The most important asset to any business is its people. Sales and leadership teams deliver more than just revenue through direct sales – they can also provide: new clients and contacts; knowledge; inspiration and innovation; a platform for recruitment. Many talented sales professionals are passionate and hungry, which can easily be nurtured through expert Learning & Development. In short, investing in the right, tailored L&D programme can help transform good people into great people, driving the business forward and increasing growth.
As we emerge from the pandemic, there’s no better time to put your focus into your employees and work with them to enhance their development, and with it, the development of your company.
Let your employees have a say in their learning and developmental needs
Your employees are the future of your business. They are the driving force behind the growth of your company. They need to have a plan of what they are going to be working towards in order to understand how they can benefit themselves, as well as the business, through L&D.
Learning & Development is the key factor behind the progression of your business and your employees – you have to grow and nurture their careers in the field they are in. Giving your employees a target to work towards is key to their development. Most successful targets are employee-led, and need full transparency and accountability.
Why are goal setting and employee input key?
Well, research has found that setting strong goals boosts performance by motivating people to increase their effort, inducing stronger focus and helping them prioritise. Motivating your employees will truly get the best out of them and goal setting is a big part of this. Goals of course need to be SMART, and can be long term or even short term; they all help in the development of your people, and provide the route to gaining more knowledge and learning more to benefit the business even further.
Shaping development plans
While you’re going to want to guide employees towards developing knowledge and skills for things that are relevant to your business, it’s important to give them scope within that to choose what they want to do. Learning new things and tasks takes a lot of motivation from the person doing it.
Your employees may struggle with motivation if they’re solely bound into a development program that’s full of irrelevant information and lacking in excitement and energy. Giving your staff the chance to shape what they do, even if some of it isn’t directly relevant to your business, will always improve their engagement in general and will benefit your employee’s focus when it comes to your business.
KPIs or Learning and Development
There are so many different KPIs in relation to Learning and Development and it’s in the best interest of everyone to properly track these. The benefits are twofold as it enables both the organisation to measure performance and the individual to track their progress towards achieving their goals. Essentially KPIs help to foster a stronger work ethic.
Some of the areas of focus for these KPIs should be:
- Engagement
- Knowledge
- Productivity
- Quality
Arguably starting with knowledge is the logical first port of call, as of course L&D can incorporate testing. From this knowledge stems increased engagement, higher productivity levels and an increased quality of work. Contact Sharpstone for more information on what specific KPIs you could set around these areas.
For businesses that are particularly ambitious, it might be an idea to enable employees to have an input in KPI setting too. It’s proven that ambition and quality of work is often increased when there is this level of accountability, albeit it may be a scary thought for many leaders out there! Sharpstone L&D is focused around key areas including accountability and trust, so fear not if you aren’t quite there as a business (yet!)
Help your employees learn in the way that they want
If you want to get the best out of your employees, you may want to let them learn and develop in the way that works best for them. Everyone is different and will absorb information and learn in their own way, EG some prefer to learn alone, some in groups, some like to read, some are listeners. You need a provider ideally that takes all of this on board and tailors programmes to specific needs of the majority. Of course, it’s not always easy to strike the right balance and may be too laissez faire to let everyone choose for themselves, but a good provider can at least make L&D interesting, engaging and even exciting for most and provide suitable supplementary materials to aide this.
There are many different ways that L&D will provide your business with a positive ROI, and set it up for mid to long term success; talk to the team at Sharpstone today for more information.