Professional development is a continuous process marked by an employee’s desire to improve. That is, when an employee accumulates, enriches and improves his or her experience, skills and attitudes at work over time.
When you develop as a worker and as a person, when you achieve your goals and objectives. In short, professional development is achieved when you perform better.
Professional development is based on combining personal habits (commitment, effort, responsibility…) with professional development in the position. Both areas, if on the right track, lead to satisfaction and improved performance.
The organization is responsible for identifying areas of interest for professionals and finding ways to develop them. Companies develop career plans to guide and reward the best workers to meet expectations and grow within the company.
Stages of Employee Professional Development
Career development is based on five stages.
Growth (0-14 years).
During this period, the individual explores interests, interacts with others, builds his or her personality, and enters the educational fields in which he or she will be trained.
Exploration (15-24 years old).
The first steps of a professional development plan . The teen finds his interests and begins to pursue them with more specialized training (university, internships with companies, first jobs). Stage of eagerness to learn, but where there is no experience yet.
Establishment (ages 25-44).
Your true identity is defined and it’s time to settle into your desired field of work. Little by little, you begin to build your professional career. Look for more opportunities to add experience and professional development. So companies should have internal promotion plans for employees in this range. This is a time when they are looking to move up and into positions of responsibility.
Maintenance and Consolidation (45-64 years).
The individual focuses on maintaining their position, creating a name for themselves in their profession, and embarking on a phase of junior education. In turn, this will be a time to lead and succeed.
Decline (age 65 and older).
Gradually a person’s productivity declines and opportunities diminish. Retirement and business succession planning .
Let’s look at what each of these steps consists of, which, we should keep in mind, can be done by the human resources department or individually, in order to create a personalized professional development plan. The latter is very common among freelancers, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.
1. Request an evaluation.
This can be a self-assessment or an evaluation requested by the human resources department to find out the following aspects:
The skills and interests the employee has.
What developmental opportunities the employee is interested in.
Whether and to what extent those skills and interests align with the organization’s goals.
Steps in the short and medium term to reach the employee’s point of interest.
2. assess the perspective.
Assessment covers various aspects of the individual’s work life:
- Technical skills: those that enable the employee to do his or her job and are necessary for the next position he or she seeks in the organization.
- Soft skills: what skills, abilities, and emotional and social resources you have for the job.
- Abilities: this is about the abilities you have, in what aspects you can improve and what degree of skills you have so that your growth in the organization is optimal.
- Attitude: this can be a very subjective aspect, and it is recommended that an organizational psychology specialist conduct an assessment of the prospects of potential clients, their feelings, thinking and views of the company.
Companies that also have assessment software will have a lot of statistical data on the performance and achievements of their employees. It is very important that this process not be delegated to an algorithm because it is an aspect of professional and human growth. A professional’s accomplishments often have an impact on their personal lives. Therefore, the company should have a human approach to professional development, not just a quantitative one.
In this sense, the evaluation of the department in which the professional works is extremely important.
3. evaluate the department.
The professional trajectory of his career development perspective should be aligned with the needs of the company, and especially with the needs of the field in which he works.
A professional development plan should include the following items:
- business goals
- departmental goals
- team goals
- individual goals
Professional development should consider attainable, specific and consistent goals and objectives at all levels that make up the corporation.
The department in which the career development prospect works should provide an evaluation in accordance with the goals we have just mentioned.
Said evaluation should take into account the expectations of the employee: what he or she wants to achieve in his or her career. Confidentiality of your data and the answers provided should be a priority for the company.
In order to assess the potential of a potential customer and to know the degree of connection with the company’s goals, the relevant department must combine assessment and training. Although we have discussed the importance of training at the expense of the employee, this aspect does not relieve the company of its responsibility to train personnel.
In order for the employee to maximize his or her potential, companies usually resort to external institutes, continuing education programs, seminars, and even coaching programs. As a recommendation, department managers should assess the relevance of a coaching program because of the large number of scammers posing as human and professional development specialists.
That any type of assessment and training program should have an ethical dimension in line with business values.
4 Identify growth opportunities
A company should have a comprehensive professional development plan focused on getting the best performance from employees while providing the best rewards. This is a strategic balance, more commonly known as “win-win.” Accordingly, both parties (employee and company) benefit and strengthen their long-term relationships, allowing the company to strengthen and grow, and employees to experience significant improvements in their personal and family lives.
For this reason, a professional development plan should sharpen employees’ skills and help them reach their full potential.
A professional development plan should be based on very specific tools, such as training programs, the possibility of transferring the employee to new projects, and even opportunities that involve more responsibility, such as assistants or assistants in related projects.
A comprehensive professional development plan should be designed as follows:
Daily tasks and training derived from the potential client’s current level of responsibility.
Interaction with area managers and team leaders.
Courses, conferences, seminars and training events.
The percentage will also be higher for the first item and will gradually decrease toward the third. We do not indicate the percentage distribution of each item because it can vary depending on the business model and industry. Thus, so that in the software development world, courses, conferences and seminars would have more weight than in sales, because in the first case knowledge is constantly being developed by universities and institutes; while in sales the accumulated knowledge grows more slowly.
5. Record and evaluate progress
Recording and evaluating progress can be done in the traditional way or with talent management software. In either case, the goal of tracking assessment, learning and aspirations of the prospective customer should be focused on:
- Propose new, more ambitious and achievable goals.
- Constant planning to adapt to work demands, with special attention to new trends.
- Build stronger professional relationships, both with colleagues and with area leaders, in favor of better work dynamics.