The more mature and integrated your employee development programs are with your talent management processes and your organizational strategy, the more value you'll realize from them. Linking learning and performance has been shown to improve:
- employee performance
- organizational alignment
- the return on investments in employee development
- overall business results
But like everything else related to talent management, and business processes overall for that matter, we start with baby steps, and then gradually mature our approach to gain ever greater business value.
Employee development programs are generally recognized to be an important way to ensure your organization and employees have the skills they need to succeed. They're also an important tool to support employee engagement and retention. And as organizations work to become more efficient, do more with less, and keep up with changes in products, technologies and markets, developing and evolving the skills of their only sustainable competitive advantage – their workforce – becomes even more important.
To help you gauge your current maturity level with respect to employee development, and put plans in place to evolve your programs to increase their impact and value, we've put together an Employee Development Program Maturity Scale. It's based on our research, and work with industry thought-leaders, analysts, and leading-edge companies. The list/scale is not exhaustive; it does identify most of the key milestones or initiatives we've identified as best practices for maturing your employee development programs. The items are cumulative; as your employee development program matures, it should include progressively more and more of the items in the scale.
You may notice that as you progress along the maturity scale, learning, employee performance, employee goals and organizational strategy/goals become more and more tightly integrated.
So where does your organization fit on the scale?
What next steps should your organization be taking to mature its employee development programs and increase their impact?
Read How Others are Working to Mature Their Employee Development Programs
The New England Organ Bank (NEOB) wanted to better manage their talent and more easily address regulatory demands. Now they have one system for managers to direct all talent management tasks, and can ensure that their training investments align with corporate strategy and are impacting employee performance on the job.
Swank Audio Visuals wanted to build the ultimate educational resource program with its team members' best interests in mind. They automated their tedious, paper-based performance and development management process so they now have better and deeper insight into employee performance needs, and can provide training that is aligned with employee and organizational goals.
See for Yourself
Many of these steps are easy to implement and automate with Halogen eAppraisal™. And Halogen eLearning Manager™ can help you mature your learning programs and tangibly measure their effectiveness in terms of improved employee performance. Sign up for a free trial today, and see how easy it can be.
