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What Are the Organizational Benefits of Professional Development?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | What Are the Organizational Benefits of Professional Development?Hearing the phrase “professional development” makes some people squirm, others roll their eyes, and a few actually listen candidly. There’s often a misconception that managers who suggest some type of professional development to their employees actually suggest it because of poor performance, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Professional development is a great way for people at all levels of an organization to hone in on what exactly they want their career path to look like and gives them the opportunity to experiment with new tools that might help them to get there. There are many different avenues of professional development, but some common types include seminars, workshops, conferences, career conversations, job shadowing, and online courses.

The Benefits of Professional Development

If you’re reading this and thinking, “as much as I’d like to offer these types of programs at my organization, it just sounds a bit time consuming and expensive,” then consider the many benefits:

Long-Term Money Savings

As the tried-and-true sales saying goes, it costs more money to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing ones. The same goes for people within an organization.

It is important to note, however, that poor employee development (unorganized structure, prioritizing high performers over the whole, etc.) will cost more time and money than no development at all. So if you’re going to go in, go ALL in.

There’s No “I” In Success

Some people enjoy the monotony of knowing exactly what their tasks are for the day, how long it will take to complete them, getting them done successfully, and doing it all again tomorrow. Others like a challenge—setting higher goals and aiming for the moon. By understanding the unique motivations of your employees you can tailor a different professional development plan for each individual. Skilled managers should strive to foster their employees’ development because when your employees are successful, then everyone is successful. By creating professional development plans, you can combat complacency and build teams from simply competent to excelling in no time.

Improve Company Culture

Company culture may seem like a cliche buzzword, but it still holds a lot of value to today’s labor force. As of 2019, 46% of job seekers say company culture is very important when applying for a specific role.

Now more than ever, employees are worried about crafting a sustainable career with a company that has values closely aligned with their own.

Initiate Professional Development Conversations With Employees

“But how do I go about starting the conversation on employee development,” you ask? It’s simple, talk to your team and discuss your motivation for wanting to start a development program. If you’re in a hybrid or remote work environment, you can easily set up a video conference call and begin asking questions to get the team thinking about how they would like to see their role expand.

One great question to ask your team is: “How can being an employee here help you become the person you want to be?” It shifts the perspective from “what” you would be (your duties in a role) to “who” you would be (emphasizing you as an individual.) Unlocking your team’s core values will help you further understand their goals as well as new ways you can help support their success. After all, contributing to meaningful work is the number one reason employees choose to stay in their current positions.

Foster Professional Development During COVID-19

It might be daunting to talk to your employees about their careers in the midst of a pandemic, but, nonetheless, these are still important conversations to have. It’s vital to utilize a secure network option to ensure your line of communication is private and confidential. Other tools like learning management systems make it easier to track employees progress with special e-learning courses unique to the company.

You can test the waters of your development plan by checking in on your remote employees often, and making sure they know that you’re accessible, even if it’s only over Zoom. You can also encourage their success by highlighting them in larger team meetings.

After getting a feel for the areas your employees have expressed interest in, try introducing them to other people in the company that have experience in those areas. Professional development doesn’t have to be only hard skills—it can also include soft skills such as networking or public speaking.

6 Obvious Signs that it’s Time to Quit Your Current Job

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Have you ever questioned the reason why you joined your company? Sometimes your workplace may not turn out to be what you expected. While every job has its pros and cons, if you feel unhappy at work or feel like you do not fit, you should be ready to move on and do something else.

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article | 6 Obvious Signs that it's Time to Quit Your Current Job

But things are not always so clear cut. There is no fairy tale office where everything is always as you want them to be. You have to encounter both the negative and positive aspects of a job when working. In such a situation, making the wrong decision can lead to the loss of a good job promotion. You may also end up destroying the goodwill you have created since starting the job.

So how do you tell that it is time for you to move on?

When you lose the Thrill of Going to Work

Do you no longer feel excited getting up early to head to work? Do you feel like a machine when you start working on some of your daily tasks? That is a clear sign that you need to end your job and find something else to do.

The lack of excitement in doing your daily tasks can lead you to waste your time searching for other things that may excite you, such as playing online games or watching movies at work. Instead of wasting your valuable time, you should make use of it somewhere else.

When Your Ideas Are Not Being Considered

How long have you held out waiting to impress your boss? Sometimes you have to bear being left on the sidelines until you can prove your capabilities to your boss. But if you remain in the same position for a long time, you should consider working at a different place that identifies your value.

