Corporate training expenditures hit a record high of $61.8 billion in the US alone in 2014.
As companies continue to invest more in employee career development programs, with spending those dollars wisely is a top priority for all HR and Learning and Development professionals.
8 Tools for Employee Career Development
Competencies are a powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of your organization’s employee development programs, enabling you to link individual career needs with the organization’s business requirements.
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There are numerous tools available that support all sorts of development programs, and here we have outlined the top eight competency-based tools, processes and programs that can support a highly-targeted competency-based employee career development and planning program.
- Career path information provided in a number of formats, such as orientation programs, guidebooks, or the organization’s talent management system. The benefits of providing this information in the context of a competency-based talent management system is that employees can get the full picture of what is required of the positions along their career path.
- Employee guides and forms to support self-directed development or participation in a planned program. Using automated tools to support these guides or forms can be particularly useful as it provides employees with the bigger picture view of the competency requirements for jobs in the organization.
- Competency assessment tools to evaluate progress in development. These can be delivered through online assessment tools which can provide detailed information on competency gaps for development.
- Individual personal development plans to record and track progress in line with planned career development. Giving your employees a structured framework to work within, and the tools to easily identify learning solutions will go a long way in contributing to the success of the overall program.
- Personal competency profiles that validate and document employee competencies. In this way both the employee and the organization benefit by being able to document and assess the validated skills and competencies possessed by the employee for career, succession and position vacancy management purposes.
- Learning resource catalogs organized by competency. Giving employees access to pre-selected learning options that are targeted to address specific competency areas are a great way to promote ongoing development. Including informal, low-cost options such as on-the-job learning activities can increase the participation in your programs and can have great impact on outcomes.
- Work assignments or action learning exercises aimed at developing competencies. Once again these can be organized by competency and made available to employees through a learning or talent management system.
- Formal development programs that incorporate a variety of training, assessment and learning options designed to support career advancement (job rotation, learning programs, mentoring, tuition reimbursement).
Post last updated: March 20, 2019.