As the world returns to normal (is there such a thing anymore?), we’re feeling more optimistic. Teams and organisations are starting to plan for the future again. This includes people development. Undertaking training or doing a face-to-face course is no longer an impossibility. As our confidence in the world grows, so does our awareness of the possibilities beyond our current situation.

The Great Resignation continues and the tight labour market in Australia presents challenges for employers who can’t find the staff they need. As our employees start to look beyond their current role, they need reasons to stay loyal. Professional development is a compelling incentive.

Allianz Australia’s  recent workplace research identified an increasing disconnect between employees and their managers about what they want and expect from work. One of Allianz’s recommendations for managers and leaders was to “Modernise the organisation’s approach to employee skill building, career progression pathways, and learning and development programs.”

To stay competitive, top employers need to retain and develop their existing people. Here, YakTrak outlines why people development matters, offering 4 great reasons why employee development is important.

1. People want to do a good job

People don’t come to work to do a bad job. Generally we’re happier when we feel confident that we know what to do and feel the satisfaction of doing our job well. A robust people development process can ensure your team members know how to do their jobs well.

YakTrak’s case study working with industry superannuation fund Hesta identified that employees responded positively to coaching. They required clarity around what they needed to do to improve and be successful. Meaningful, committed coaching using YakTrak provided this and contributed to a 13% improvement in employee engagement.

2. Better outcomes for employees

Increased employee engagement isn’t the only benefit of employee development. YakTrak conducted a case study with Bankwest contact centres and retail outlets. After trialling YakTrak for 3 months, teams not using YakTrak saw an attrition rate 6 times higher among employees when compared to teams using YakTrak. Employees who were using YakTrak set and achieved more goals relating to coaching and people development, and were more satisfied in their jobs.

At Origin Energy, YakTrak supported performance improvements using regular coaching and found that an astounding 100% of leaders strongly agreed that YakTrak helped improve results and 77% of all users agreed that YakTrak led to an increase in coaching and development.

In a competitive employees’ market, attracting new talent will require incentives like a robust people development strategy. Positive word-of-mouth feedback from happy employees helps.

3. Better outcomes for the organisation

Managing and developing staff doesn’t just provide benefits for the employees of an organisation, but also results in better business outcomes too.  A decrease in attrition decreases costs because it is quicker and cheaper to train an existing employee than hire a new person.

In addition to an increase in employee engagement, Hesta saw a 9% improvement in customer satisfaction AND a 13% improvement in sales conversion as a result of their work with YakTrak. Bankwest achieved a 30% lift in revenue amongst teams using YakTrak.

4. It allows you to delegate

When you have great employees that you can trust to get on with stuff, it gives you time to focus on your own performance. But if you are one of the many leaders who struggle with delegation, this could be a great opportunity to focus on your own professional development too.

If you want to build a high performance culture of continuous improvement, role modelling your own professional development is a great way to set the expected standard. When your team sees you putting in the time to develop yourself, they will expect it of themselves too.

So learn how to delegate and trust that your great team know what they’re doing. They’ve received excellent professional development, after all!

How YakTrak helps manage people development

Once you get into the detail of your people development process, you may wonder how to manage and measure all the different elements of your employee development plan.

YakTrak is a tactical people development system that can track development, encourage regular development conversations, set a coaching cadence and bring all development activity, forms and documentation into one place for easy oversight.

If you’re wondering how to measure employee development, get in touch to have a yak and book in a demo.  

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov via Pexels.