Moreover, if your workmates exclude you when making decisions or don’t appreciate your opinions, you should find somewhere else that is more welcoming. It is essential to work in an environment that appreciates your effort and work and makes you feel valued.

When You Are Smarter than the Boss

It is not a crime to be the smartest person in the room. But if you believe you have more skills than your boss, you may have to consider switching to another job. It can be very frustrating since you may have to downplay your thoughts as you conform to your boss’s even when you know they are disastrous.

Additionally, you will constantly be uncomfortable if you do not trust their decisions regarding the company. If you do not want to go down with a sinking ship due to poor leadership, you should seek a more challenging working environment.

When You are Underpaid

Does the work you do equate to the amount you receive as payment? You should not consider sticking around if your salary is too low. Aside from your monthly income, a good company should offer you work benefits, an employee health insurance, a 401k program, and a paid time off, among other monetary benefits. If you’re looking for a better job opportunity, you will find that there are plenty of advantages of Truck Driving for Barr-Nunn Transportation that you cannot find in other similar companies.

You Cannot See a Future

Does your company offer you opportunities to grow? A good company should create an opportunity for you to grow and rise in the hierarchy. Everyone is entitled to go after new opportunities and create a name for themselves. However, if your company does not provide you with such opportunities, you should find somewhere else to explore that.

When Your Work Environment is Toxic

Does your company tolerate bad behaviors, or does it hold perpetrators responsible? The culture of a company is depicted by how it responds to particular behaviors in the workplace. How does it deal with bullying, gender, and sexual harassment, or conflicts in general?

It would be best not to work in a company that does not protect you from such acts. Not only can they be demeaning, but some of them can hurt you mentally, physically, and emotionally.

It does not matter if you receive a good salary; if the environment is toxic, your productivity will be affected. You should instead find somewhere else that provides you with a safe working environment.

Summing up

Do not stick in a work environment that does not benefit you in any way; the grass is greener on the other side. Once you decide to leave, you should figure out what you want and find ways to get there. Take the step forward, fearlessly, and pursue a positive future.

How You Will Bounce Back From Job Loss

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article | How You Will Bounce Back From Job LossLosing your job brings up a variety of unwanted thoughts and feelings. You’re flooded with worries about how you’ll cope without a regular income. How and if you’ll ever find a new job. And depending on the circumstances of losing your job, you may begin to doubt your capabilities at work.

Although things may seem difficult now, there are brighter days ahead.

Bouncing back from job loss isn’t a matter of if but when. To help you get back on your feet quickly, breaking down what you need to do into manageable chunks is crucial. And so, through this post, you’ll find four vital steps to follow, manage your job loss worries and bounce back.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up

Before moving onto the next step, it’s essential to take time out to grieve your job loss.

Investing in self-care, such as eating healthy, positive thinking, exercise, and taking time to do something you enjoy will ensure you maintain a healthy body and mind. Both of which are essential to keep your head high and focused on putting your life back together, following losing your job.

Contact A Lawyer

The moment you lose your job, everything can seem a bit of a blur. You may not have truly taken the time to understand or even question your ex-employer about why they’re letting you go.

Finding out your rights as an employee, from experienced labour lawyers, is an essential step to take. By sharing your situation with a lawyer, they can advise if your employment agreement stipulations have been violated. Or, for example, whether you may have been subject to wrongful dismissal. In turn, professing your case to your company to ensure you are treated fairly or receive adequate compensation.

Manage Your Finances

Although it may be painful to look at your bank balance and budget right now, it’s necessary to avoid missing payments and falling into debt.

For this step, you want to work out how much money you have to live on for the coming weeks while finding a new job. In doing so, you can establish the urgency of needing to get a new role.

If you’re drowning in debt, you need to contact the collectors urgently to explain your situation. They may be able to freeze your payments until you get a new job.

Other areas where you can make positive changes to ensure you can afford to live for a while if you find a new role is trimming your budget. Whether cutting down your food shopping budget or letting go of a few unused subscriptions.

If more drastic measures are needed, you could return a vehicle you’ve leased to the provider, to save yourself a monthly lump sum. Or downsize to a less expensive home.

Survey Income Options

Depending on the circumstances of your dismissal, you may be able to claim benefits. Contact your local government to see if you’re entitled to any financial support.

