What's employee development?
First of all, you should know that employee development not the same with the workforce/employee training and that providing your employees with learning programs doesn't mean that you fulfil the workforce development needs of you teams. Basically, while the workforce training is focused on a specific skill that an employee needs in order to complete his or her tasks, the workforce development is a more complex activity which requires a long-term and ongoing strategy for creating a culture of learning.
In other words, the workforce development is related to finding solutions to meet the employment needs in terms of knowledge and skills, preparing them with everything they need to fulfil their daily tasks and, even more, giving them opportunities to grow, to get engaged, to actively get involved in what happens around them, professionally speaking. Moreover, an ongoing education, involving skills development, represents an important aspect of employee retention.
Best practices
Let's move on to the part when you actually start implementing the employee development as one of the key aspects of your business strategy. What are the best practices in doing so?
First of all, the delivery method plays a decisive role in achieving your development goals. In the context of this digitalised business world, you should choose an online delivery, using a learning management system which provide your learners with a self-paced process, choosing the time and place which suit them best.
Another important thing is related to the perspective that employees have upon the concept of workforce development. You should make them understand that it doesn't resume itself to training programs which are often perceived as another mandatory task to fulfil, but they are rather best described by the concept of continuous learning.
The company is interested in employees development, but so are they, because it is also important for them to professional grow and, more importantly, it is mandatory in this ever-changing and demanding environment. Also, they approach should be employee-led to a lesser or greater extent, so that employees know that they are a valuable part of the decision-making process when it comes to their own development.
Employee development and eLearning
eLearning is a valuable solution for effectively achieving workforce development goals. Why? Because it provides companies and their employees with up-to-date tools which enhance the benefits of employee development.
Among these, online training resources, feedback tools and customised analytics tools make the difference between traditional methods of workforce development and eLearning. By means of a LMS, students can acquire knowledge by methods which suit their learning style, pace and objective, while also being able to keep track of the learning progress and to provide the trainers or other members of the teams with feedback.
Employees are more likely to be engaged with the learning approach if they actually have something to say about it, which also contributes to the process of retaining top talent and of getting rid of employee turnover.
Workforce development, workforce development and workforce development again. Yes, this concept is so important that it should never be underestimated when it comes to your business strategy.
