The mission of a business support institution more or less imposes that the institution knows and informs about industry, trade and professional trends, new technologies and other important developments. The institution’s employees thus need to continuously keep up with new topics and developments in their fields of expertise.

Another important development area is the delivery of programmes and services, that is, training, research, counseling, consulting, information services, etc. The employees will need to continuously learn how to improve their methods of delivering support to the members and clients. Thus, trainers have to be trained in pedagogical techniques, training methods, feed-back and presentation techniques.

Consultants need to learn how to deal with clients, how to analyse processes and needs, how to communicate the results, how to define improvement actions and agree on measures. Information services staff need to be trained in customer relationship management, in effective communication techniques, etc.

See in "Examples" which forms of staff development you could provide to your employees.

As discussed in the part on Business Planning, the institution's management has to plan and budget these development needs and ensure that enough funds will be available.