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Article
Written by
Lead People Scientist, Culture Amp
Employee development is one of the most powerful tools you have to motivate your team, improve retention, and boost productivity. When approached thoughtfully, it’s also a fantastic way to align individuals’ aspirations and interests with business objectives, creating a win-win for both your employees and your organization.
The key to effective development planning is finding the sweet spot where employees’ passions and career goals intersect with the needs of the business. As a manager, you have the unique opportunity to drive this alignment by helping your team set effective employee development goals that ensure both personal fulfillment and organizational success.
In this article, we’ll explore just how to create employee development goals that support your team’s career aspirations while keeping organizational objectives top of mind.
Employee development goals are personalized objectives that push employees to improve their skills, adopt new behaviors, expand their knowledge, and gain meaningful experience. Ultimately, they can help your employees grow and reach the next level of their careers.
Professional development looks different for every employee. Here are a few examples of what development could look like for your employees:
Development goals will vary for each employee, so as a manager, it's essential for you to understand their unique strengths, areas for improvement, and career aspirations. By tailoring goals to align with these factors, you can help employees create meaningful and impactful objectives that support both their growth and the organization’s larger plans.
When used effectively, professional development goals can help your business:
While employees typically know where they want to go in their careers, they might need help figuring out how to get there. That’s where development goals and a manager’s guidance can help.
At Culture Amp, we’ve found that effective development goals combine three elements:
The “sweet spot” of development lies at the intersection of these three elements.
At this sweet spot, employee development goals:
Finding this three-way balance can be tricky, but it’s worth the effort. Any imbalance can lead to negative outcomes for both individual and organizational growth. Let’s take a closer look at the potential consequences:
In the next section, we’ll explore a framework for guiding your employees towar development goals that balance all three elements.
Finding this three-way balance can be tricky, but it’s worth the effort. Any imbalance can lead to negative outcomes for both individual and organizational growth. Let’s take a closer look at the potential consequences:
Achieving this three-way balance can be tricky, but it’s essential. For example, if an employee’s development goal doesn’t meet a business need, it can be frustrating for other team members who are being held accountable for reaching a business goal. It can also affect the employee’s performance assessment later that year, which means that encouraging your direct report to focus only on their passions and strengths can actually deter their ability to move up in the organization.
Likewise, if a goal incorporates an employee’s strengths and aligns with business needs, but doesn’t match the employee’s desires or aspirations, then the employee may become demotivated. Culture Amp data has shown that lack of development and career progression is the #1 reason an employee leaves a company. The wrong development goals can fuel employee turnover by pushing employees to look for growth opportunities outside of your organization.
As a manager, you might run into a situation where an employee wants to pursue a growth opportunity that doesn’t align with a business need. For example, they may want to move into a different role, but there is no open role that matches their interests; or they may want to be promoted, but your company doesn’t have the additional budget to warrant a more senior role. How can you bridge the gaps between what your direct report wants and what the business asks for?
In the next section, we’ll explore a framework for guiding your employees towards development goals that do just that.
As a people manager, it’s up to you to help align your direct reports’ needs and strengths with the overarching business strategy. While this might seem challenging, we’ve broken the process down into four straightforward steps for shaping growth goals that land in the “sweet spot” of development:
Part of your job as a manager is to understand your direct reports. This includes learning their career advancement aspirations, strengths, areas of improvement, motivations, and so on. When you know your team well, you can be a better coach and manager, fostering the growth and passions of each of your direct reports.
How can you get to know your team better? Through surveys and 1-on-1s!
In addition to learning about your direct report’s career advancement aspirations and strengths, be sure you understand your organization’s needs.
Start by asking your own manager and HR about the following key areas:
As a manager, you have a vantage point that your direct reports do not. Your goal is to understand the options and limitations so you can best help them navigate internal processes and connect them with the right people.
Growth doesn’t always have to come in the form of a promotion or lateral shift. Other types of career growth can be equally, if not more, rewarding and open up a wide variety of opportunities for your employees. So, before you move on to the employee goal-setting process, take the time to explore what learning and development opportunities your business offers.
At Culture Amp, we use the 3 E’s model – Education, Exposure, and Experience – to assist with development planning. Here’s a quick breakdown of the framework:
While traditional classroom learning can be effective, learning via exposure and experience is often more impactful. Keeping this in mind, try to find opportunities around the organization that will allow your direct reports to learn from others and try new skills out first-hand. This might not have the same allure as a promotion, but these opportunities can provide purpose and meaningful growth.
