Chapter 14
Providing the Right Growth Experiences for Team Members
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting a grasp on talent development
Ensuring a supportive culture
Determining your talent development needs and the best way to meet them
Weighing the pros and cons of virtual versus in-person learning
Considering the factors that help talent development programs succeed
Measuring the results of talent development programs
In Chapter 1, I establish that your employees are your business, and much of this book focuses on how to maximize the talent in your business to support your business success and growth. After all, businesses don’t go; people do, so this chapter outlines how best to support the growth and development of your team members.
Understanding What Talent Development Is
Talent development is the part of the talent management process that ensures team members grow in skills and experience and contribute to the organization by accomplishing their goals over the long term. Talent development is the organizational process of positioning team members for career advancement in a way that aligns with the company’s mission and the team member’s career aspirations. It’s about aligning them with the right growth experiences to develop their skills and better position them to accomplish organizational goals.
Meanwhile, talent management is the broader strategy of maximizing the talent within your business. Talent management encompasses all the human resources and talent processes related to attracting quality candidates, effectively onboarding new team members, and retaining employees. Talent management is strategic. Talent development is specific.
Here, I delve deeper into talent development — recognizing the goals of talent development and making sure all your employees are being given opportunities for growth.
Recognizing the goals of talent development
The primary goals of talent development include the following:
- Creating a high-performance workforce that allows the company to achieve its objectives: It’s simple: Empower team members by providing what they need to succeed, and you’ll reap the rewards. Team members can’t perform well if they don’t have the skills and knowledge required to succeed in their role. When learning and development resources and opportunities for further growth are available, team members are more likely to accomplish and exceed objectives.
- Reskilling/upskilling employees so the company can continue to be competitive: According to a 2021 Gartner study, 58 percent of employees will need new skills to successfully do their jobs in the coming years. This makes development essential for organizations and employees. Reskilling/upskilling is helping employees develop a new skill or skills to be successful in a different position or support a new focus within the organization. For example, an organization may reskill a workforce when a system changes from a manual one to an automated one.
- Increasing employee engagement and retention: With the Great Resignation making competition for talent fiercer than ever before, improving employee retention is top of mind for organizations across industries, and prioritizing talent development can help. Prospective employees often report opportunities for growth and promotion as top drivers for exploring new jobs. Talent development initiatives are an important part of your retention strategy as they drive engagement and connection to the business. In addition, developing talent internally and equipping employees to take on expanded responsibility and/or new roles can save dollars that it would take to bring in external talent. The cost of replacing an employee who leaves a company averages anywhere from one-half to twice their annual salary, so efforts that promote employee retention and internal growth offer a significant return on investment.
- Attracting quality candidates to the organization: For job candidates, career prospects and future opportunities are an important part of evaluating a potential employer. An organization’s reputation for developing its employees is a powerful recruiting tool. In 2021, Inc. found that growth and training opportunities are a major draw for 90 percent of job applicants. Implementing talent development initiatives can entice the best candidates to apply for positions within your business.
- Improving your succession planning: Retention is an important business strategy as you want to keep the talent that runs your business. That is the goal of succession planning, and talent development initiatives help by collecting and analyzing data about employee performance and potential that can used when promoting team members and getting them ready for advanced roles.
- Improving legal compliance: Talent development initiatives are an important part of creating a safe, inclusive, and nondiscriminatory work environment, so in addition to the growth of team members and the business, they contribute to better legal compliance.
Talent development (for all of the reasons noted above) is an increasingly important part of every company’s business strategy, regardless of size. Talent development activities include growth experiences such as mentoring and coaching, skills-based training, leadership development, succession planning, on-the-job learning, and more. Throughout the rest of this chapter, I share the must-haves for all talent development activities, discuss the differences in different types of growth experiences, and reinforce the importance of measuring success across all talent development initiatives. Chapter 15 continues the conversation on talent development with a focus on career growth and leadership development.
