10 employee development ideas to unlock your team’s potential

From a paycheck to a sense of purpose, there’s plenty that employees want from their jobs. But another big one belongs near the top of the list: career development.

Despite what all of the chatter about employee disengagement and quiet quitting would have you believe, many employees are hungry for skill development and career progression.

Yet, when it comes to identifying and pursuing professional development activities, many workers feel unsupported by their employers. According to a recent Gartner survey, only 46% of employees are satisfied with their career development.

That’s alarming, particularly when development has a real and meaningful impact on employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of employee development ideas you can implement to show employees you’re committed to their continued growth and advancement.

What does employee development mean?

Employee development is the practice of providing support, opportunities, and resources to help your employees learn new skills and hone existing ones.

If that feels broad, it’s because it is. Employee development can come in many forms, from learning more job-specific skills to mastering new technology to staying informed about the industry.

Put simply, employee development means helping an employee learn or get better at anything that directly benefits their career.

Understanding the value of employee development

You may think focusing on employee career development only benefits your workers. They’re the ones who will pick up valuable skills and knowledge they can use to advance their careers – regardless of if or when they decide to leave your company. But, rest assured, prioritizing skill development, learning, and advancement is a win-win for companies.

There are many organizational advantages that come with investing in employee development, such as:

• Building a more skilled and knowledgeable workforce: Many employers are struggling with skills gaps – meaning there’s a disconnect between the skills workers have and the skills employers need. When you focus on employee training and development, you can identify the skills that matter most to your organization and help your existing employees build them.
• Increasing employee engagement: There’s a direct connection between employee development and engagement. When you show employees that you value and invest in their growth, they feel more motivated, loyal, and connected to their work and your organization. In fat, Culture Amp data found that learning and development (L&D) is a top driver of employee engagement across industries.
• Improving employee retention: According to a McKinsey study, lack of advancement opportunities was the top reason people left their jobs. Providing support and resources to help employees learn and develop shows them that your organization isn’t just a place to work for a while – it’s a place for them to grow their careers.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of employee development. It’s not a meaningless perk or fodder for your employer brand. It directly impacts the employee metrics you care about, including engagement, satisfaction, commitment, and retention.

10 employee development ideas to help workers learn and grow

Now that you know it’s worth investing in employee training and development, you may wonder: What exactly does it entail? At Culture Amp, we think of career development in terms of the “3 E’s”:

1. Experience: On-the-job experiences that help employees grow (e.g., stretch tasks, special projects, and mentoring others)
2. Exposure: Learning through observation (e.g., working with a coach, seeking feedback, shadowing, and networking)
3. Education: Structured learning (e.g., courses, books, and conferences)

The 3 E’s captures the vast array of professional development activities you can offer to engage, retain, and upskill your workers. For more inspiration, check out this list of employee development ideas.

1. Foster a safe and supportive learning culture

An employee who wants to learn or try something new faces some inherent risk. They need to put themselves out there, jump into something unfamiliar, and tackle a new challenge – all with the knowledge that they might fail, at least at first.

That’s why it’s so important to build an environment where continuous learning is encouraged and missteps aren’t seen as failures but as opportunities to learn and improve. When you foster psychological safety at work, people naturally become more comfortable taking risks, such as leading a challenging project or picking up a new skill.

So, how can you help employees feel more safe and supported? You can:

• Model vulnerability as a leader by talking about your own mistakes and what you learned
• Setting stretch goals for yourself and your team
• Hosting regular retrospectives to talk openly about wins, mistakes, and learnings

Small actions like these go a long way in helping employees feel comfortable pushing themselves, knowing they have the support of their team behind them.

2. Design personalized career paths

Many workers are hungry for career progression, but that doesn’t mean they want to wedge themselves into a rigid mold. The most meaningful career development is personalized.

Begin by building a deep understanding of an employee’s unique career goals and strengths. What work do they enjoy? What do they dread? What are they good at? What’s something they’re not good at but would like to improve? Are they interested in managing people, or do they prefer being an individual contributor?

Using this information, you can collaborate with your employees to craft motivating and individualized career paths within your organization. This provides employees with clear visibility of their future at your company, including what skills they need to build to reach their next steps.

You can make this process a lot easier by using tools like Develop by Culture Amp. With Develop, you can easily craft personalized development plans, set growth-specific goals, and provide clarity about career progression and role expectations.

3. Host impactful workshops and trainings

Teaching your employees is one of the best ways to walk the walk on employee development. You can offer employee training, workshops, and seminars on areas like:

• Soft skills
• Technology skills
• Industry updates and changes
• Health and well-being
• Leadership and management
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Just remember to balance any classroom-style learning with plenty of opportunities to put the theoretical knowledge into practice.

4. Offer opportunities for experiential learning

Workshops and trainings have their time and place. However, this type of education is most effective when people can practice and apply what they’ve learned in a real-world or simulated setting. This is where experiential learning comes in.

In contrast to the seminar, “sit and listen” style of traditional training, experiential learning gives employees a chance to get their hands dirty, so to speak. They learn by doing rather than listening. This can include opportunities like:

• Job shadowing
• Leading new projects
• Participating in rotational programs
• Taking on stretch assignments

Note that psychological safety is particularly crucial for this type of professional development opportunity, as it requires real action (and not just attention) from your employees.

5. Emphasize mentorship and coaching

Coaching and mentorship programs are another proven way to invest in your employees’ growth and development. Pair employees up with more experienced professionals they can learn directly from.