Here are a few common ways to invest in employee development:
Once you’ve done your research and familiarized yourself with the above, it’s time to share this information with your employees and put a career development plan into action.
Then, find the “sweet spot” of development by connecting your employee’s aspirations and strengths to current business needs and opportunities.
How might this look in practice? Here’s an example:
Say you’re having a development conversation with an employee who mentions wanting to improve their project management skill development and become a Sr. Project Manager one day.
As a manager, you look for a way to map the employee’s strengths and professional goals to an important upcoming business project. For example, say your team has a significant project lined up for the next quarter. You can ask your employee if they’d like to take a more prominent role in the project to gain more project management experience.
Then, you can set up a bi-weekly meeting with a current Sr. Project Manager on your team so your employee can ask them questions about their job and get advice on the new project.
You also recall that your team’s quarterly budget has additional funds available, so you suggest to the employee that they explore a project management course to further develop their skills.
Moreover, you know that your business just signed a few large contracts with new clients. Demand for project management skills will increase in the coming months, so now is the perfect time to invest in this employee.
In this sample scenario, you’ve identified a way to align business needs and employee desires and leverage the “3 E’s model” to help shape your direct report’s development goals.
Now, it’s time to put pen to paper. For example, a good development goal might be “Become a stronger project manager.” You can use this goal to evaluate the individual’s overall performance objective (e.g., “Serve as the lead project manager on Q3 project for X company.”)
The purpose of an employee development goal is to give employees an understanding of what success looks like and the steps they can take today to achieve their personal and professional targets. You can even tie professional goals directly to performance goals to improve accountability and motivate employees to do their best.
Remember that professional development is an ongoing process. The work isn’t over once your direct reports have set their goals – in fact, it’s just beginning. Meet frequently with your employees as they pursue their goals. During weekly or bi-weekly 1-on-1s, share feedback and goal progress, identify blockers, and work together to build development into your employee’s day-to-day.
As a manager, you’re responsible for juggling the best interests of your employees and the organization – which is no small feat. Luckily, you don’t have to go about it alone. Here are some tools you can use to improve employee development:
Technology can be a game-changer in creating personalized development plans for your employees. Culture Amp’s personalized growth plans make it easy to identify your employee’s desired next role, create clear development goals, identify growth areas, and share continuous feedback. With all this information in one tool, employees can clearly understand what they need to accomplish to reach the next level in their careers.
Are your employee’s goals truly SMART?
You can be confident they are when you use structured templates that guide both employees and managers in setting clear, actionable objectives. Culture Amp’s goal-setting software has templates to help you define measurable goals, set specific timelines, outline key results, and align individual goals with broader team and business objectives. Additionally, you can control the visibility of goals, allowing employees to track their progress publicly or privately. By setting effective goals, storing them in a centralized location, and continuously monitoring progress, you foster accountability and keep development top of mind throughout your review period.
With so much to cover in weekly 1-on-1s, professional development can sometimes take a backseat. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to help employees keep development goals and progress front and center throughout the quarter.
Make time in 1-on-1s to provide meaningful feedback and coach employees effectively, ensuring they prioritize their growth and make continuous progress. Using a shared meeting agenda, like the one in Culture Amp’s 1-on-1 conversations tool, can serve as a helpful reminder to share development updates, discuss setbacks, and offer feedback, keeping both you and your employee focused on their growth.
Employee development initiatives are only as effective as the results they produce. To ensure your efforts drive meaningful change, it’s essential to measure the impact of development goals and adjust your strategies based on the insights gained.
Here are a few ways your business can evaluate the success of its employee development initiatives. Consider tracking:
Collectively, these data points and metrics provide valuable insights into how employees perceive development and growth opportunities within your organization. They help identify what you’re doing right and where you can improve, enabling your business to take targeted action. By addressing any gaps, you can enhance employee satisfaction, foster growth, and retain top talent before they seek new opportunities elsewhere.
Grow and retain your top-performing employees with Culture Amp Develop. Store career paths and competencies, use analytics to gain visibility into employee development, and develop individual development plans – all in one easy-to-use platform. Inspire every employee with growth opportunities that keep them engaged, motivated, and performing at their best.
Request a demo of Culture Amp Develop today to see the tool for yourself and take the first step toward investing in your employees’ growth and success.
Learn how to have more productive growth conversations and start making meaningful changes that empower your people.