Navigating Areas of Professional Development for Employees

There are many opportunities available when looking at the areas of professional development. But they can also sometimes be necessary for ensuring the future of organizations.

Employers estimated that 44% of skills would be disrupted by 2028, due in part to the rising importance of technology literacy, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023. Nearly 60% also cited skill gaps in local labor markets as the biggest factor holding back their business transformations.

Career development is also consistently one of the top reasons for employee turnover, according to the Work Institute's 2024 Retention Report, illustrating how employee development needs aren’t only critical to meeting skills requirements within the organization but are also essential for retention and efficiency.

By understanding critical areas of employee development and supporting professional growth, businesses not only help their employees — they help themselves navigate the future of work.

What Defines Areas of Development?

Areas of development are sometimes called competencies or strengths. They include the basic skills and knowledge employees need to perform effectively. To reach their full potential, employees should improve, upskill, and reskill their knowledge and experience.

Areas of professional growth are skills that benefit employees, helping them become more productive and responsive team members. In addition, managers and employers can support developing employees who go beyond academic and technical skills, creating a culture that appreciates self-improvement and personal and professional growth.

Why Constantly Develop Your Workforce?

All employees benefit from continuous development, regardless of their specific skill sets, specialties, or concentrations. Their roles and responsibilities are constantly changing, requiring them to develop and adapt to new challenges. And in some cases, developing soft skills is equally as important as improving hard skills.

Organizations also benefit in the same way as employees — if not more — from continuous development.

Imagine a creative and flexible team with an exceptional work ethic, problem-solving skills, amicability, good task prioritization, and adaptability. That would be the ideal team, right?

The need to be competitive while improving profitability motivates companies to invest in their employees, providing upskilling and reskilling opportunities. This is especially true for markets or skills where there are notable talent shortages. However, due to rapid changes in the world and technology, the only way to consistently achieve this is to develop employees through constant learning.

So whether organizations need talent with basic skills or employees with extensive experience and knowledge, exploring areas of development for professional growth is essential.

Key Employee Development Areas

We all want a workforce made up of confident and empowered people who take the initiative and strive to do the best they can. That's why it's critical to focus on developing the hard and soft skills needed, as well as equip employees with technology and processes necessary to enable continuous learning.

But what's the difference between hard and soft skills, and how can learning and development (L&D) teams approach these skill needs?

Soft skills

The rapid evolution of work has made one thing abundantly clear: Soft skills are vital for employees.

Empowering soft skills affects how employees think and behave, and promotes agility and resilience when faced with new challenges. As a result, it should be a clear priority for talent developers, executives, and HR managers. Soft skills prepare employees for virtually any functional need, both now and in the future.

Here are a few basic soft skills organizations should consider incorporating into their workforce.

Flexibility

The dynamic of today’s business requires employees constantly improve their skill sets and adapt to changing work situations.

Flexibility is one of those areas of professional development that can greatly help employees — and the organizations they work for — stay ready and relevant. However, a new environment and training for adequate acclimatization require a diverse set of tools.

Here are some key ways to improve professional development areas for employee flexibility:

• Cross-training
• Role, department, and project changing for new responsibilities
• Business trips to other offices, branches, or stores
• Networks support
• Peer learning and knowledge sharing

Creativity

Creative thinking actually consists of a bundle of skills, including problem-solving, communication, and analytical thinking. One of the best ways to expand creative skills is to focus on innovative ways to tackle similar tasks or problems. In addition, doing things differently and moving significantly away from established work style patterns can help grow talent in this area.

Resolving challenges with non-standard thinking to meet the goal of constant innovation requires fostering a learning environment that:

• Challenges the status quo to question established thinking, which is the basis of creativity.
• Encourages experimentation, since there are no two identical people, situations, problems, or solutions.
• Helps employees feel free to be their authentic themselves when approaching issues, utilizing their experiences and beliefs.

Communication

Basic communication skills are now a primary focus for most forward-thinking companies, as businesses strive to become more agile in a world of never-ending changes. The critical thing is to create an open format, encouraging dialogue within teams.

Here are some communication skills that every organization should consider developing:

• Clear writing: Digital communication is the best way for a modern business to interact and avoid miscommunication at all costs.
• Critical listening: Good listening skills help encourage open discussions with both employees and managers and understand the points of view of all parties involved.
• Conflict management: Prepares talent to approach somewhat awkward situations — such as salary negotiations, complaints, and quitting — with sensitivity and poise.
• Prudence and reliability: Build trust and be fair in every aspect of employee interaction, from grassroots to senior management.
• Strong ethics: Part of building professionalism is understanding the clear rights and wrongs within organizations, and respecting ethical standards such as confidentiality.

Time management

Time management skills are valuable both professionally and personally. The better you manage your time, the more effectively you will meet deadlines, manage your workload, and reduce stress.

One of the best ways to improve time management skills is to gain a deep understanding of how employees spend their time doing various tasks. By tracking tasks and work behaviors, employees can learn ways to delegate, avoid procrastination, and rely on tools that can help prioritize workloads.