If you have a side business, you could use your free time to make the most of your entrepreneurial talents and expand it into a full-time gig.

Otherwise, you could seize this opportunity to take a new course and learn something that can either enhance or change your career path.

Taking time to take care of you. Alongside sourcing a lawyer for support, managing your finances and surveying new potential income options. Are the essential stages to follow to help you bounce back from losing your job.

What Are Professional Development Goals?

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StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Professional Development Goals|What Are Professional Development Goals?OK, many of you will ask –

So, what is professional development anyways?

Here’s a short answer.

Professional development can give you the chance to grow and expand your knowledge on the subjects that matter to you. It can offer you access to the outcomes that you want and help you evolve personally.

Why set goals?

Career development is quite challenging to achieve without goals. If you can set the right ones constantly, you might actually get exactly what you need. Gaining more experience must be planned to figure out the next step of the way. You will become more motivated and determined to succeed by having a clear objective in mind. If you want to expand your skills in a specific domain, you must learn more about the topic and then, practice. For example, expanding your computer skills could be associated with taking a Photoshop course.

Setting career goals encourages constant development. You will soon learn that you have skills that stand out in other industries. To continue on our example, if you are a computer scientist, you might as well work in the digital arts field now.

If you don’t know how to set goals, don’t worry about it. That’s okay. You’re here to learn how to do it right. Take a look at some of our ideas and let us know what you think.

Complete a leadership program

Completing a leadership program will offer you the tools that you need to become empowered. If you are not in a leadership position as of now, you might be after you’ll graduate from such a program. Leadership programs are appealing to new companies as well as new roles within your company. So, if you’re tired of doing the same job and want to attract new potential opportunities, a leadership program might be what you’re looking for.

“Leadership training can empower you to succeed, teach you valuable skills, can help you get to the next level, teach you how to work with people (and influence them), how to build a team, and how to avoid major mistakes,” according to dissertation help specialist and the team leader, Christina Wanger.

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Professional Development Goals|What Are Professional Development Goals?Complete a professional degree or certificate

Another useful career development goal is earning a certificate or professional degree in your field (or any other field for that matter). Continuing to develop your skills shows persistence and determination and can be an extraordinary asset. If you’ll want to change careers or apply for a promotion, your resume must stand out, and you must show willingness to improve. You could sign up for Marketing or SEO training to expand some of the most valuable skills on the market.

Tip: some companies agree to invest in professional development programs for their employees, so you must want to check with your firm on that.

Get out of your shell

Knowing your department only can be limiting. If you have no idea how other departments in your office function, you’ll never be able to contribute more to the company. Learn what roles each person has within the company and how habits can determine outcomes. Shadow each department over the next quarter or so and build a wider understanding of what it means to work in a different field. You will gain lots of experience!

Ask for constant feedback

Receiving transparent and honest feedback is one of the best ways in which you can professionally develop. You must know what you can improve in order to make the changes. Getting your team’s and employer’s perspective on your practices can have a crucial impact – it can teach you what works and what doesn’t. As long as you focus on correcting the don’ts and improving the do’s, everything’s good.
Get feedback on your behavior, work practices and ethics. Ask your colleagues and boss about your skills – where could you improve, writing skills maybe? Check on them at least once a month and take on new projects to exert those skills and improve them. For example, see some essay writing service reviews when you’re specializing in IT, where there is no direct connection with the content writing. It can only broaden your perspective and sharpen your mind.

Improve your performance

Improving your work performance could be an outcome of the actions that you’re taking towards your goal, but it could also be a mindset. If you know that you can succeed, then prove it to yourself by increasing work performance. Some of the ways in which you could do that:
Set milestones on all of your projects to stay organized.

  • Plan and prioritize your work accordingly to stay on top of it.
  • Plan your meetings effectively.
  • Get those difficult assignments out of the way first.
  • Eliminate disruptions.
  • Have a well-defined schedule.
  • Acknowledge your weaknesses and strengths.
  • Finish what you started.
  • Get promoted

If getting promoted is on your bucket list, now it’s the time to plan it out. Applying for a promotion can be random but it’s definitely more effective when prepared for. After you’ve completed your desired training and got your certificates, you can start thinking about getting promoted. Make a list of all the projects you’ve accomplished, don’t forget to mention how essential you are to the team (performance metrics!), and show how many new skills you’ve learned. Make sure you know WHY you want a promotion – what is the reason behind it? Personal development is, for example, a really good one. Remember, only those excited can lead!

