Employee development should be considered a natural extension of training. Like training, this process is concerned with the growth of employees. However, unlike training which occurs in a short period and is targeted at specific KSAs, employee development unfolds over a longer period of time and targets a more general set of competencies. Thus, career development focuses on programs and systems that manage and track employees’ broad progress over many years – ensuring long term personal development.

Employee Development

An employee development program is a process developed to help people manage their careers, learn new things, and take steps to improve personally and professionally. Employee development is vital for the long term viability of any organization. Most organizations will pursue employee development on at least two fronts – succession planning and employee personal development.

1. 1. Succession planning is key to the success of organizations. An organization should always be concerned with the growth and development of its next generation of leaders. Because this development unfolds over many years, succession planning has to be a constant priority for HR managers and Senior Management. It usually takes 20 years to develop the CEO of a large organization, so one must start early and be very proactive to ensure that the pipeline of leadership talent for top positions is healthy. Remember how the success of Apple was so closely tied to its charismatic CEO, Steve Jobs, and how his untimely death in 2011 created much speculation as to the future of the company. It turns out that Apple did not miss a beat with its successor, Tim Cook, and is now one of the most profitable companies in the world with a market capitalization of $2 trillion! The development of Tim Cook as a successor of Steve Jobs did not occur overnight. Cook was carefully groomed, along with many others, to succeed Jobs just like the potential successor of Cook is currently being groomed at Apple.
   2. Employee personal development helps with employee motivation and retention. There are few things more motivating for employees than knowing that the company that they work for is committed to their professional development. Conversely, an employer who does not focus on employee learning is going to suffer from low performance, engagement and retention. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report, a whopping 93% of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers. People want to know how their goals and aspirations fit with the plans of the company that they work for.

A career development plan usually includes a list of short- and long-term goals that employees have pertaining to their current and future jobs, and a planned sequence of formal and informal training and experiences needed to help them reach their goals. As this chapter has discussed, the organization can and should be instrumental in defining what types of training. Both in-house and external that can be used to help develop employees.