What is employee development?

Employee development improves employee performance and ensures all employees have the knowledge, skills and expertise to do their jobs well. It involves developing individual plans to help employees build capability in the areas identified. Development activities range from formal training programs to informal employee coaching, including: on-the-job observation and coaching self-paced learning with online employee training software personalised learning paths formal employee training and certifications attending conferences, webinars, workshops and in-house training courses taking on more responsibilities in a current role opportunities to demonstrate specific behaviours while engaged in day-to-day activities. Employee development strategies should help an organisation achieve capability outcomes and drive business goals while delivering the growth opportunities employees are seeking. Training and development programs are often run by a Human Resources department (though within small business it may be managed by the business owner), while individualised employee development is tailored for a personalised learning experience to meet the employee’s individual needs and involves the employee’s manager.

What is the best way to do employee development?

Employee development strategies are successful when they motivate employees to embed the skills that management wants to see in the workplace. A powerful way to do this is while people are on the job. While employee training is a formal part of many learning and development (L&D) programs, to see sustainable results a regular coaching program should be implemented and focus on the inputs needed to deliver sustained higher outputs. In fact, management consulting firm McKinsey reported that employees find organisational performance management systems are more effective when managers coach team members. But don’t try to work on all measurable outputs at once. Create continuous growth by setting goals related to specific behaviours that drive the desired outputs. The key to long-term improvement is focusing on the actions and skills that staff need to demonstrate to improve their outputs.

Why should organisations develop employees on the job?

Ninety per cent of what we have learnt in our working life has been learnt by doing, on the job. Yet most businesses leave this opportunity for learning to chance, leading to little behavioural change. Employee training is often done off-site in a formal setting and many businesses invest in management systems that track only this type of training. In fact, this software only tracks 10% (formal employee training), leaving the remaining 90% to chance. The 70:20:10 rule developed by Morgan McCall, Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo advances the widely accepted idea that only 10% of learning and development takes place in a training room while 90% happens on the job with the support of leaders. This 90% is broken down into 20% learned from other people (colleagues and leaders) and 70% learned by doing – in other words the informal learning that happens with the experience of doing the job.

What is employee development software?

Employee training software supports a wider performance development strategy. While employee development software provides a broad range of functions to support capability lifts across an organisation (including capability assessments, performance tracking, goal setting, employee coaching and reporting), employee training software focuses on the training and learning components of development. It may include: a learning management system personalised learning paths tracking and reporting catalogues for employee training courses and training solutions feedback mechanisms. While the best employee training software might include employee training content and learning materials, this doesn’t replace what coaching can bring when it’s embedded into the daily routine. After all, if we learn 90% of new skills and behaviours on the job, it makes sense to use a solution that facilitates this.

How do I know what employee training we need?

Before you can start coaching and training employees you need to identify the gaps and figure out the skills and competencies that will improve with tailored development. A capability assessment is a structured approach to evaluating the capabilities of your workforce. It helps identify and provide visibility over your team’s skills, competencies, values and behaviours –capturing where there are gaps and training needs. You can then develop the targeted training material and individual coaching programs you’ll need to implement to drive change. How do I know what employee development tools we need? We recommend that everyone in your business uses the same tools to understand its people capabilities and track capability growth. Use employee training metrics and capability scores, and track progress through regular observations. With everyone using the same tool, you’ll be able to get a clear picture and understand where your investment is paying off.

Ready to make daily learning a habit?

Establish an operating rhythm for employee coaching

Your people are integral to your business’s success. But are you getting the most out of your investment in people development?

Building an employee coaching operating rhythm can make a huge impact on the success of your people development activities and increase engagement, improve retention and drive business outcomes.

Make daily learning a habit. It’s time to get on track with the Yak.

Want to find out more?

Get in touch and we'll give you a tour around YakTrak

Watch to see how YakTrak helps to establish a consistent operating rhythm for people development activities.

Seeing trends before they become problems

Rolling out a coaching program

Improving visibility and changing the culture

Establish an operating rhythm for employee coaching

Want to find out more?

Book A Demo