💡Key Insight
- Promoting professional development in the workplace helps your business attract and retain top talent by enhancing your employer reputation and increasing job satisfaction among employees who see clear opportunities for growth.
- Encouraging professional development broadens your workforce’s collective skillset, enabling employees to contribute in multiple areas and adapt to changing demands within your business.
- Including professional development opportunities in job advertisements or employment contracts makes roles more appealing to high-quality applicants, improving recruitment outcomes.
- A culture of professional growth contributes to a more positive workplace environment and can enhance productivity because employees who continue learning are generally more engaged and effective in their roles.
As an employer and business owner, you’re probably wondering how you can keep your employees happy whilst growing your business. Although this can be a fine line, one way to do this is to facilitate professional development when you hire employees. Here we’ll tell you 5 ways professional development will not only do them a favour, but also your business.
1. Staff retention will increase
Staff that feel valued at work tend to stay in their jobs for longer. Further, they also tend to have a greater sense of loyalty to the business. Having high staff turnover can be harmful because each time a new employee starts, you have to spend time and money training them. In this way, it’s much better to develop the skills of your current staff. When your business retains its staff, it looks good on a professional front and provides consistency for customers. However, it also means that you’ll be employing workers who know your business on the kind of level that can only come from experience.
2. Your employees will be happier
Many people now expect to be able to continue developing their career and knowledge well after they’ve landed a job. It’s natural that your employees will want to increase their qualifications and expertise to progress. For many employees, being competent at their role is not enough – they want to be the best. Professional development activities will let them gain skills in other areas, which they will in turn bring to their role and your business.
3. Your business will benefit from having a diverse skillset
Similar to the previous point, having skills in a range of areas is beneficial to almost any role. For example, someone you employ in sales may benefit from undertaking a short course in marketing. Your employee would come to understand the customer journey from a different perspective, and use this knowledge in how they communicate with customers. Training up your employees in other skills is also useful when you need extra hands on deck. Another benefit is that you may be able to claim professional development expenses as a tax deduction for your business.
4. You’ll attract the best job applicants
When it comes to hiring new staff, you probably only want to attract the best and most suitable applicants. If you include ‘professional development’ in your job advertisements or as a clause in your employment contracts, you’ll find the quality of applicants you receive increase. Research has shown that additional work perks (aside from remuneration) have become increasingly important to job seekers. Offering professional development opportunities means that the right applicant is more likely to accept your offer of employment. An employment lawyer can help you draft this as a term in the contracts you offer employees.
5. Your business will have a better reputation
Your business’s reputation is formed in two ways: On the experiences of your customers and on the perceptions of your employees. If your employees are able to grow in their roles and continue learning through your business, word will get around. Further, there are platforms online where users can read reviews of employers from previous employees. These reviews often rate salary, management and professional development opportunities offered by the employer. If your business has a reputation as a supportive employer, then your business will be seen in a more positive light.
Encouraging the growth of your employees means that your business will benefit from having a wider collective skillset. The productivity of your business largely depends on your employees – so it’s important to help them be the best they can be.
