EMPLOYEE PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 1

Employee Personal Development

What is it?

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Employee Personal Development (EPD) is a staff training approach that shares the responsibility of employee development between the employer and the employee. The core argument is that employers (and society) will benefit from the drive of stable, empowered, developing employees. EPD programming is a balanced employee-employer approach to staff development and training. In a sense EPD calls on employers to share in the social development of staff (corporate social responsibility).

The EPD approach to training does not focus on organization needs alone but also emphasizes employee growth. A typical training calendar would include "Management Development" as well as "Personal Financial Management" or "Team Building" and "Family Planning". The dual emphasis on Corporate/Technical and Personal/Social skills recognizes the importance of the employee is a key player in the corporate success of the business and a valuable contributor in society. To emphasize the business angle of training and ignore the employees development is a one sided relationship that does not maximize productivity of the relationship between the employer and the employee.

EPD programs invest in employee potential by creating or enhancing the capacity of an individual to be a productive member of society. Stable self-motivated employees make better employees than employer driven staff. Employers state what they want from employees and assume that pay is all employees want from them. If employers were to ask employees what they could do for them as partners to make them more productive, employers may be surprised to find that they can provide personal development programs at no extra cost. A few adjustments to the training calendar, and not necessarily the training budget, may be all that is needed to yield inspired employee productivity.

Employees, however, may need guidance on what to ask for and what could be included in the program. Having been excluded from the training planning process for so long, it may come as a suspicious surprise to the employee who will then react in a guarded response. A briefing of what EPD is will go a long way in settling employee fears as to what this new approach seeks to achieve.

Management may regard this approach to training as a waste of funds and employer resources, but it is impractical to expect to work well with a partner who cannot effectively manage his/her own affairs. Training should therefore be used to not just to strengthen corporate performance but develop social (personal) competencies as well. This has the net effect of optimizing organization performance the and positively impacting society at large.

Allan Bukusi, 2005