Note: Most HR professionals use the terms training, learning, and talent development interchangeably, and even though there is much overlap, I address them differently. Talent development is the umbrella for all employee growth experiences. Training and learning are specific activities to support the growth and development of team members. Training and/or learning refers to activities a company offers employees to help them become more proficient at the tasks and the skills necessary for success in their role.
Ensuring talent development initiatives are connected to other HR activities
The key is connection — ensuring that the skills/competencies you are developing through talent development programs are the same skills/competencies you are hiring for and that these skills/competencies are the ones being measured through performance management.
In order to be relevant and effective, all talent development activities must be intertwined with other HR and talent processes and the company’s long-term business goals. Business leaders responsible for talent development work closely with senior managers, supervisors, and employees themselves to stay connected to what’s happening in the business. It’s critical to ensure alignment between the talent development programs being offered and the skill sets necessary to keep organizations competitive.
In Chapter 5, I highlight the importance of defining the skills necessary for success in the position success profile and through the definition of organizational core competencies. Documenting your core competencies into a framework provides clarity and visibility to leaders at all levels around what success looks like. These core competencies can then be used to ensure that your talent development activities are developing the right skills.
Creating a Learning Culture
It takes more than a curriculum of well-designed, well-delivered learning and development workshops to make a talent development program successful. What’s needed most of all is an organizational culture that values and supports continuous learning and development. There’s no single formula for creating such an environment. Clearly, though, it’s hardly a coincidence that companies frequently singled out for their commitment to employee development are headed by chief executives who are themselves strong advocates of employee learning and growth.
I once worked for an organization whose owner encouraged all team members to “work harder on themselves than their job.” He knew that team members who were focused on growth and development and committed to improving their skills would move the business forward. If the organization’s leadership and culture encourage a growth mindset, talent development efforts to support the growth of team members will become a regular part of working within the organization.
Here’s a brief look at some of the best practices found in companies known for their outstanding talent development initiatives. You may want to use them as a checklist against what is currently going on in your company.
- A mission statement that incorporates continuous learning as a core value. Beyond this, there also should be a steady flow of communication from senior management that reinforces this commitment.
- A systematic approach to identifying the skills and knowledge needs of managers and employees that are explicitly connected to business objectives and goals.
- An administrative support system that makes it easy for employees to gather information about education and learning and development programs, to relate them to their needs, and to arrange the time in their work schedules to take advantage of those offerings.
Assessing Your Needs
The place to start with determining your broad talent development needs is with the skills/competencies outlined in your position success profiles and/or your competency model. Before implementing any talent development initiatives, you must answer these questions to ensure that you are focused on the right growth experiences for your team:
- What are the strategic goals of this business — both long term and short term?
- What competencies do employees need to achieve these goals?
- What are the current strengths and weaknesses of the workforce relative to those competencies?
- What improvements can training be expected to offer that differ from day-to-day supervision?
- What kind of a commitment — in money, time, and effort — is your company willing and able to make to provide necessary training?
After you have clear answers to these questions, you’re more prepared to act, which the following sections help you do.
Determining the right growth activities
Follow these steps to gauge the right talent development activities:
Identify the business need.
What is the expected performance to support organizational goals?
Determine the gap.
What is the gap between the expected and actual performance (how the team member is performing today)? In this step, it’s important to identify what it is that is getting in the way of employee success. There are a variety of ways to collect this information:
- Direct observation
- Questionnaires/surveys
- Consultation with people in key positions, and/or those who have specific knowledge
- Interviews with team members
- Focus groups (targeted conversation with six to eight employees)
- Assessments
- Team member work samples
- Identify the right talent development activities to fill the gap: What talent development activities can be provided to help team members meet expected performance standards?
Working through this process helps to ensure the following:
- How talent development will improve productivity and the bottom line
- What, specifically, team members need to focus on for growth, as well as what will improve success and performance
- An understanding of the link between organizational issues and learning
Incorporating the four ingredients for growth
Before outlining the specific ways to develop the talent in your organization, it’s important to clarify how growth happens. After all, growth is what you’re after. You aren’t interested in learning for the sake of learning; you’re interested in growing team members to support them as individuals and to support business growth. So how does growth happen?