Here’s a list of tips for improving effective time management:

• Set goals correctly
• Prioritize wisely
• Take a break between tasks
• Organize your task performance
• Put away insignificant tasks and activities
• Plan

Conflict resolution and work ethic

In workplaces with diverse ideas and opinions, conflicts can happen. That's why an understanding of conflict management can be critical — for both managers and employees.

To navigate these often-thorny subjects, it's important to:

• Learn to communicate during stressful situations and master being polite but persistent, which can help you diplomatically resolve these sorts of conflicts.
• Self-assess situations and reach tactful decisions to resolve them.
• Foster punctuality, self-discipline, justice, understanding, tolerance, and empathy to improve work ethic and to manage complicated situations.

Stress management

Stress management is essential for any employee at any company universally beneficial.

Here are some ways to encourage successful stress management in the workplace:

• Practice setting clear goals
• Learn to process and work through stressful situations
• Encourage movement and other healthy stress-relieving habits throughout the working day
• Support staff efforts in dealing with stress by providing access to professional counseling
• Emphasize and train time management
• Offer a more flexible work environment

Leadership

Strong leadership skills are an excellent area of professional development, whether you are a mid-level manager or an experienced C-suite executive. Leadership training helps improve people’s confidence, which can lead to better opportunities and positions —— and is undoubtedly beneficial to organizations.

Here are some universal traits successful leaders must master:

• Motivation
• Decision-making
• Team management
• Development of strategies

Industry knowledge

This area seems obvious, but it can often be overlooked — especially in organizations with high attrition. Industry knowledge is incredibly valuable to organizations and desirable in new employees. Companies that can rapidly and effectively get employees up to speed increase their chances of retaining happy and successful talent in the long run.

Here are some tips for increasing and sharing industry knowledge:

• Provide online courses that explore the latest developments in your industry.
• Encourage workers to subscribe to trade newsletters and other related information.
• Establish mentoring processes for transferring industry knowledge from senior-level employees to newer hires. This is vitally important for organizations with older, more experience talent that's looking to retire in the near future.

Hard skills

Hard skills often relate to the technical part of an employee’s role — the knowledge and expertise of software, technology, procedures, and processes necessary to do a job.

However, the nature of technology inevitably forces organizations to develop highly skilled workers quickly. Some of the best methods for doing this can include sprint-like seminars and courses. Shorter and sharper bursts are likely to be accepted by staff and remain as relevant as possible.

Digital proficiency

While digital savviness is important in many different areas of the business, it's rapidly evolving HR teams, too. For instance, data analytics helps teams track, analyze, and act on workforce data that will help align areas of development with business goals. More and more corporations are turning to technology to better organize their talent data.

Developing this skill across the organization enables workforces to:

• Learn and quickly adopt technology and tools that will help companies gain an innovative and competitive edge.
• Surface data-backed insights to improve workflows and time management among teams and departments.
• Overcome unique challenges with automation and other tech to drive more value to the business.

Onboarding

Onboarding is an essential component for a long-term relationship with employees. By developing this skill, organizations can help newcomers quickly and smoothly adapt to a new workplace and team.

Since most companies have switched to remote or hybrid work in the last few years, you need to expand your pool of onboarding skills.

Several analytical skills that are essential for managers include:

• Using online tools and software to help explain company policies and culture.
• Creating videos or visual presentations that will include information on job requirements, communication tools, and work productivity tools.

Talent management

As a leader, you don’t simply need to manage — you need to inspire. Good leaders should motivate people to go beyond basic requirements, solve complex problems, and be part of a highly productive work culture. Effective leadership can impact productivity and employee motivation, ethics, and relationships with the company.

Here are some suggestions for improving people management:

• Focus on emotional intelligence (EQ)
• Involve everyone in the project
• Focus on communication skills and transparency
• Practice empathy

Areas of Development for Remote and Hybrid Employees

Employees should be able to work independently, and remote and hybrid work has shown that dispersed work environments can be effective. However, the ability to do so is often associated with the areas of employee development such as self-management, maintaining a proactive mindset, and diligence.

4 Companies Leading Employee Development

Many well-known industry leaders are successfully improving soft and hard skills in the workplace, including:

1. ‍General Electric (GE) has become known as an "academy company," fostering the exchange of ideas and fostering top talent. The company follows the motto that there are no bad ideas, encouraging risk and innovation in all work areas.‍
2. Amazon seeks to educate its employees through continuing education using an approach they call the Amazon Technical Academy. Employees can learn skills in high-tech fields and receive Amazon discounts, while receiving paid-for training.‍
3. Salesforce managers conduct one-on-one training sessions with teams to help them focus and improve employee development. The company allows employees to receive feedback on how they can develop quickly.‍
4. Google is a long-recognized company that values employee development, and it's been very successful in this area. The “way of Google” is to experiment, fail quickly, and learn from mistakes, all while having fun along the way.