Employee development is especially important for the survival and development of the support institution. This is because the financial rewards of working for such an organisation might be limited. Personal development opportunities can therefore be used as a motivating factor to keep good employees. Whenever the management considers a strategic expansion or redirection it has to consider the human resources requirements and plan in advance for the development or recruitment of the necessary people.
Furthermore, the mission of a professional support institution more or less imposes that the institution knows and informs about industry and professional trends, new technology and other important developments (political, economical, environmental, etc.). The institution’s employees thus need to continuously keep up with new topics and developments in the field of the profession and industries they deal with.
Another important development area is the delivery of support to members and clients, that is, training, research, counselling, consulting, etc. The employees will need to continuously learn how to improve their support to the members and clients.
Example: Trainers have to be trained in didactics, training methodology, 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.
Smaller organisations may find it especially hard to find the financial means and the time to send their employees to professional training or development activities. Staff development does not only refer to expensive seminars and courses, it also means:
· Learning via performance appraisals and continuous feed-back from the management
· Learning through coaching or support from more experienced colleagues
· Learning via in-house training given by professional experts (e.g., from member company) or training, consulting or research experts (e.g., most senior colleagues, members )
· Learning via assignment of new, challenging tasks (learning by doing)
· Learning by self-development: reading journals and publications, maintaining and using the institution library, searching the Web, attending seminars in the leisure time, etc.
· Learning by participating in events, experience exchanges and discussions with the professional networks
For some purposes the attendance of expensive training courses may not be avoidable. Furthermore, how shall your clients and members believe in investing in your training courses if your institution does not judge such an investment important for its own employees?
The institution management needs to plan for these training needs and ensure that enough funds will be available, either as surplus percentage of the revenue generating activities or through donor funding.