Regardless of the talent development activities used within your organization, you need to ensure the following factors are woven into any growth experience — the must-haves:
- Time: Development is a process, not an event. It happens over time, as team members struggle through the learning curve and take on new skills. You must allow time for growth to happen, or it will be stunted.
- Focus: There must be clarity on who and what is being developed through the process. Focus = growth, and if you try to focus on too many skills or irrelevant skills, you’ll miss the mark.
- Accountability: Research from the Association of Talent Development (ATD) proves the impact of accountability. Committing to someone that you will follow through on the goal you’ve set increases your likelihood of accomplishing the goal to 65 percent. Having a specific accountability appointment with someone you’ve committed to increases the likelihood of accomplishing the goal to 95 percent.
- Psychological safety: The environment in which team members are developing must be one in which they feel safe letting their guard down, failing, and struggling through the learning curve.
Comparing Online and In-Person Learning
Online learning is exactly what it sounds like: Classrooms and subject materials are all covered virtually. Options in online learning are continually increasing. It can be accomplished via an online learning platform, an online conferencing tool, online videos, and so forth.
In-person learning is the traditional way of learning, where students attend face-to-face workshops or learning sessions at a specified time and location.
There are obvious benefits and drawbacks to both in-person and online learning. It’s important to carefully evaluate the pros and cons before making a decision that will affect your team members’ growth and, ultimately, career. The key is to determine what works best for your employees’ schedules, learning needs, and your overall financial situation.
Tables 14-1 and 14-2 point out some of the advantages and disadvantages of in-person and online learning.
TABLE 14-1 In-Person Learning
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Being face-to-face creates a greater sense of connection among participants. | Participants have to congregate in a physical location. |
Hands-on learning provides better opportunities to practice new skills. | Participants must adhere to a specific class schedule, which may interfere with their job or other meetings. |
TABLE 14-2 Online Learning
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Participants can join from any location via the internet. | Skill development may be impeded by the lack of hands-on practice. |
Participants can work at their own pace and repeat content if needed. | Participants lack the opportunity to get help from one another. |
Scheduling is flexible. | The lack of structure may cause procrastinators or very busy employees to put off attending. |
More accessibility options, such as captioning, text-to-speech, and so on are available. | Technology isn’t infallible. The Internet goes down, the screen freezes — you get the idea. |
Virtual learning is less expensive, especially if it allows you to avoid travel expenses. | Participants, especially those who work remotely, may look forward to attending an event with coworkers. |
In order for online learning to be successful, it needs to be managed and monitored, just like in-person learning. If you simply upload a slew of learning and development courses and encourage team members to have at it, you shouldn’t expect it to do much good. The good news is that online learning is easy to monitor through the many online learning platforms that exist. Quizzes and exams can be incorporated to assess comprehension. Encourage — and maybe even offer incentives — to employees who complete online learning. When providing online learning, set aside specific times so that team members feel encouraged to temporarily stop their day-to-day tasks to complete an online course.
Identifying the Right Talent Development Activity Given Your Needs
After recognizing the skill or competency you want to develop to support your organizational goals, you can identify the learning approach that works best for your team members.
Learning is a highly individual process. As a result, you must remain skeptical of taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Formal learning and development programs still abound, but numerous other delivery methods are available as well. What follows is a brief look at the range of approaches that are possible today. It’s also important to note that many of these options happen in combination to create a variety of learning methodologies for employees.
Implementing formal learning and development programs
Formal learning and development (L&D) programs are the most traditional and familiar form of talent development. Employees are part of a cohort who are led through a targeted development program by a facilitator. These programs can be delivered in a variety of ways — in-person, virtually through online learning or videoconferencing, or via a combination of both (referred to as a hybrid development offering). Facilitators can include internal leaders and/or external partners.
The primary advantages to formal learning and development programs (apart from their familiarity) are that they provide ample opportunities for group interaction and social learning, and they give facilitators a chance to motivate the group and address the individual needs of each team member.
