opportunities to gain fresh insights from the latest team additions and develop their leadership skills.

An effective onboarding process should teach new employees the skills they need to feel confident in their roles, helping them feel motivated and valued. The result is improved performance, retention rates, and engagement.

In addition to welcoming new hires into internal systems, training them on the organizational tech stack, and having them sign necessary documents, center your onboarding employee development program on:

When subject matter experts from outside your organization run workshops with your team, they not only enable employees to learn new skills from professionals in similar fields but also share a fresh point of view. External instructor-led training encourages people to think outside the box and reflect on and modify outdated practices.

Suppose your HR team is new to managing a remote or hybrid team of employees. In that case, you could invite the head of HR at a prominent remote-first company in your industry to share their best practices for engaging remote employees.

Nearly three in five employees experience at least one mental health and well-being challenge, including symptoms of anxiety, depression, or burnout. These individuals tend to report low job satisfaction and engagement levels and are four times more likely to want to leave their company.

Employee development refers to training and related opportunities for employees to gain new skills and competencies. While many employers view development as a shared responsibility with employees, it is almost universally recognized as a strategic tool for an organization's continuing growth, productivity and ability to attract and retain valuable employees.

This toolkit does not cover the topic of employee development for organizational leaders and managers. For information specifically related to that topic, see Developing Organizational Leaders and Developing Management.

Successful employers integrate development and succession planning programs into the organization's overall strategy, ensuring all programs drive toward the same set of objectives. These guidelines can help management plan employee development programs:

Some methods of employee development occur on the job, with the manager or an experienced co-worker leading the development activity in the context of the actual work environment. Other development occurs at training facilities or other locations. And increasingly organizations use online methods to develop employees.

Coaching involves a more experienced or skilled individual providing an employee with advice and guidance intended to help him or her gain new skills, improve performance and enhance the quality of his or her career. The hallmarks of coaching are that it is personalized and customized, that it has a specific business objective, and that it is usually accomplished one-on-one over a period of time.

Coaching should be approached like any other strategic goal. Successful execution requires commitment from the organization and the person being coached, a plan to obtain results, qualified coaches, and a follow-up evaluation.

Mentoring matches less experienced employees with more experienced colleagues through formal or informal programs. Formal mentoring programs can reduce turnover, enhance recruitment, and improve performance and the work environment, especially for women and people of color.

To accelerate the pace of employee learning, organizations may use an individual development plan (IDP). This document details an employee's intentions and learning outcomes as well as support necessary to meet his or her tangible growth goals. Beneficial IDPs reflect adult learning strategies, experiential learning and symbolic interaction.

The 9-box grid is an individual employee assessment tool that evaluates the employee's current and potential levels of contribution to the organization. The grid is most commonly used in succession planning as a method of evaluating an organization's talent pool and identifying potential leaders.

For performance appraisal purposes, the 9-box grid provides a visual reference that can include appraisal and assessment data to allow managers to view employees' actual and potential performance. With information from the grid, managers can design IDPs. See What is a 9-box grid?

Cross-training refers to training employees to perform job duties other than those normally assigned. Cross-training can be a short-term or ad hoc fix, or it can be an ongoing, planned process. Cross-training usually does not result in immediate advancement, but it does indicate that an employee is interested in learning new skills. This skill diversity may help him or her meet qualifications for future career advancement.

Employers find value in cross-training because it is usually more efficient than bringing in new hires. Many managers take those efficiencies to the next level by leveraging technology to improve cross-training efforts. Many employees appreciate cross-training because it allows them to broaden their skills.

All cross-training should begin with two basic steps: 1) identifying the knowledge and skills needed for each position and 2) cross-referencing that list of knowledge and skills with an inventory of current employees' proficiencies. These steps reveal gaps between employees' current skills and those the organization needs. Technology makes it easy to gather and analyze such information.

On-the-job training projects and "stretch assignments" give employees a chance to learn while doing real work. Developmental assignments allow employees to develop new skills, knowledge and competencies necessary for higher-level positions.

Getting to the next level in business often means having the right experiences. Yet many workers do not know what experiences best prepare them for upward mobility. Experts say that people who have experiences characterized as "accelerators" of potential will be more likely to succeed.

Research has shown, for example, that first-level leaders are more likely to succeed if they have had cross-functional experiences, midlevel leaders are more likely to succeed if they have had experiences handling tough challenges (e.g., a difficult employee situation), and new executive leaders are more likely to succeed if they have had high-risk and high-visibility experiences.

Job enlargement involves expanding the employee's job by adding more tasks and duties, typically at the same level of complexity. Job enrichment builds more depth to an employee's job through more control, responsibility and discretion.

Organizations often redesign jobs to increase employee motivation; however, when jobs are enlarged but not enriched, motivational benefits are unlikely. Although the distinction between job enlargement and enrichment is fairly straightforward, employees may not correctly perceive the changes as enrichment or as enlargement.

Job shadowing requires more than just having an employee follow a colleague around all day. Shadowers view the organization from a different perspective and learn firsthand about the challenges facing workers in other departments. This perspective helps employees realize the impact their decisions have on other groups.

Rotation programs may vary in size and formality. Though larger employers are more likely to invest in a formalized job rotation program, organizations of all sizes might consider implementing a job rotation program. Typically, formal rotation programs offer customized assignments to promising employees to give them a view of the entire business. Assignments usually run for a year or more.

Many reasons exist for implementing a job rotation system, including the potential for increased product quality, giving employees the opportunity to explore alternative career paths, and perhaps most importantly, preventing stagnation and boredom. Possible downsides include increased workload and decreased productivity for the employee, temporary disruption of work flow, line managers' possible reluctance to allow high-performing employees to participate in job rotation programs, and the costs associated with the learning curve on new jobs.

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