How many organisations have you worked for in the past that really embrace personal development?
Many employees we’ve spoken to over the years can find themselves in a state of limbo where training is concerned. You want to move onwards and upwards, but there’s too much work to do in your department to focus on your own needs. You want to progress and make an impact in your organisation, but you don’t want to push your luck by asking the company to pay for expensive courses. You’re desperate to bring new skills to your role – but taking a day out to study simply won’t wash with your superiors.
So, what the heck do you do?
The one thing you certainly don’t want to do is stay in the same role for years on end if you’re looking to progress. Not only will you begin to resent others around you who are moving into exciting areas of the company, you’ll start doing a bad job. When your goals for progression are never met, even if you’re happy in your role, you’ll start to doubt your ability to do well at the task at hand. If you work hard for years with little or no reward, the chances are you’ll look elsewhere for that promotion you’ve been hankering for.
At People Lab, a huge part of what we do is in meeting a variety of employees from all kinds of organisations, to find out what makes them tick. Employee Engagement is entirely individual, and what engages one person might not remotely interest the next. However, in a room full of disgruntled employees, it’s a pretty good guess that at least one of them will be disheartened by the lack of opportunities for development offered by their company.
There are a number of reasons that some companies might avoid offering external training and development opportunities, far too numerous to list them all in fact. It could be that they simply don’t have the budget to pay for expensive training, or that they lack in resources to cover the time you’ll need to take to study. They could be concerned that you’ll ditch them when the course is complete, or they could simply think that you don’t want to undertake any further formal qualifications – because you’ve hardly mentioned doing so.
And that’s just it – if you don’t tell your employers that you want to undertake this kind of training, then it’s unlikely that they’ll offer it to you. While many organisations could stand to be more forthcoming with their offer of opportunities for development, so could many employees.