Formal L&D programs need considerable administrative support to be effective (coordinating schedules, reserving space for in-person sessions, ensuring appropriate technology for virtual sessions, and so on). Also, organizations that are bringing remote team members into the office for the learning can incur major expenses (travel and lodging, for example), which aren’t directly connected to the learning experience.
Encouraging participation in conferences and public seminars/learning events
Professional association conferences and seminars can provide a wealth of information on a broad array of topics and professional issues and provide an opportunity for team members to network and learn from other professionals within your industry. Often, associations rotate the location of such events from one city to another, and many are held online (or have a virtual attendee option). That can make it more convenient for certain members to attend, depending on the proximity of the conference or seminar.
Associations are well aware of the issues that are most important to their members, and they tailor programs accordingly. Conferences and seminars also offer opportunities to meet other members to exchange insight and ideas.
Like other learning options, however, the cost of travel and lodging can be a significant issue. Additionally, because some conferences can be quite large, one-on-one interaction with speakers and other people leading the program can be difficult if not impossible. Plus, topics may be more generic and not relevant to your organization or business goals.
To circumvent the travel expense issue, you may be able to identify local professional associations or user groups offering training that could benefit your employees. These may not be as comprehensive as an annual conference, but an after-work lecture or presentation can still be valuable.
You also can encourage employees to attend topic-specific workshops that are organized and run by learning and development companies. These public seminars usually are held at a public site, such as a hotel or conference center. Companies that stage these seminars typically market them through direct mail or advertising. Recognize, however, that most public seminar offerings are, by necessity, generic. Similar to large industry conferences, the topics covered don’t necessarily have direct relevance to your particular company. Another problem: inconsistent quality from one seminar to the next.
Offering executive education seminars
Seminars and workshops offered by universities and business schools are targeted, in most cases, to middle- and upper-level leaders. Typically, they cover a wide range of both theoretical ideas and practical pointers for putting these principles into practice.
Instructors are usually faculty members with a high level of expertise. These kinds of seminars are a good opportunity for attendees to network and share ideas.
However, courses at the more prestigious schools can take the executive away from the office for more days than desired. They’re also expensive — in some cases as much as several thousands of dollars (including room and board) for a course lasting several days.
Choose these courses wisely. Make sure that events cover management concepts and techniques that are relevant or applicable to your firm’s business focus and culture.
Mentoring
Some skills, such as the development of interpersonal skills, aren’t easily taught in the classroom or through online courses. In fact, some skills aren’t taught well in groups at all. Enter employee mentors. Just as appointing a more experienced employee to serve as a mentor for a new employee can help the new hire acclimate to your work environment, well-chosen mentors can assist staff at any stage of their careers with longer-term developmental learning.
In a mentoring role, an employee who excels in a given area — customer service, for example — can help less-experienced employees discover how to smoothly interact with customers and colleagues or develop additional skills that require more long-term and individualized attention than a classroom or online course can offer. Mentoring also helps people build interpersonal, or people, skills.
Mentors also can serve as valuable training facilitators for high-potential employees you may want to groom to eventually take over key roles in your company. (I touch on this in Chapter 15.) This is no small advantage. As firms brace for significant turnover among their most experienced employees due to the eventual retirement of many Baby Boomers, such arrangements may become increasingly important as a means of passing on valuable expertise to less-experienced workers and preparing them to take on positions of greater responsibility.
In short, the opportunity to have a close confidant is a valuable — and appealing — form of talent development.
Professional coaching
While the focus of mentoring is learning from a more experienced leader, the focus of professional coaching is asking the right questions to help the team member work toward their goal. A professional coach is someone who supports professionals and guides them in pursuing personal or professional goals. The International Coaching Federation describes professional coaching as the process of “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” In the business world, this is a collaboration through which employees and managers can develop new skills, create a clear career path, and improve their performance with the help of a professional coach.
There are a number of different coaching formats to choose from, including group coaching, one-on-one coaching, and even online coaching.
