Proposal for an Employee Development Program

By Yvonne Cutler

EIDT-6501-1,Training and Development.2014 Fall Sem 09/02-12/21-PT2

The purpose of this presentation is to encourage company approval and the establishment of a company-wide training and development program.

What’s in it for you? • A workforce that “…understand[s] their strengths, weaknesses,

and interests and by showing [that workforce] how new jobs and expanded job responsibilities are available to them to meet their personal growth needs.” (Noe. 2013)

• “Employee development is key to ensuring that employees have the competencies necessary to serve customers and create new products and customer solutions.” (Noe. 2013)

• “Companies that report that the most important talent management challenges they face include developing existing talent and attracting and retaining existing leadership talent.” (Noe. 2013) • Think: succession planning

What’s in it for you? (continued)

• “To succeed in their jobs, employees must stretch their skills…” (Noe. 2013)

• “Enabling individual capabilities is one of [positive organizational

scholarship] POS’s major tenets. “Reflected bestself” refers to an intentional focus on and development of one’s strengths instead of one’s weaknesses.” (Pace. 2010)

• When employees feel good about themselves, they have more to give to the company and others in general and in a more positive way.

Recommended Employee Development Activities:

• Performance appraisals with 360 feedback• “Ensures employees understand their current performance

and expected performance…”(Noe. 383)• Allows employees to get another perspective of their

performance (Noe. 384)

• Coaching / Mentoring • “Evaluation of the peer coaching has found that coaches gain

confidence in their abilities and participants learn about the topics discussed.” (Noe. 398)

• Tuition reimbursement• For every course grade “C” or higher, the employee gets

reimbursed “X” number of dollars for that course.

360 Feedback Example“Shawn Quinn, managing partner for organization development firm LIFT Consulting, describes a reflected bestself feedback exercise organizations canimplement to unlock employees’ best talents and strengths: Each employeeasks 20 to 30 people—for example, friends, family members, and co-workers—to share three examples of when they have seen him at his best, and the specific strengths he displayed in those instances. The employee then uses thefeedback to create his best-self portrait.

Quinn recounts one client’s (Jim) reflected best-self experience: Jim’s feedback showed he was good at “football,” although he really wanted to be good at “skiing” and had spent a significant amount of time developing his skiing skills. Jim decided to instead focus on football and delegate skiing to one of his direct reports. As a result, the direct report excelled in his career like never before and received the bestperformance score possible—a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5. Jim noted to Quinn, “This whole time I was waiting for my direct report to earn a 1, but I was the one keeping him from achieving it.” (Excerpt: Pace. 2010. Unleashing positivity in the workplace.)

Questions?

References:

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Pace, A. (2010). Unleashing positivity in the workplace. Training and Development, 64(1), 40-44.