Valentina Drofa, Co-Founder and CEO at the PR firm for eminent finance and fintech brands Drofa Comms.
The professional growth of employees is a vital topic for any business that seeks to scale up and improve itself. A survey conducted at the end of 2022 showed that many workers today are highly focused on developing their capabilities. Over 70% of respondents were concerned that they lacked the necessary skills to confidently advance in their careers.
Professional growth can be achieved through a variety of methods, be it training programs, workshops, education courses, etc. The main point is for employees to acquire new knowledge and competencies which can be applied in their current or future roles in the company.
On the one hand, it allows individuals to excel in their work, achieving better results and a sense of satisfaction from a job well done. On the other hand, it also benefits the company they work for, as greater productivity of workers leads to business growth.
In this article, I would like to share some of my thoughts on how a CEO can go about fostering the right mindset for professional growth in their company.
Create The Right Company Culture
To foster growth among your employees, it is essential to create a corporate culture that encourages learning and development. Personally, I believe that there are two main ways to go about it.
The first is to seek out and hire sensible and forward-looking people who understand from the beginning that continuous education and training play a major part in advancing their careers as specialists in their fields. If a business leader can succeed in this, they don’t have to worry about micromanaging employee education directly, as there will be plenty of initiative from the workers themselves.
Another crucial aspect of driving growth culture is to lead by example. A business only develops at the speed with which its leaders develop. So if you want your subordinates to grow, you must demonstrate it through a personal example and provide additional training opportunities for them to make use of.
For example, last year’s statistics showed that over half of all polled employees had no workplace training and were entirely self-taught. Furthermore, 74% of workers claimed willingness to acquire new skills to stay employable but a similar amount indicated that they feel a lack of development opportunities in their workplaces. Millennials, in particular, demonstrated a stance that professional development opportunities are one of the most important aspects of company culture.
From personal practice, there was a period of time when I took a step back from actively growing my company, and we have simply existed on more or less the same level for a couple of years. Our services were of good quality and in demand, so we weren’t really looking to scale further.
But then I decided that I wanted more for my business and plunged into regular training sessions with a business coach to seek new avenues of development. My business partner soon joined the process, and from there we began introducing new initiatives in our company. Notably, most of our employees readily jumped on board and began adopting the improvements.
One of the very first training initiatives that we integrated into our work was the grading system. After a discussion with our HR department, every employee is set up with an individual growth plan suited to their roles and responsibilities in the company. These plans target specific areas from which employees would benefit most, helping them move up the career ladder, receive better salaries, and drive overall job satisfaction.
Work With Your Employees, Not Over Them
In my mind, one of the greatest tasks a CEO has to tackle is making it comfortable for people to work in their company. In order to do that, it is crucial for the company leadership to regularly interact with the employees, and receive feedback from them. Based on that feedback, you can get the general picture of how things are going in the company, as well as what areas you may need to pay attention to.
One way to go about it is by conducting one-on-one meetings with your workers in order to get their own take on the situation in the company. Oftentimes, they can offer valuable insight into what can be done to improve existing business practices and workflow, things that you may not have previously considered until they were pointed out to you.
Another practice that I have found to be rather useful is to create multi-purposed “clubs” where employees can openly discuss any number of topics among themselves. This is a fine way to conduct on-the-job training, as people get to share their respective work experiences, learn from each other and gain practical knowledge from covering real cases and challenges your business has faced. Not only does this approach contribute to professional growth, but it also creates a sense of community within the organization.
Measure Your Success
Naturally, spending time and effort on educational initiatives for your employees does not automatically guarantee their growth. But that is a risk you have to be willing to tackle if you wish to achieve growth for your business. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”—that’s how the saying goes, after all.
To determine whether your efforts are getting results, you need a concrete growth plan to measure progress against. Assess what work is being done as part of that plan, and how the employees feel about it. Ask them if they are managing to perform their responsibilities in a new manner, and whether they feel like they have benefitted in any way from their education.
Furthermore, don’t forget that having more competent workers means providing better quality services to your clients, thus driving revenues. Skilled employees possess the knowledge and expertise needed to tackle complex projects efficiently, resulting in faster turnaround times and greater customer satisfaction. By investing in the development of their workforce, companies can improve employee satisfaction, productivity and ultimately drive success.
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