How to take your staff development to the next level?

Staff development can be a logistical nightmare. Your compliance tasks are out of order, and while some sites are fully informed, others are lagging behind. You have a rough idea of who needs what training. But these staff are spread out over many departments and sites - and the lists are changing constantly. You know what you need to train people on. Only it’s all a mix of paperwork, online checklists, in-person conversations, and providing evidence.

But 74% of employees feel they aren’t reaching their full potential at work due to a lack of development opportunities. While nearly 59% claim they had no workplace training and that most of their skills were self-taught. Something clearly needs to be done. So how can you take your staff development to the next level?

Why does staff development matter?

Prioritising staff development is about giving your people the space, support, and opportunities to grow. Feeling valued in their role will impact their morale and engagement with the business. And it’ll also go a long way in improving your staff retention.?

It will also have positive effects on the wider business, too. More engaged and skilled staff directly impact your long-term productivity and profitability. It’s really a win-win situation.

It’s time for an overhaul

We always suggest starting with a complete overhaul. Whether you do this yourself or get external support, you want to take stock of where your staff development is currently at, as well as setting goals about where you’d like it to go.

As we mentioned before, your current staff development programmes might be a messy hybrid of in-person and online training. A logical first step might be to explore how best to bring the entire process into an accessible online version.

Create clear pathways

Robust, effective staff development programmes place them on a clear trajectory towards achieving their goals. Whether that’s achieving full compliance for their site, a new starter becoming a fully-fledged team member, a team member advancing to a supervisory role, a supervisor becoming a manager, or any other development path.

You want a clear set of tasks or responsibilities a member of your team must check off before they can advance to the next level or achieve compliance. This way, they can easily monitor their progress and manage their time more effectively. And you can keep track of who’s working towards what, as well as where further training and support might be beneficial.

What do you need to consider?

So you know you need an overhaul and you need to set a clear path. Great - what’s next?

As we said before, you can think about bringing everything online. What needs to be digitised to collect on one platform? It’s probably a good idea to start thinking about how to consolidate what you have before you dive in. Forms, leaflets, training procedures, and whatever else you might have, archive them in one location. This way, if your staff need that information, they know where to find it.

Then you can start thinking about a new approach to training. Again, we advocate for keeping this online; or at the very least organising them here. Who needs extra training? Can you let them know easily? Can you then see if they’ve attended it? You want to be updated throughout to ensure they know what they need to know. And that information you just digitised? They can revisit it if they want to.

For you, you want to be able to organise all this data clearly. Any way you can filter employees by start date, job title, or any other reason will be a massive help. It cuts back on the time-intensive admin of figuring out who needs what.

Bring the entire process together on one platform. One that can be tailored to your specific requirements. That’s how to make staff development a more fulfilling experience for everyone involved. Don’t let outdated ways of working hold you back.

At Inform People, we automate and standardise all your staff development programmes. Figure out your next steps with clear reports and modules suited to you. To find out more, get in touch with us on 0161 713 4104 or info@informpeople.com.