Leveling Up Your Employees: How to Holistically Carry Out Career Development Plans

When we think of company growth, our minds jump to words like expansion, acquisition, or partnerships, to name a few. However, company’s don’t just grow on their own; they grow with the development of their workforce as well. Employees are the cells that make up the body of the company, and if every employee develops and levels up, so does the business at large.

Plan, Plan, Plan

Carrying out anything in business involves a lot of planning. Planning is your best way to not only steer actions towards common goals but also to mitigate as much risk as you can while maximizing benefits. The same is true for carrying out career development plans.

Initially, you must plan how to carry out employee development from evaluations up to promotions. Weigh in on company needs as well as company capabilities. Plan for any movement and its effects. Looking at small affects like giving out small incentives to bigger movements like restructuring to accommodate more promotions will help your development plans come together more easily. Not only that, but you also have to plan for contingencies, follow throughs, and continuity. While the goal of having development plans is to streamline top talents, not all top talents are going to be ready for developments.

All of this should be in light of ensuring all plans contribute towards bigger business goals. At face value, employee development plans feel like a direct benefit to employees, but more than that, it should be carried out with the greater scope of the organization in mind. After all, an employee base that’s loyal to the organization’s cause creates a cycle of growth for employee and organization alike.

Involve Everybody in The Development Plans

When it comes to development plans, noone should be left out—if they’re an employee, they’re involved. Some organizations only create development plans for desirable employees while leaving out non-desirable and auxiliary employees. This practice hurts not only the othered business units, it will also create a culture of contempt.

In involving employees, it’s important to mediate healthy discussions. Take the time to talk to and hear out managers, supervisors, and line employees. It will help you get a grasp of who’s ready for more responsibilities, who aren’t, and you might even find out about top talent that you might be able to prevent from leaving just from providing proper development initiatives. 

Proficiency Versus Preparedness

When developing employees, it’s important to understand that not every employee strives to climb the corporate ranks. However, it’s no secret that all employees want to be seen and rewarded when they put in the good work. 

If you see employees who are proficient, make sure that honing them will ba part of the development goal. Leveling up doesn’t mean just climbing the ranks, it could also be lateral, ie, being an expert of your process. 

Some employees will want to climb up the ranks but not all of them will be ready. Use this opportunity to look for those who have the fervor to lead people and carry the business. These employees are important because while training can provide you with skill, no amount of training can bring out an employee’s passion to improve a company.

When it comes to proficiency, take note of 3 things: hone the proficient, support the prepared, and reward those who are proficient and prepared at the same time.

Train, Train, Train

Development plans for employees do not stop at evaluations and salary adjustments. If anything, it only begins with that and should continue onto training. Training will harness whatever potential is locked away behind an otherwise stagnating top talent. 

Like in videogames, you can’t level up employees without experience points. Training helps employees tackle greater obstacles in their line of specialty or handle problems in adjacent fields. This is true for great employees that have plateaued in skills; some businesses may have repetitive tasks and this affects both employee growth as well as process improvement. New training may help great employees find ways to perform repetitive tasks faster and better, saving your organization time and money, as well as improving and streamlining aspects of your business.

Along with developing your company, it’s also important to have tools that scale and grow with your business. Salarium’s payroll software is designs to easily accommodate employee movement, addition of new hires, and even let’s you manage multiple different payroll of your different growing businesses. Try Salarium for free today.