Who you are as a person influences all aspects of your life, including your professional performance. For example, someone with excellent communication skills at home is also likely to be a great communicator at work. Likewise, employees who are confident leaders in their personal lives are typically better candidates for managerial positions at work.
Do you want to have a large pool of talent you can dip into for various managerial roles and openings? If so, it’s worth your while to encourage both personal and professional improvement. Here are some effective ways to help staff members grow as individuals so they become better people and assets to your team.
Track Each Employee’s Journey
You’re probably familiar with the employee lifecycle and how it’s tracked. But just as a refresher, here are the six things most employers follow in the traditional lifecycle model:
- Attraction
- Recruiting
- Onboarding
- Retention
- Development
- Separation
These can all reveal valuable information about the typical employee experience. However, the employee lifecycle model does tend to become a bit impersonal and robotic. It doesn’t focus on each team member’s most meaningful moments. It also fails to identify areas where you can offer additional support.
To gain a greater understanding of your staff members and help them grow as individuals, try employee journey mapping. You can customize how you track each worker’s journey to include categories that the employee lifecycle model misses. Suggestions include life events (such as the birth of a new child or a work anniversary), manager development, and observances and holidays.
Your employee journey map should include key moments of each worker’s personal and professional life, professional journey stages, and supporting communications. This approach allows you to maximize your outreach and predict the various stages of each person’s journey. It also helps you identify areas where team members need additional guidance and support.
Encourage Professional and Personal Development
If you want to maximize your profits, you should always emphasize professional and personal development. Too often, employees are kept so busy at work that they have no time to work on their skills and positive attributes. It’s good for team members to stay focused while on the clock, but not at the expense of personal growth.
To create an environment of progress and improvement, many employers are building personal employee growth time into work schedules. This may look different for various companies. Some might choose to give staff members a few minutes of free time each workday to build a specific skill. Others might give workers an entire day each week to undergo training in an area that will help them be better professionals and people.
No matter what type of personal development schedule you adopt, it’s wise to establish some rules. For example, let team members know the skills they choose to develop must directly relate to their role at work. You might also specify that employees must spend their personal development time doing things that are challenging rather than easy.
Switch Up Your Training Approach
People don’t like to always be told what to do by someone who sits around and barks out orders. Employees tend to learn more effectively when they are shown how to do something properly. That’s why some of the best managers adopt a “Tell, Show, Do, Apply” training approach when teaching a new skill.
This approach doesn’t do away with telling altogether, but it uses it as just one piece of a more comprehensive training method. The other pieces include demonstrating how something is done, allowing trainees to do it themselves, and encouraging them to apply their knowledge to future projects.
Some managers even choose to ditch the traditional training model altogether. Instead, they get in the trenches and work side by side with their employees. This leading-by-example approach tends to generate greater respect among team members. It also helps them feel like equals and thus take on a greater sense of pride and responsibility.
Encourage the Development of Soft Skills
Many companies place a higher emphasis on hard skills than soft skills. Hard skills are typically gained through training and education and are specific to the job. Examples of hard skills include welding, computer programming, and graphic design. Mastering these types of abilities is essential for performing various job duties well. But to help employees grow both professionally and personally, it’s important to encourage the development of soft skills, as well.
Soft skills are attributes that can help people perform well in all aspects of their lives. They include things like strategic thinking, leadership, problem-solving, and clear communication. Punctuality, resilience, and determination are also important soft skills that can improve a person’s professional and personal interactions and progress.
You can encourage staff members to develop soft skills by rewarding behaviors such as critical thinking, collaboration, and exceptional communication. You can also enhance soft skills through special training sessions. Don’t forget to model the behaviors you want employees to develop in themselves. If you want your staff to be better at problem-solving, be a good problem-solver yourself so they can imitate you.
Helping your team members grow as individuals is mutually beneficial. It will allow your staff to be more successful at work and in their personal lives. It will also help them become more productive workers and drive business profits. Finally, taking a proactive approach to personal development and growth will improve company-wide morale and boost employee retention rates.
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