My Development Plan

Employee development includes “formal education, job experiences, relationships, and assessment of personality and skills that help employees prepare for the future” (Noe, 2013, p.367). Development is important not only for preparing employees for expanding their ability to grow into new roles or positions, but also for expanding their abilities and preparing them for changes within the workplace that take place both due to external and internal impacts (Noe, 2013). To address my own personal development both to prepare myself for new roles or opportunities and to prepare myself for changes that may occur in my workplace there are several types of development that I can initiate both on my own as well as with the support of my current employer. These include formal education outside my workplace, formal education within my workplace, job experiences, and interpersonal relationships.

Formal Education Within My Workplace

Formal education sponsored by organizations can occur both off-site and on-site and with some programs that are designed to be directly linked to the organization’s business strategies (Noe, 2013). The organization that I currently work for has many different formal education programs that employees can attend to obtain various certifications and acquire knowledge and skills needed for supporting some of the business goals that the organization has. These programs include a focus on development of leadership skills as well as other functional programs such as certifications in six sigma process improvement or certifications in project management. Attending programs that focus on leadership will help to support me in my current career track at the organization and obtaining certifications in other areas will help me support some of the goals of the organization in improving processes and ensuring productivity.

Formal Education Outside of My Workplace

While my organization offers a wide variety of formal education programs to support my development, I also intend to continue pursue educational programs outside of my workplace. Many organizations offer tuition reimbursement which allows employees to receive financial contributions towards coursework and degree programs that can support their development (Noe, 2013). Tuition reimbursement has been shown to also support “employee retention rates and readiness for promotion, and improve job performance" (Noe, 2013, p.379). My organization does provide a tuition reimbursement program and while I am not currently taking advantage of this for completing the graduate program I am currently enrolled in I do plan on utilizing this benefit for future pursuits of coursework that will help me grow professionally in my current role and help me with being ready for taking on new roles within the organization in the future.

Job Experiences

Job experiences are an approach to development that helps employees to apply their existing knowledge and skills to new experiences in order to expand and develop new skills (Noe, 2013). At the end of August I will have completed my masters in instructional design and technology with a specialization in training and performance improvement. My development plan for myself includes having the opportunity for job enlargement and volunteer assignments to help me expand and develop some of the skills I have acquired through this graduate program as well as within my current role. Job enlargement consists of providing new responsibilities to an existing job through new projects, assignments, or roles (Noe, 2013). I have already had opportunities to take on a new roles within my department to expand my skills, but I am looking forward to taking on other responsibilities and projects to develop and expand on some of the instructional design skills I have acquired. More specifically in the short term I envision taking on a project of redesigning our new hire training program that has not been addressed in several years. I also foresee volunteer assignments playing an integral role in my development as it will give me an opportunity to expand my skills by experiencing new challenges and responsibilities that I may not encounter in my job (Noe, 2013). Additionally, volunteer work is an important development opportunity as it will help me to fulfill some of the values that organization has outside of work and will promote my overall well-being as I will feel gratified by having the opportunity to give back to the community.

Interpersonal Relationships

Interpersonal relationships help employees to develop their knowledge of the organization through either mentoring or coaching where the employee is able to interact with individuals who have more experience within the organization (Noe, 2013). The type of interpersonal relationship development that I plan to partake in is mentoring. “A mentor is an experienced productive senior employee who helps develop less experience employees” (Noe, 2013, p.394). I plan to partake in this development activity in two ways both by establishing a relationship with an experienced employee in a leadership position as well as through providing my mentoring to an employee who is seeking out a mentor. Our organization has a formal mentor program that uses a database matching system where employees are matched to a mentor with the skills and expertise that the employee is seeking development in (Noe, 2013). I will utilize this formal program to help further develop my leaderships as well as assist other employee seeking development. I also plan to establish a more informal mentor relationship with a manager within my department who can help me to grow and further develop my leadership skills.

References

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.