People are our only asset. How often do we hear this in our industry and in moments of difficulty when the training budget is slashed? Personal Development Plans are not given the importance they deserve or are ignored completely; then we ask why people are not performing. We ask our people to work safely, drive efficiencies, work collaboratively and be customer focussed, but what training have we given them? The development of your people has a direct impact on your bottom line by increasing moral and contributing to the retention of your people while delivering an inspired team culture.

Here are a few tips:

Developing people is supporting team members in reaching potential and meeting business needs through feedback, coaching and training

Tackles training needs:

– Identifies and addresses obvious training needs.

– Understands current status of skills within team.

– Ensures that specific mandatory training needs are swiftly tackled.

– Encourages others to think through their training needs.

– Makes use of available training resources.

– Releases team members for training courses.

– Makes sure new starters are effectively inducted into the team.

– Conducts appraisals.

Develops People:

– Helps individuals to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

– Helps people to learn through constructive feedback.

– Gives personal time and support to develop people.

– Creates situations and opportunities to learn and apply new skills.

– Encourages others to take responsibility for their own development.

– Follows up after training courses and coaching/development activity.

Develops a longer-term foundation:

– Takes time out to review ream effectiveness and performance.

– Thinks ahead and takes action to ensure the skills and capabilities of the team will meet future business needs.

– Understands the aspirations and potential of the team.

– Identifies and develops potential.

– Helps people to learn from mistakes.

– Recognises and praises achievements to help the whole team learn.

– Seeks secondment and project opportunities to develop others.

Creates a learning culture:

– Gains reputation as a centre of excellence for developing people.

– Seeks out stretch assignments for talented individuals.

– Volunteers to act as a mentor or coach, and helps mentees realize their potential.

– Regularly reviews succession plans and refreshes development activities.

– Identifies and develops his/her successor.

Developing your people comes in many shapes; it’s not just external providers but in-house development, mentoring, coaching and shadowing. The use of consultants for specific areas of expertise is crucial to your business, where in-house knowledge does not exist or new ways of working are required. We must address the development needs of all our people on a regular basis, we are never too old and it’s never too late to learn simple ideas to improve how we operate. Motivate and stimulate our people, treat them with respect, invest in them and they will invest in you. Your people are your only asset – make them feel valued.