Studies show that mentorship is helpful for skills development and career advancement. However, it’s not only the mentee who benefits – the mentor does, too. People who serve as mentors report greater job satisfaction and greater fulfillment at work, proving these relationships can be mutually beneficial.

Yet, according to Gallup data, only 40% of employees report having a mentor in the workplace. Rather than leaving employees to fend for themselves and find a suitable match, company-sponsored mentorship programs can help workers connect with people they can learn the most from.

When creating your matches, remember that the most obvious fit might not be the best one. The most impactful employee development ideas are personalized, so remember to focus on your employee’s unique goals, strengths, and improvement areas. Rather than defaulting to pairing that person with someone in a similar role, you can match them with someone who best suits their needs.

For example, a junior software engineer doesn’t necessarily need to be matched with a more experienced software engineer. If they want to hone their communication skills, they might benefit more from being paired with someone in sales.

6. Encourage cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing

When brainstorming who your employees can learn from, it’s easy to think only of more experienced professionals and distinguished experts in your field. However, workers can learn just as much (if not more) from other people in your organization – even those who don’t work in similar areas or aren’t ranked above them on the org chart.

This speaks to the importance of fostering a collaborative work environment where knowledge sharing is frequent and free-flowing. Simply being exposed to other teams, processes, and ideas helps employees open their minds, think differently, and pick up valuable skills.

Encourage more cross-functional collaboration in your organization by:

• Organizing cross-functional projects: Bring members from different teams together to work on shared goals or company initiatives
• Hosting regular knowledge-sharing sessions: Schedule “lunch and learns” or internal webinars to give employees a chance to present their expertise to each other
• Implement job rotation programs: Allow employees to temporarily work in other departments (even just for a day) to better understand their processes and challenges
• Create shared communication channels: Silos can sabotage collaboration, so set up easily accessible groups or forums where people can share updates, insights, and ideas
• Hold cross-department brainstorming meetings: Invite diverse teams to collaborate on solving company challenges

All of these get workers out of the bubble of their direct teams so they can gain valuable exposure to other perspectives and approaches. Plus, research shows that cross-functional teams benefit your company with more innovation and adaptability.

7. Create leadership development programs

One group of people is often overlooked in lists of employee development ideas: your leaders and managers. They’re tasked with rolling out these initiatives for their teams, but they may not receive the same level of support for building their leadership skills and advancing their own careers.

Research shows that managers are getting less and less training. So, when planning out your employee development activities, remember to offer relevant options for your organization’s leaders.

This can include job-specific training, such as educating them on new industry regulations or teaching them the ins and outs of new technology. However, you can and should also focus on leadership skills and other interpersonal capabilities that help them manage their teams.

From having difficult conversations with direct reports to leading a hybrid team (something that 70% of managers have zero training on), focusing on these different management areas can help your company’s leaders approach their roles with more confidence – and equip them to lead and foster happier, more engaged, and more productive teams.

8. Create self-paced learning resources

Aside from a lack of opportunities, time is one of the biggest barriers to employee learning and development. Workers are so caught up in their daily responsibilities and to-do lists that they don’t have the necessary hours to dedicate to their own growth and education.

You can combat this by setting aside dedicated time for learning at work. For example, you could reserve Friday afternoons for on-the-job learning or choose an entire day each quarter when employees forego the normal demands of their jobs in favor of learning something new.

On top of intentional scheduling, self-paced learning resources go a long way in helping your workers make time for their learning and development. Things like self-directed online courses, books, and podcasts can all be educational while still giving employees the flexibility to consume them on their own schedules.

9. Provide frequent and targeted feedback

One element worth including at every stage of your employee development cycle is feedback. When you offer regular and helpful employee feedback, you keep people in the loop on areas where they can improve – which means they can grow and develop even faster.

Providing feedback once or twice a year during performance reviews isn’t enough. Employees need ongoing feedback to continually improve their performance.

Opt to provide feedback at regular and predictable intervals, such as during:

• 1-on-1 meetings
• Team or project retrospectives
• Career development conversations

Remember that feedback doesn’t always need to be critical. Offering praise and recognition can be just as valuable, because it helps employees understand what you want them to continue doing.

10. Refine your performance review process

While your performance reviews shouldn’t be the only time you offer feedback, they’re still an invaluable time for you to connect employee performance and development.

Performance reviews are most beneficial when they’re perceived as fair and helpful. Unfortunately, many employees negatively perceive their company’s performance review process.

That doesn’t mean you need to ditch your reviews altogether. Instead, you can take steps to right the ship by:

• Communicating openly with employees about the performance review process and its value
• Bringing together company managers to agree on a company-wide rating scale via performance calibration sessions
• Training managers on common biases so they can acknowledge and address them

All of those increase the fairness of your performance review process so you can mitigate misconceptions and help workers treat their reviews as growth opportunities rather than a groan-worthy obligation.

How to measure the effectiveness of your employee development initiatives

The employee development ideas above will support your employees in bolstering their skills and advancing their careers.

But, much like any other initiative, you’ll want to keep a close eye on the data to see how your efforts are paying off – and what you can adjust to make even more of an impact. The following metrics will indicate how effective your employee development ideas are:

• Employee engagement scores
• Employee retention rate
• Internal promotion rate
• Training completion rates

While your data will provide solid clues, it’s also worth discussing what works best for your employees. They can add more color and context to the digits and give you valuable insights about ways you can help them grow their careers at your organization.