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employee development plan

Did you know that there are serious financial costs to employee turnover? In fact, a conservative estimate has reported that poor retention can cost 25% of an employee’s annual salary. Don’t let high employee turnover rates be the reason your company isn’t performing to its potential!

Recently, many companies have adopted an employee development plan to boost employee retention and promote professional growth. An employee development plan outlines potential path’s for growth in the company. Oftentimes, this plan includes activities and assignments to increase knowledge and learn new skills. In the end, this is a reasonable growth mechanism for the employee and company.

We’ve created an easy game plan for creating an employee development plan for your company.

Create the employee development plan that takes your business to the next level

Consider business goals

Before you sign off on an employee development course, take the company’s business goals into consideration. For example, let’s say you own a start-up marketing company. What conferences or online classes can your workers take that directly relate to the business? From a conference on social media engagement to an online course about email marketing, look into business development activities that can increase profitability. While these employee development plans are designed to benefit your workers, they should also be able to add value to your company.

Listen to your employees

It’s important to not make assumptions about your employees’ current capabilities and career ambitions. What are they interested in improving? What career path do they see themselves pursuing? After all, the company and its’ employees are less likely to reap the benefits of enrichment activities that they are not engaged in.

Employee development is about creating benefits for your employees that will ultimately make them feel positive about company culture. In other words, when the company culture is great, employees are more likely to stay! In fact, 93% of employees would stay longer at a company that invests in their careers. Since career development has become more expected in the workplace, make sure to consider employee input before deploying any action plans.

Consider a variety of employee development ideas

Employee development ideas have a wide range of offerings. Professional development classes, annual conferences, mentoring programs, and networking events are all great options for employee development. While some of these events might be more costly, there are also plenty of cheaper options too.

Affordable options include lunchtime learning sessions, where you can invite a guest speaker over the lunch break so there’s less disruption in the workday. In addition, starting a small book club and providing reading materials can be a great way to add a fun twist to career development. Whether it’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie or “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, this is a fun twist for including worker education.

Partner with an executive search firm

We hope these easy steps can help you create a development plan that will boost employee retention. If you still find yourself in need of qualified employees, contact Trupath, an executive search firm dedicated to finding top-notch talent for your company. With over 17,000 successful placements, Trupath is the industry expert on filling job openings quickly and cost-effectively. The search firm focuses the efforts on recruiting individuals that align with the company’s culture⁠—one of the many reasons TruPath is a premier search firm.