In today’s edition of Tips from the Experts, we asked three business professionals to share their top five tips on how to facilitate employee and company skills development.
Helen Westcott, HR Officer at itec
1. Be Curious
Taking a genuine interest in your employees and their goals is invaluable in determining what skills can be expanded on. Everyone is good at the things they love, and finding out what each employee actually enjoys doing is solid base on which to build their skills. This approach ensures their buy-in, assures you don’t waste money up-skilling staff members in the wrong field, and encourages the loyalty of these newly skilled staff members because they feel appreciated and understand the value they bring to your business.
2. Foster Employee Honesty
If your employees can be honest with you about where they’re falling short or struggling, you are more wisely able to spend your resources on a worthwhile training initiative. Similarly, if employees are unhappy in their particular roles, see room for upward or even lateral moves, and are simultaneously able to be honest with their managers about these factors without fear of negative repercussions, then the organisation benefits from this insight and can implement the most appropriate training interventions as a result.
3. Utilise Mini Projects
Once you’ve determined what skills you want to focus on, then utilising small projects in the workplace to either transfer these skills from other employees, or to cement practical use of their recently acquired theoretical knowledge, can really make all the difference. The added responsibility of taking charge in these projects is just icing on the cake for empowering your staff too!
4. Encourage Mentoring
Sometimes one of the biggest barriers to skills development can be cost implications. In making the effort to find out what skills your employees possess, you can pair them with training mentors (even in informal ways) to ensure skills transfer to those employees that require development. Succession planning relies heavily on this kind of mentoring – don’t hope for your employees to stick around forever, you want them to have drive and ambition, you want them to transfer their skills and move upwards.
5. Embrace Change
Focus on streamlining, improving quality and continuous improvement. Consult with your staff and get their buy-in through suggestions. Everyone learns new things and your business reaps the rewards. Don’t be fearful of employees moving roles, don’t be afraid of staff moving on – cultivate an environment that embraces these changes and takes them in stride, and you’ll develop a staff complement that is keen to learn and take on new responsibilities.
Spencer Lawrence, Lettings Director at Paramount Properties
1. Routinely Ask What Your Team Want
Do they think they could work together better as a team? Do they need to improve their knowledge of a certain area? Perhaps they want to belong to an accredited industry body? Find out what they want and create a training schedule around these needs.
2. Know Your Employees
It’s important to always consider the individual and create a place where they can develop their own career. At Paramount we routinely promote from within and across departments, filling gaps and creating new positions for our employees to develop professionally.
3. Think Ahead
Always think about how training and development initiatives will help in the long term as well as the short term.
4. Be Open
I think it’s vital to listen to employees. If you create an open culture where people can speak freely you’re able to spot gaps when issues arise, and look for training opportunities that will help bridge those gaps. At Paramount we do this through informal group sessions that bring all the departments together – without the directors.
5. Think Out the Box
Remember there are many different ways to facilitate employee development. It’s easy to identify the obvious gaps, but the magic happens when you broaden the spectrum.
Bryn Thompson, Sales Director at Pareto
1. Putting in the Effort
Sales success doesn’t happen by chance, it comes about through expert nurturing, training and development which can be done in your company or through external courses. By investing the time and effort in improving how your sales team performs and their skills, you can take your business to the top.
2. Boosting Morale
Every aspect of the sales cycle needs to be enhanced and developed to give your team a defined route to success. Sales development should cover everything from boosting your employee’s confidence to improving conversion rates and customer service skills, which will fundamentally increase sales.
3. Identifying Gaps and Improving
Even the most successful sales team will benefit from developing their skills and specialist courses can be a way to benchmark how each sales person is performing individually. From this, you can evaluate if there are any inefficiencies in your team and see how you can improve on them.
4. Iron Out All Processes
Sales development is not something that should be done in isolation. You need to establish a firm plan of assessment, evaluation and development from this point in order to ensure the smooth running of your sales company.
5. Give Back to Your Employees
You’ll find that your employees truly benefit from support and development, and ultimately see profits rise as a result.
Thanks to all our contributors for their valuable advice. For more expert tips be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.