What Is An Employee Development Plan?
As an employer, it is crucial to keep a forward-thinking approach to your business and focus on strategic growth and expansion. Employees are an essential part of any organization’s growth strategy – if you want your business or non-profit to continue to grow, it is necessary to invest resources into the people who will spur its growth. But how do you do this an efficient, effective way? Enter the Employee Development Plan!
An Employee Development Plan is defined as a well-put-together plan to equip an employee with the goals, skills and strengths needed to advance their career, coupled with the steps needed to achieve these goals, skills and strengths. It is an essential tool organizations can use to optimize growth and foster employee engagement. Having a well-defined Employee Development Plan in place ensures that both the employee and the company are working toward the same goals. They not only provide your employees with goals and direction, they also map out the trajectory on the steps needed to achieve those goals.
Though employee development plans require employers to go up-and-above and carve out additional time, making this investment in your employees can help them feel more connected with the organization’s mission, satisfied with their work and confident in their roles. It’s a win-win situation for both the employer and the employee.
Break All the Rules
Historically, Employee Development Plans were used to highlight gaps in an employee’s performance and where improvements were needed. And while this method might have been effective to some degree, it really only proves to discourage employees and leave them feeling like they aren’t valued. So, forget everything you currently know about Employee Development Plans, and read on to learn more about the Achilles Group approach to Employee Development Plans.
Equip & Encourage
The focus of Employee Development Plans is shifting: no longer is the process about highlighting performance gaps, remediation or what an employee is lacking. Instead, we encourage you to focus on building the strengths of an employee and helping he or she become better equipped in specified areas with the skills needed to excel.
The science of physical therapy is a perfect way to illustrate this concept. The point of physical therapy is to strengthen the muscles around a joint in an effort to help strengthen the joint itself. Though we typically think of physical therapy as something people who are sick or injured would utilize, this isn’t necessarily the case. Even someone who is the picture of health, such as a professional athlete, will take the steps needed to strengthen their muscles to help avoid an injury before it occurs through exercise and physical therapy.
An Employee Development Plan is like physical therapy for your employees. By equipping them with new skills, and helping them build upon their existing strengths, you are building up your employees and mapping out the steps needed to take an employee from one that is so-so, to one that has some stellar capabilities! It’s a strategic approach to help you take the best advantage of growing your organization and retaining excellent talent.
Interested in enacting Employee Development Plans within your business? We can help with that. Contact us, and we’ll set up a Discovery Meeting to determine the best strategy and Employee Development Plan approach that’s unique to your organization.
