What Is Employee Development?
Employee development is a joint, on-going effort on the part of an employee and the employer to upgrade the employee’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Successful employee development requires a balance between an individual’s career needs and goals and the funeral home’s need to get work done.
Role of the Supervisor in Employee Development
The supervisor has several roles to play, but providing information and support to facilitate the employee’s development is what is most important.
There are a few basic roles for a supervisor in developing employees. They include:
- Coaching employees to help them determine what they need for development
- Providing both positive and corrective feedback
- Offering organizational insight, information, and advice
- Guiding the planning through goal setting and checking back over time
- Allotting time and money for development experiences
- Ensuring opportunities for applications of new learning
It is very helpful for an employee to get an honest assessment of their work, as well as access to others who may be able to provide information or coach the employee.
The successful supervisor will also respect every employee’s learning curve. It takes time for anyone to learn new skills and be able to apply them well; this does not happen overnight. Building this development time into the application of a new skill set will make the employee more successful.
Role of the Employee in Their Development
Some things that the employee can consider in their own development include seeking a variety of assignments, tackling tough problems and asking for feedback. Coaching is another helpful activity, both in looking for opportunities to coach others and finding good coaches for themselves. It can help to ask for feedback when working with a variety of people and in a variety of situations. Employees should be looking for developmental relationships that can provide a variety of learning. They can also identify goals for new skills and abilities and then look for ways to meet those goals.
While employee development is critical to the success of an organization, both the employee and the funeral home must recognize that most of the responsibility for development falls to the employee.
Some things the employee should have and consider when beginning to work towards development:
- Develop specific goals; identify goals for new skills and look for ways to meet those goals
- Dedicate the time and energy to make the development possible
- Look for the opportunity to experience a variety of work assignments
- Ask for feedback on performance and areas for development
- Seek opportunities to coach others
How to Establish a Development Plan
When working with an employee, it’s helpful to work together to create an Individual Development Plan. A sample development plan is provided as part of the Performance Review Form – Template available in this HR Toolkit. This tool can help you plan an employee’s development as part of their annual performance review process or you may wish to use Section 3. Individual Development Plan on it’s own to document development needs, action steps and target completion dates. The purpose of a documented development plan is to jointly agree on development goals, establish concrete action steps and timelines, and help the employee to stay on track to achieve the stated goals.
Reasonable, Achievable Goals
The employee should identify areas for development, based on priorities, and commit to 1-3 goals during this phase.
Goals should be concrete enough to guide behaviour change and growth. For example, rather than “I want to improve my communication skills,” which is vague, say “I want to have the skills to clearly present and organize information in groups” or “I want to polish my writing skills to more clearly and effectively communicate information.”
Action Steps
The development plan should be action oriented, outlining the steps needed to realize the short- and long-term goals.
Identify as many action steps as needed to reach the goals. First, try brainstorming many possible activities, then sort through and specify which action steps make the most sense and are reasonable to be completed within the agreed upon timeframe. Again, be concrete.
What are the Various Approaches to Employee Development?
Because learning styles are so different among adult learners, there are a variety of approaches to employee development and delivery of training.
Professional training and development approaches include:
- Classroom Training: Development of technical/professional knowledge and skills is most commonly addressed by formal classroom training.
- Web-based Training: A major advantage of web-based training is that employees can receive training through a computer at work or at home. This is becoming an increasingly popular option for accessing a variety of training and development opportunities through a growing number of training providers. Several web-based training providers are listed under Tools and Resources at the end of this section.
- Books, Journals and Videos: Some employees learn best by reading books and articles and others by watching videos. It can be beneficial to have a small resource library of frequently requested resources available at the funeral home.
- On-the-Job Development: Most adult learners learn well by “doing” and when possible on-the-job development can be a cost-effective and time-efficient method of development.
- College, university, continuing education and other accredited educational facilities. Many organizations encourage continuing education and provide tuition reimbursement programs that reimburse employees for successful completion of courses consistent with development needs and/or career interests.
Tools and Resources
Performance Assessment and Development Form
Resources for Web-Based Training
There are numerous companies offering web-based training on a wide-range of topics including computer skills, communication, leadership and general business. Listed below are several such companies. Keep in mind that you’ll want to do your own research on these and other companies to find one that is right for your funeral home.
