Professional development has emerged as a leading pillar of employee retention.
When coupled with greater opportunities for internal mobility, LinkedIn data shows that these engaged employees stay with their companies on average 41% longer.
Organizations that invest in learning and development (L&D) programs that target individual professional development are more likely to realize this benefit since they are training their future leaders from within their current ranks.
1 out of 5 employees believes they can meet their career goals where they work today and have support to pursue those goals.
The good news for business leaders is that workers genuinely want to learn, and they are looking for opportunities to grow within their organizations.
Having a standard system for goal setting, progress monitoring, and success recognition will help your organization better cultivate internal talent while providing your workforce with the challenges and opportunities they crave.
Before you can carve out a path, you need to know where you’re going. This goal-setting is foundational to any professional development plan.
Most people have been through the process of goal setting at some point in their lives, but far too often those goals are not assessed and revisited against changes in one’s personal and professional life — and that’s a problem.
Goal setting should be an ongoing process that encompasses the full range of motives an individual may have for growing their career – including personal goals. Make sure your professional development plan includes regular goal reviews.
“Here's what I believe in my bones about goals when at their very best: They unlock ambition – ambition for yourself, ambition for the work that you do.”
One of the biggest challenges people face with achieving their goals is having a list that is too long. This lack of focus and clarity can leave your learner feeling overwhelmed and set them up for failure.
The key to staying on track with achieving goals is prioritizing those goals. When you sit down with your employees to review their list of goals, ask them:
Try creating a plan that includes some goals with six-month timelines, so those easier wins give your worker a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to keep working on the larger goals.
“It may sound counterintuitive, but having fewer goals can actually help you accomplish more.”
Measuring progress toward achieving professional development goals should function as both a tool of assessment and motivation.
The metrics used to measure progress are subject to the professional development goals set by your workers. That’s why it is important to set individual progress benchmarks at the beginning of the professional development plan process.
Make regular check-ins part of the plan, too. These meetings provide an opportunity to celebrate wins, fine-tune learning plans, and reassess what your L&D team can do better to support your workforce.
A great way to help your workers meet their professional development goals is through a success recognition program.
In her course Build a Personal Learning Plan and Stick With It, employee experience expert Shanita Williams shares, “The progress principle… suggests that there are many things that boost motivation, but the most important is making progress.” Achieving those benchmarks laid out in the previous section are moments for recognizing success.
Your L&D team can create a plan for how to handle recognition and what celebration entails, but remember to also discuss this with your employees while working on their professional development plan. Some people thrive on public recognition, while others may prefer praise that remains one-to-one.