Personal development is one of the most important factors when it comes to talent sustainment, leader creation and overall job satisfaction among the workforce. These three crucial areas will have a direct impact on business if employee needs are not met, and require attention from the human resources function to ensure company-wide success.
SHRM’s Job Satisfaction Survey found that while 72% of employees cited respectful treatment by bosses as important, only 33% were satisfied in this regard at their organization.
This shows a shockingly high level of disengagement between talent and their leadership, which will have devastating knock-on effects to the overall business function.
In the same report, 47% of survey respondents listed career advancement opportunities as a defining factor in job satisfaction, with only 20% of whom content at the availability of such in their roles.
Figures such as this show that in too many companies, the human resource department is failing when it comes to the personal development of talent, and much work needs to be done to reverse the effects before it’s too late. Unsatisfied employees will have poor engagement, little brand enthusiasm and low productivity.
The Educational Media Center, based in the Netherlands, outlines the five basic principles of a talent development program as:
- “A crystal clear talent policy,” that is designed down to the details to enable the best performance when it comes to sourcing new employees.
- A “coherent organizational talent management effort,” that runs the course from the hiring of new employees to the future assessments, career planning, mentoring and engagement in terms of development.
- “Corporate challenges that could potentially underpin talent,” the resilience of the company in their respective business environment.
- Mentor roles between talent and “a more experience leader or professional outside their chain of command,” which seeks to improve the company’s strength and the individual’s personal development.
- Talents offering their companies “a huge and largely untapped cognitive surplus,” which is wasted when employees believe they are not fully challenged in their roles and their skills go unused.
With these points in mind, People Professionals must consider how they can improve the personal development of their own talent by first assessing traditional policies and measuring recent success rates, likely you will want to change or even get rid of these.
In order to produce in-house sustainable leaders for the future, businesses must begin to develop current talent in a way that compliments the businesses’ future objectives and goals.
For example;
- If the group intends to go global, are executives taking solid steps or providing enough training to establish bi-lingual employees that can adapt to new cultures?
- If your organization is planning to overhaul its brand image, are talents being formed to align with the company’s intended cultural ideals?
As human capital is at the very core of every move HR makes, the department must always remain in touch with their workforce’s training needs and requirements, or prepare to face a lack of talent, struggling business progression and development in the future.
The personal touch is beginning to fade in many businesses as technology replaces traditional communication and research functions, and losing sight of this can be catastrophic to every level of the business!
© New To HR
View Comments (3)
This is a great article and needs to be read by HR departments across the country. Development of employees may not seem like an obvious good idea, but in the long term it will help companies have more productive employees.
I totally agree with Tate. This is a great resource for any HR department! It's so important that employers don't throw away the talent they hired, but instead try to tap into their employees' potential!
I love this. At my job, there is a library and meditation room full of books you can borrow and return whenever you're done. They encourage you and/or co-workers to go sit and talk when business is slow and sometimes even encourage us to go sit under the trees and have a nice talk about our own personal growth.