The Return of Employee Development
After being on the back burner in some organizations, employee development programs are coming back. They are seen as a vehicle for attracting, retaining, and maintaining a motivated workforce. There is an increase in training, mentoring, and succession planning activities.
In a 2004 New England survey by Bruce Katcher, HR professionals identified employee development as a key factor in their strategic plans. Some of the projects they were undertaking included: conducting training needs analyses, assigning mentors, creating personalized development plans, implementing succession planning, and refining their leadership development programs.
Having been involved with many of these activities with our clients, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you embark on these activities in order to increase your likelihood of achieving your desired outcomes:
Strategic connection. Creating training or development programs in a vacuum is a costly and ineffective approach. It’s important to look at the whole picture (external conditions, corporate issues, short- and long-term objectives) before you start designing surveys, training, or development programs. Unless you have clear objectives, you will most likely end up with a shotgun approach that does little to help you address your specific areas of concern. The more clarity you have around where you want to be, the better able you are to identify the gaps that need to be addressed by the development programs. A one-size-fits-all program (perhaps transplanted from another company) is unlikely to yield the desired results.
Support at all levels. If you are trying to develop new skills, the participants need a place to practice those new skills. The more support and encouragement they receive for adopting those skills and behaviors, the more likely you are to see results. That means you need systems that promote the new way of doing business (e.g., compensation, performance management, equipment, software). One often overlooked aspect of support is “leading by example.” For example, if managers do not provide constructive feedback to their supervisors, it will be difficult to hold supervisors accountable for improving their coaching and feedback skills.
Performance management. If new behaviors are not rewarded, they will not be adopted. Time and time again, we see clients who invest time in money in a training program and are unable to show whether or not the training had any effect on performance. By using performance management to reward new behaviors on the job, the organization can verify that performance levels and/or the culture have changed.
Patience. The full value of the programs may not be apparent for some time. While there may be some immediate “wins,” it takes time to reap the benefits of training and mentoring. The participants need time to grow and achieve results. Depending on their ability and motivation levels, you may continue to see returns on your investment as the participants are promoted and gain additional influence in the organization. That’s why they call it “development.”
If you are interested in learning more about employee development programs, please contact Kammy Haynes.
The Beauty of Assumptions
Those of you who follow baseball know that the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim should not have won the first game of their playoff series with the Chicago White Sox. Why? Well, the experts said that the Angels would be too tired after all of their travel and tough games in the previous series to have much left for Game 1 against the well rested White Sox.
It's not like it was a bad assumption that the rest factor would give the White Sox an advantage, it's that it was the only piece of data brought in to make the prediction. Had other factors been taken into account, the experts might not have been so sure of themselves.
The lesson here is that we can become too attached to certain pieces of information which leads us to ignore other things. We make better decisions when we don't give too much unwarranted weight to individual pieces of data (particularly negative ones).
To learn more about decision making, or talk about the baseball playoffs, please contact Warren Bobrow.
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