According to the most recent Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report, show that 85% percent of employees are not engaged in the workplace. This means that the majority of the workforce around the world does not have a positive outlook towards their job and organisation and they are not performing at the optimum level of their skills and experience. Adding to that, research after research show that motivated employees outperform their unengaged peers.
Having said that, most organisations today still bank on the classic/ obvious monetary benefits and workplace perks to keep their employees motivated try and take care of their overall well-being. But one rather overlooked way to increase engagement at the workforce is to invest in personal development, both for managers and their teams. According to another Gallup's Meta-analysis Report, the business or work units that scored the highest on employee engagement showed 21 percent higher levels of profitability.
With implementation of a “Personal Development Plan” companies can make employees feel like their best interests matter, and the leadership cares about their dreams, goals, health and overall well-being. When this happens, employees respond by being motivated, engaged, and most of all happy at work.
Here are 4 ways to provide personal development opportunities to your employees.
1. Facilitate self-awareness
Employee motivation and well-being underlines performance in the job, and the former cannot be achieved without self-awareness. Providing your employees with personality assessments is an objective and reliable way to help them increase self-awareness by allowing them to have an analysis of various aspects of their personality, their strong points and then focus on areas of personal development.
2. Provide personal development resources
Invest in a set of tools that are readily available to employees to choose for their personal and in turn professional growth. Offer (pre-purchased, discounted) personal assessment tools, e-learning modules, personal and career coaching sessions, etc. These personal development tools can have add-ons, like articles, podcasts, video tutorials and more.
3. Encourage development with both professional and personal goals
Most companies facilitate employees to identify professional goals and then work towards fulfilling the said goals. But employees should be self-motivated to set goals for themselves, by themselves. On opportunity for discussion of these goals can during performance review as well. It will motivate, make them feel valued by showing your employees that their manager cares about them as an independent individual, not just as an employees to the company. A good example can be a full-paid/co-paid offer for higher-education courses.
4. Allow scheduled time for personal development
After encouraging and facilitating a process and resources for professional development, it is crucial for the organisation to allow for time within the working hours as well to give the employee the opportunity to make use of the various personal development resources.
For example, it could be the 30 minutes in the mornings, a few days a week, marked on the employee calendar to take self-initiative and select and use the different personal development tools available. This time is an important long-term investment and should be valued by both the managers and the employees, as it is for benefit of both the individual and the organisation.
To conclude with 'reiterating' this simple but crucial statement, showing your team how much you care about them as people and not just as employees will motivate them, transform their approach to work as positive and will also contribute to their overall well-being both at and outside the workplace.