One distinction in coaching formats is between individual coaching and collective, or group, coaching. The difference between these two is really dependent on the goal you want to achieve. For example, if the goal is to help a high-performing individual, a new manager, or an executive either improve soft skills or overcome certain challenges they’re facing in the workplace, individual coaching is best. Especially in the latter situation, it’s critical that the individual feel comfortable and open to change. This can only be achieved in a one-on-one setting.
If you want to successfully introduce a wider change within your organization, whether you’re going through an organizational transition or want to improve diversity and inclusion throughout your organization, collective or group coaching can help you shape attitudes and mentalities in the same direction.
While mentoring and coaching are important and valuable talent development activities, in Chapter 15, I provide additional insight into both mentoring and professional coaching in supporting team members on their career paths.
Additional talent development tools
The following sections present some other tools you may consider using.
Microlearning
“I don’t have time” is a common response when team members are asked why they don’t participate in learning and development activities. Calendars are full and attention spans are limited, and this makes it challenging for team members to find and make the time for learning amidst their day-to-day activities. For these reasons, microlearning — short (3 to 5 minutes), focused learning — is a popular tool to support ongoing development within organizations.
Microlearning, also referred to as nano learning, bite-size learning, or micro-training, is online content that is delivered in a short, succinct manner, focusing just on what the employee needs to know. It is ideal for focused 3-5 minutes of informal learning in bite-sized chunks, rather than developing skills that require in-depth learning.
For example, many organizations use microlearning in their onboarding process, including short bursts of learning on compliance, data security, and other industry-specific regulations. Another example includes the use of microlearning in a distribution facility to reinforce the importance of safety and moving products without accident or injury — shift workers may be required to spend 3 to 5 minutes playing a game answering questions about important safety features within the workplace.
Holding lunch-and-learn sessions
Some employees learn best in a more relaxed environment. Many businesses have adopted the concept of a lunch-and-learn session, in which a team member or someone from another company gives a brief seminar-style presentation while refreshments are served. It doesn’t even have to be a full lunch. It’s a simple, cost-effective way to bring team members together and provide a quick burst of learning on an important topic to your business.
Implementing individual development plans (IDPs)
An individual development plan (IDP) is a great way to personalize the development of each team member. It’s a document that outlines the projected growth for an employee. It’s an agreement between an employee and employer that certain skills should be improved or learned, or that overall performance should meet a certain standard by a specified time.
A best practice in the use of IDPs is for the team member to own the development of their IDP in collaboration with their manager; this helps to ensure that the plans are customized to each employee’s needs. Encouraging the development and ongoing review and update of the IDP demonstrates that you care about their growth and provides a defined development track for team members to follow.
The specifics of an IDP can vary greatly depending on the job and the goals of the team member. Some IDPs are standard documents for all employees. Sometimes, they are created when employees are specifically tasked with showing improvement. Either way, they are a helpful talent development tool as they document specific areas for growth and add accountability for the employee.
Pair these plans with regular one-on-ones with supervisors or managers to ensure development stays on track. The IDP is only as valuable as it’s followed, so it’s important for managers to discuss the contents of the IDP ongoing. During one-on-ones, managers should discuss any challenges the employee is facing and provide guidance so there is continual conversation about their growth — this helps to instill a culture of learning.
You can find a sample IDP template in the online tools.
Knowing What Makes for an Effective Talent Development Program
In this section, I cover some of the factors that most often influence the effectiveness of a program, regardless of which form it takes.
Team member readiness and preparation
You should consider the extent to which participants are open and receptive to the concepts that are covered in the training. Do they know why they have been selected? Do they agree that the objectives will be helpful to them?
Do your best to communicate to all potential participants the specific learning objectives of the course and how they’ll benefit prior to the learning event. Make sure that supervisors who’ve recommended that certain employees attend the program communicate to those employees why that decision was made.
The applicability and relevance of the subject matter
The success of any program hinges largely on whether participants believe that what they’re being taught has direct relevance to the day-to-day challenges they face in their job.
