by Julian Azzopardi – Up Your Level CEO
For a company to reach its growth potential, management must constantly look inwards to ensure alignment between culture and goals.
The rapid escalation of startups and small businesses can stagnate as the company reaches its second, or even third phase, of growth, and once a business has become much bigger, assessing where to go next can become complicated by the reality of the business, whether this is high turnovers, diminishing profits, or a misalignment between the audience the business services and the audience that it wants to speak more to.
None of these are insurmountable issues, but they are easier to diagnose at the onset than they are once the company has reached a certain level of growth – however, if you’re only starting to see the symptoms now, there’s a way that you can benefit regardless.
Part of the reason why company growth stagnates is that employees become disillusioned with the processes of the business the longer that they remain with the company.
Company culture can help significantly to reduce this, but job satisfaction can vary between individuals and company culture might not be enough to keep your employees motivated and happy.
The same driven, highly-motivated employees could find that they’ve reached the pinnacle of their professional development, and could be struggling to find the way forward from there.
Here’s the solution: keep the goalposts on their professional development continuously, constantly moving.
Why are professional courses beneficial for employees?
People who are highly-driven, highly-motivated, and highly-organised – or in other words, the people you’ve most likely hired for your business – are a boon for every organisation, but they can become demoralised if they feel there’s nothing further for them to learn or experience in their current role.
As we spend most of our time at work, feeling as though you’ve hit the ceiling on your role can be extremely difficult to get over, and without outside help, might not even be something the employee can handle on their own.
You might find that your employees are taking on vast amounts of workload and responsibility to try and fill up their time with more meaningful applications, however this will only lead to burnout and employee dissatisfaction, and ultimately, turnover.
Professional courses, on the other hand, give your employees a whole new facet of work to focus on, and can lead them to develop in different areas to what they’re trained for.
How does professional development help employees?
Employees who find themselves bored in their day-to-day will either check out mentally of their job or start looking for other work.
Neither of these options are good for company, and much less for company culture, so providing your employees with the opportunities to keep growing and training within the same organisation can have a positive impact on overall business operations.
But for your employees personally, it can renew their interest in the work they’re doing, or give them the opportunity to expand out into a different role that could be sorely lacking in business.
Most of all, it leads to happy and motivated employees, which should be the ultimate goal for any business.
How does professional development help employers?
The world is changing rapidly, and businesses have to keep up – but the forecasted future for your organisation can be difficult to predict as new technologies or ways of working come to light.
No one anticipated COVID-19, the rise of remote working, or the way that generative AI has streamlined some business processes.
Professional development courses can help you keep your fingers on the pulse of what’s happening.
By necessity, the companies that deliver professional training are on the cutting-edge of what’s happening across the world of work, and can definitely help you identify the gaps in your business plan or where you need to make changes to meet the new future of work.
Which professional development course is right for me?
What does your business need?
As a business owner, you already know the answer to this question; it might just not be in so many words.
There is something in your operations that you struggle to meet with, whether it’s a scheduling issue, or a gap that has led you to outsource certain aspects of your work, or something as simple as a need for better conflict resolution.
If you’re struggling to identify what that is, we’re more than happy to help. Our professional development courses are geared to meet your specifications, and for a brief time, you can get 70% off as a government rebate.