A Business Owner’s Guide to Strategic Employee Development

Even though most of us haven’t carried a backpack or gotten on a school bus in years, this time of year still brings that familiar “fresh start” feeling. However, just because you may not be in the classroom doesn’t mean you can’t use this time to invest in yourself and your employees.

Strategic development doesn’t mean that everyone has to enroll in graduate school or rigorous leadership courses either. Even efforts as seemingly minor as cross-training your employees on tasks from different departments can help support your team in becoming more dynamic.

The fall provides the perfect opportunity for business owners and leaders to think strategically about their own growth and that of their employees. In this blog, we’ll discuss how to approach employee development strategically to maximize its effectiveness and your investment in your people and organization.

The Gap in Effective Employee Development

One of the most significant flaws in how many organizations handle employee development is their uncoordinated approach that often lacks a clear strategy or direction. They might offer a random training here, a conference there, and include a shadowing opportunity. However, these opportunities don’t work together to create a unified development plan for those involved.

This fragmentation often causes more harm than good for both the organization and the employee. It results in wasted resources and budget on poorly planned training and leads to employee frustration with seemingly random assignments. This approach lacks measurable progress toward meaningful goals and misses opportunities for employees to develop their talents strategically.

However, if your organization has historically taken a less coordinated approach to employee development and you’re frustrated by the lack of tangible results, don’t panic. There are several ways to realign your development efforts to ensure your team can maximize the investment your organization is making in them, starting with creating a comprehensive development framework.

How to Create a Holistic Development Framework

When you’re building a strategic employee development program, it’s often helpful to start with the end goal in mind. Consider questions such as,

• What specific skills does your organization need?
• What are individual team members hoping to develop?
• How do these align with business objectives?

From there, you’ll be better able to map the development activities and initiatives to the specific desired outcomes and objectives for your organization. As you develop strategic learning pathways within your organization, ensure each training, conference, or shadowing experience supports these same goals.

A helpful exercise for your management team is to sit down and plan the strategic growth of each employee. Ask questions that encourage them to think about what they want each team member to learn over the next year and how they can support that growth. Equally important is having a plan to measure this development process.

How to Implement Your Development Action Plan

Once you have a framework for the education, training, and development you want your employees to achieve, the next step is implementing the plan. However, before you start implementing the plan, a vital step is ensuring alignment between your vision for your employees and their personal goals. Without this, the plans you may have for that employee may not succeed.

The best way to accomplish this is to have a conversation with your employees about their current skill gaps and unique growth aspirations, and from there, create a personalized development plan that benchmarks their learning objectives.

Additionally, before investing significant time and resources into creating new initiatives, take the time to evaluate your current development offerings, if any, to determine how your existing resources can be leveraged with new ideas or reorganized to achieve a more cohesive and strategic purpose.

The final step in implementing your development action plan is setting clear milestones and checkpoints. Tracking progress serves several purposes, including ensuring that the time and resources invested in employee development actually achieve the desired results and that employees are truly acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to become more well-rounded individuals. This also creates a culture of accountability. As you progress through the employee development process, if you identify bottlenecks or areas for improvement, you can make the necessary adjustments to ensure these efforts are successful.

The Importance of Executive Coaching Development

It’s not just your employees who need support in their development—your leaders do, too. Nor should it be that only your employees are committed to improving themselves while your leadership remains complacent.

Leaders should also dedicate time to self-reflection, seek constructive feedback, and continually work on developing their abilities. Investing in executive coaching combines various development approaches, offering leaders opportunities to grow and improve their leadership skills, which benefits them, their employees, and the organization as a whole.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to truly effective employee development and executive coaching, your organization needs to think beyond traditional “training.” As you and your team consider the development goals you want to achieve this fall and beyond, we encourage you to take a strategic and coordinated approach to create a real impact with long-term benefits for both your organization and your employees.

If you have any questions about developing a cohesive employee growth plan, our team is here to offer strategic insights on fostering a culture that is dedicated to employee development. Contact us at info@bergerhrsolutions.com or 410-695-9888 to learn more.