Take all reasonable steps to ensure that the workshop focuses on issues that are the most important to employees who are in the program. If you’re using an external partner, make sure that the facilitator and/or program manager (often with external partnerships, you’ll have both a facilitator delivering the content and a program manager who is administering the program) are aware of those issues. Arrange to have examples and exercises customized, making ideas easy to relate to.
The overall learning experience
Consider how interesting or entertaining the learning event is, content notwithstanding. The typical adult attention span is 10 to 15 seconds, so the content needs to be engaging and capture the attention of the learners.
Learning events should be as interactive and participant oriented as possible. The best courses use a variety of learning tools: discussion, simulation, and exercises.
Reinforcement of concepts
Follow-up is critical. Devise techniques to reinforce the skills learned in the seminar and apply them to the job or task at hand. Instead of stand-alone sessions, a best practice is to provide a learning series where shorter sessions are conducted over a few months’ time, during which participants handle projects in between sessions and assignments. This approach is particularly effective for emerging leaders or high-potential talent. Individuals are more likely to retain, apply, and improve if they learn through a series of activities and experiences.
Provide relevant homework and exercises between sessions. Ask participants to create follow-up plans during or at the end of a session. Class participants also can form a community post-session, sharing ways they’ve successfully applied what they’ve learned in their day-to-day jobs.
But Is It Working? Measuring Results
As the person in your company responsible for the learning and development efforts, you can safely assume that you’re going to be called upon at some point to answer a simple question: Are we seeing results from our efforts?
HR professionals have long wrestled with the problem of quantifying the results of a process that doesn’t readily lend itself to quantifiable measures. It’s generally acknowledged, for example, that one of the primary benefits of employee development is that it enhances morale. But how do you measure the bottom-line benefits of morale? Not easily, to be sure, but you can look to team members for feedback and track and measure important aspects of the employee experience to gauge the impact of talent development programs.
It’s virtually impossible to isolate the impact of a talent development program, but by tracking multiple data points, you can gauge progress over time and tell a compelling story about your team members’ growth.
First, ask your employees how they’re doing and solicit their feedback on your talent development program. You can send out employee surveys asking them to give your learning modules, manager meetings, and other programs a grade. Ask them what works and where there’s room for improvement. Then, see what changes you can make.
Employees’ answers to the following survey questions immediately following the learning event can help you gauge its effectiveness:
- Were the topics covered in this learning event directly relevant to your job?
- Was the facilitator sensitive and responsive to the needs of the group?
- Were the instructional materials easy to follow and logical?
- Would you recommend this program to other employees?
The feedback you receive is useful but limited. Post-learning surveys measure initial reactions and offer little insight into the long-term value of the development efforts. Because of this, it’s important to observe the accomplishments or behavior of employees in the weeks and months after the learning event or to follow up with the individuals’ supervisors for their assessment. Do those who had leadership development, for example, report lower turnover rates? Have employees who enrolled in a technical skills course shown noticeable improvement in their mastery of a certain software program? Do more trainees win promotions than the average employee base? Drawing a direct correlation between training and job performance isn’t always possible, but this type of hard data can be invaluable when making the argument for additional talent development resources and can reinforce the value of the development that is being offered.
Another way to gauge the impact of talent development programs is to dig into the data. If assessment data is used within the development program, analyzing pre- and post-assessment data is a helpful way to measure progress and provide valuable insight to employees about their growth.
In addition, you can look to other HR and Talent metrics to help tell the story of progress on learning goals. Whenever possible, use metrics that are compelling to the business. Your chosen metrics will greatly depend on the purpose of the program, but they may include such factors as tenure, succession or next-level readiness, promotions, employee engagement levels, and production rates. The following HR metrics are commonly used to help tell the story of growth over time:
- Employee engagement
- Employee retention
- External versus internal hiring rates
- High-performer turnover rates
- Promotion rates
If your talent development program is robust and impactful and meets the needs of employees and the organization, you’ll see that reflected in the data. Team members want organizations to invest in their development, and they’ll be more likely to engage, stay, and reach for promotions if yours does.