Episode 3: Supporting Growth in the Workplace

Why are Employee Growth Plans and essential part of the the employee relationship? Methods and Processes for Developing Employee Growth Plans.

Introduction: Why Support Growth in the Workplace 0:13

Welcome to the leading from the ground up podcast. I'm your host John Hall. Welcome to episode three. Today we're talking about supporting growth in the workplace and employee development. You might be asking why we would like to do that. Well, there are few reasons why we would like to we need to do that one sustainable change in the organization. We need to focus on the future and we need to make sure that our employees are aligned. If you focus on employee development and show employees that they are valued in your organization, employees tend to be more engaged They are much more productive and You have a higher retainability rate. So you're not continuously looking for new employees. You're retaining the the talent that you've already hired. And you are mentoring that talent so that you ensure that their engagement and their productivity is high. And they stay around because they enjoy the work that they do and they enjoy the organization that they work for.

Benefits of Growth Plans for Employees and Organizations 1:23

How this benefits the employee. The employee gets to grow, the employee gets to know new things. They enjoy coming to work, they enjoy the company that they work for. They can be one of your biggest advertisers because they like the job and they like the work that they do. So it benefits both the organization and the employee in in many different ways.

When to start an Employee Growth Plan 1:49

So when should you start a growth plan with new employees or employees in general? If they're brand new employees, you should probably wait until about 90 days, get a sense for their work style. Get them going on the job that they currently have, that you hired them for. Get them trained into that And then after the three months or 90 day period, sit down, have a conversation with them and start developing a growth plan. If you have employees who have been with you for a while, you should start with them immediately. We've all had the question in interviews from time to time, where we've been asked where we see ourselves in five to 10 years. For an interview. that’s not necessarily a fair question because you're not going to get you're gonna get whatever answer you get. It may not be a clear answer. It may not be an honest answer because an interviewer doesn't want to seem like they don't want to work for the company for the long term. But for an employee that already works for you. This is a good question to ask at some point, because they may be in school they may want to transition to something different. They may want to get their feet wet in other areas to see how they like it. The point is that they are still in your organization. They are looking for other areas inside your organization. And you want to help develop a plan with them to give them a direction or path to get to that point.

Things to Consider when Planning for Employee Growth 3:34

Can it deter from their current role? If you don't do it right, it can, if you do it the right way it can only enhance their current role. So you want to start with as I said before with current employees immediately, with new employees, wait 90 to 120 days before you start developing the growth plan just to get them on board with the current job that they have. So we have to start thinking beyond formal training. Companies that have new employee orientations or onboarding training that is set for employees depending on what their task is whether that's online, whether that's with the training department. For this case, we need to start thinking beyond that formal training and thinking outside of the box of how we get those things done.

Mentoring as a part of the Employee Growth Plan 4:31

One way to get this done is through a mentorship program or setting up a mentorship program with employees who are more seasoned who have been there longer, want to be part of the process of developing new employees or the process of helping employees to better themselves and to grow in whatever capacity that they want. This doesn't have to take a lot of time though the seasoned employees day. They don't have to meet on a daily basis. They can set up times when it is convenient for them and the employee to meet and discuss these things. It doesn't have to be a formal process. It does have to or does require time. It does require some dedication on both parts. And it does require the leader to relinquish that role a little bit. And that's okay because it benefits everybody in the process.

Soft Skills and Employee Growth 5:36

Another one of the things that you want to discuss with employees is developing soft skills. Things such as problem solving skills and developing emotional control. You want to get employees to the point where they can problem solve, that they can see through steps to solve whatever problem they're running into. They are coming to you in that open door policy to talk about what are the problems or problems that they may have that we spoke about in the last episode. You also want to talk to them about their listening skills and that will help them develop their emotional control with their listening skills. They aren't always going to hear everything that they want to hear or something that is always going to be good. They're going to get feedback that isn't always going to be positive feedback. Some of it is going to be not necessarily negative, but definitely constructive feedback. They should learn to take those or that feedback and figure out where their deficiencies are and find ways to correct them.

Importance of Listening and Aligning when Developing Employee Growth Plans 6:58

Part of this as well is we as leaders in organizations need to learn how to listen to our employees. We need to ask them what they need as opposed to just assuming that we have all the answers and we're going to push them in a direction that they don't really want to go. What that leads to is them going down a path that they don't really want to go down so they're not invested in and they won't really get anything out of it. as an organization we don't necessarily get an improved or enhanced employee based on something that we wanted them to do and as opposed to something that they wanted to do where the two paths don't align.

Steps to Designing a Growth Plan 7:41

Once they've told us what they want to do, we want to make a list of any resources that we may have inside the organization that will help them along, which goes back to that mentorship program that I talked about earlier. We want to create a training program for them. Once again, it doesn't have to be a formal training program. We can get them with other departments within the organization that do the specific things that they want to grow into and marry the two together and see if they can cross train.

Merging Employee Passion with Business Needs 8:16

Now I know this may seem like it's geared towards the employee for the most part but it isn't completely we need to remember our business needs. When we are talking to employees and developing these development plans. We need to look at what desired skills the organization requires out of employees. Whether or not this aligns with business needs and the direction the businesses is going in the future. We have business goals and we need employees to have different skills. It's a perfect marriage in growth for the employee and needs for the business. So consider this when you're developing your action plan for the employee development, after you've developed all this, you want to sit back down with the employee after you both had time to think about the process of what you've talked about to that point and develop an action plan or explain the action plan with the employee and get their buy in on how everything is going to play out. You want to make sure that you as the leader in your organization, are on the same path with the employee and you are on board with the desired growth that they want. As well as they are on board with the method in which the two of you have agreed to pursue this growth.

Conclusion 9:55

Thank you for listening and continue with me on this journey. As always, if you have specific questions that you would like covered in an episode, please send those questions of John@apertureadvising.com Until the next time, remember, I believe in your ability to lead from the ground up

Categories: : Podcast