Network

You must already know that improving your networking skills can increase your chances of accessing new opportunities. If you can begin to network ahead of time, you will be able to have quite a wide range of new contacts before changing careers or applying for a promotion. The best way to network is by attending conferences, professional development events, and being present on social media (especially LinkedIn), EssayWritingLand advises. LinkedIn can actually be one of the best ways to reach out to people, especially during the pandemic!

Enhance your communication skills

Delivering clear information is crucial to advancing professionally. So it’s receiving it. Thus, consider enhancing your communication an essential goal. You could sign up for public speaking classes or debate courses. You could also take notes on how to deliver better PowerPoint presentations. Verbal communication should be your first goal; but that doesn’t mean you should forget about your writing skills.

Making sure your e-mails and letters are error-free is important. It will show professionalism and might increase your chances of getting promoted even more. Keep your content concise and use professional writing tools to stay on track.

Learn to collaborate

Learning to collaborate with your colleagues is another important objective to keep in mind. Working adequately within a team shows your advisor that he or she can depend on you. If you are, for example, working on a project right now, taking initiative would be priceless. You could start organizing the meetings and discussing the progress with your team as well as your boss. Make sure you listen to everyone carefully and thoroughly. If you disregard someone’s view from the very first start and then offer your opinion, that conversation will not be productive.

Volunteer to learn something new

We’ve already discussed this but learning a new skill is essential to your progress. If you work in the advertising industry, teaching yourself a new programming skill can be super valuable. It shows an ability to embrace the new and take on challenges. It also shows courage and determination, as well as strong willpower!

Conclusion

Your goals are an important part of career development, so make sure you set them right. The above goals are just some examples, but feel free to come with new ones if you feel like it. Integrate these new habits into your routine and then, watch it happening. Good luck!

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Tiffany HarperTiffany Harper is a training guru who’s been working in the corporate sector for over a decade now. She is a management graduate and loves to share her experience through blogs and articles. If you want to find an essay writing service in the UK, she also provides some freelance help with lab report writing service. If you need a consultation from a trustworthy source like Dissertation-today.com, Tiffany is your go-to.

How To Prevent Cybercrime Hurting Your Business

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Cybercrime|How To Prevent Cybercrime Hurting Your BusinessA relatively short time ago, cybercrime wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t even a word. Yet as technology has increased and we have become ever more reliant on the internet to run our daily lives and, of course, our businesses, cybercrime, cyberattacks, and hackers, are now something we have to protect ourselves and others from on a daily basis.

If a cybercriminal were able to infiltrate your business, they could do untold damage financially and to the company’s structure itself. Whether they hack your network for monetary gain or just to cause havoc, the result would be the same; your business would be hurt; possibly mortally so. This is why it is absolutely crucial to do everything you can to prevent this from happening. Here are some ways it can be done.

Use The Cloud

The cloud is a virtual storage space for important documents and sensitive information. It is exceptionally secure, much more so than a laptop or mobile device could ever be, and this means it is the ideal place to keep your most valuable data such as your customers’ payment details, their names and addresses, and your business banking information.

If you can store everything on the cloud, your business will be as secure as possible. Only those with passwords should be able to access your cloud account. Since the data is encrypted, even if someone did manage to get in, they wouldn’t be able to retrieve the information, rendering it entirely useless.

Strong Passwords

Regarding passwords, you will need to have a different password for every log in you have. This might be an irritation because you’ll have to remember several different passwords, but it’s much better than having just one password which, if it were to be compromised, would mean that absolutely everything you log into online would be at risk too. This would include your business information and even your personal financial information.

When you are creating passwords, they must be strong so that no one can guess them or hack them. To create a strong password, you will need a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols, and you should use upper and lower case. Make it a rule to change your passwords every six months or after ten logins to ensure they stay safe and secure.

Encryption

Data encryption is another way to prevent any cyberattacks from being successful. When data is encrypted, it becomes impossible to read and is useless to anyone unless they have the encryption key. Since a cybercriminal wouldn’t have this, even if your laptop or mobile device were stolen, or if you lost a USB stick with all this data on it, no one else would be able to see it.

Encryption is one of the most critical elements of online security, but it can often be overlooked. Implementing it within your business gives you and your clients an additional layer of protection that really can make all the difference.