When it comes to professional development, high performers frequently suffer from tunnel vision. They yearn to gain knowledge, advance their level of skill, and advance in their careers.
Yet, the significance of using personal development as a way of professional development is something that is frequently disregarded.
As a matter of fact, the highest levels of professional development require personal development.
So, how can you encourage this at the office? What do you need to do to motivate your team members to strive for greatness both personally and professionally?
For starters, take a look below.
L&D needs to be a priority
The phrase “learning and development” refers to everything a business undertakes to support the professional development of its staff, from skill development to people management. Historically, L&D has been viewed by many organizations as a formal training program that staff members attend during work hours.
Therefore, L&D needs to be a priority at your own office too. This is because learning and development will inspire growth among your workers, which will consequently boost your business’s productivity and efficiency.
On top of that, many employees nowadays want to work for companies that offer these programs. Therefore, businesses that offer excellent learning and development opportunities are more likely to draw in and keep talent than businesses that don’t.
Employees feel the organization is interested in their growth and are driven to stick around when they gain new skills and find new possibilities at work.
Last but not least, L&D will help you grow leaders within your business. In other words, learning and development programs can help employees become better managers and leaders.
Advancing the careers of your current employees who know your business goals and care about your company’s success can be more useful than looking for fresh, external prospects.
Progress and performance tracking
Employee productivity is a term used in business to describe how effectively you invest time and money to achieve the desired results. For the majority of businesses, revenue increases with the results. Consequently, raising productivity should be a major focus.
The main advantage of employee tracking software is that it is fairly straightforward to understand but challenging to put into practice. The use of employee tracking should be tailored to the company’s systems because every firm has its own regulations and procedures.
A corporation can assess if employees are meeting company standards by tracking the job they complete. If the standard is not met, employers can search for solutions that can help their employees produce better work. Workers who lag behind should receive additional training.
Managers can better understand the challenges and issues that their workers may be encountering by monitoring the productivity of both individual employees and workforce teams. For companies that depend on getting work finished at a given cost and within a specific timeline, productivity and time tracking can also help to improve forecasting efficiencies.
Self-awareness is also important
Our performance is determined by how we feel, and we cannot take care of ourselves if we don’t know who we are.
Think about providing your team members with personality tests like the Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Clifton Strengths Assessment. These tests raise a person’s awareness and provide them with a vocabulary for their distinctive personalities.
To help employees better understand themselves and each other, encourage group discussions about evaluation results. People can create possibilities for themselves to leverage their abilities in the workplace through self-discovery and enhanced awareness. They can also explain why they experience certain emotions at work.
Provide the right resources
Just as there are tons of resources online available for professional development, make sure you provide your employees with resources for personal development.
For instance, think about allowing employees the same access to life coaches that you do to career coaches. Moreover, create an online repository where staff members may access up-to-date learning materials, such as podcasts, articles, videos, and more. If your team has more resources, it’s more likely that some of those resources will be useful to your team.
Change the approach to your managerial structure
When it comes to the promotion of self-improvement, growth, and innovative ideas in the workplace, a rigid hierarchy can be a serious obstacle.
If the employees at your company follow orders blindly and only consider innovative ideas when particularly told to do so, you’ll never realize the full potential of your business.
The most innovative businesses have a management structure that enables workers in different departments to collaborate more freely with each other. The interaction of different groups and departments, as well as the discussion and resolution of shared challenges and concerns, are key drivers of innovation.
One excellent illustration of this is Tesla. The radically flat management structure that Elon Musk implemented requires senior management to take a hands-on approach, urging employees to collaborate across departments in ways that are subject-specific.
Final words
If you demonstrate to your employees that you care about them as people in addition to their roles as employees, it will completely change the way in which your team approaches their work. Therefore, the next time you adopt a plan for professional development, make sure to prioritize tactics for personal development as well. Remember, you need them to develop both their skills and their minds.