How investing in professional development can retain IT professionals

Alongside a poor work-life balance, poor management, and poor compensation, the lack of growth opportunities is one of the top reasons employees might leave your company for a new one!

As much as we love what we do, as humans, we tend to get bored easily. Especially, if we aren’t learning something new. And this might make a great employee to leave its current position and switch to a different role.

Providing your team with learning opportunities will help them stay motivated and also make them better prepared for future challenges and projects. 

In this article, we’ll cover how investing in professional development initiatives can help you retain your IT workforce, specifically.

But what is professional development?

Professional development involves providing employees with ongoing training opportunities throughout their careers. This can include classes, workshops, mentoring, learning programs, industry conferences, or certifications in specific software tools, technologies, or skills.

If you have an IT team, there are a few in-demand certifications that might be a good idea to put in place. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) certifications, Certified Agile Leadership (CAL), Azure Certifications, and Professional Scrum Master (PSM).

Offering professional development opportunities will encourage your IT employees to enhance their skills, advance their careers, and stay current with industry trends. Also, boosting their engagement in the company.

The real benefits for your employees

The first benefit is career advancement as we can’t move up in the career ladder without developing new skills and growing professionally. And this is not just about hard skills but also soft skills such as project management, teamwork, communication, presentation skills, and so on.

Let’s imagine a senior software developer. If they only know how to code a specific language, they might be unable to lead a software team, for example, as many other skills are required. 

Investing in learning courses and certifications on multiple technologies and skill sets, will help them communicate better with other members from different departments, expand their knowledge, and help lead a diversified tech team properly.

Because they will understand other technologies, and areas such as UX/UI, for example, they will be able to better lead a software project, its requirements, and deadlines.

In addition to career development, investing in professional development will allow your IT team to stay current with industry trends so they don’t end up using obsolete technology, tools, and resources in their projects. For example, AI and Machine Learning, are now technologies we wouldn’t use as frequently 5 years ago. 

It will also help them stay confident in their roles and their skills, as they gain more knowledge and experience.

Professional development helps keep your employees engaged and motivated to stay. According to a Zippia report, 45% of workers would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development, while 76% of employees are looking for opportunities to expand their careers.

Best practices you should consider

Before investing in professional development, you must sit down with your IT team and help delineate a career plan for each member. This will help you understand their goals and plan the next steps in their growth journey. 

Here are some best practices to consider before investing in professional development initiatives:

• Help your IT team delineate a personalized career plan as it will help you understand which courses, and certifications make the most sense according to their personal goals;
• Create a mentorship program where senior members can guide junior members, sharing their experiences and knowledge and helping them in their professional development journey;
• Provide a training budget where each employee can invest in resources of their choice, such as books, online courses, conferences, etc;
• Organize networking events and on-site workshops to motivate your IT members to join and learn new things and get out of their comfort zone;
• Gather feedback from your employees to understand their experience on their training, mentorships, classes, and conferences to check which resources are more useful to them;
• Identify employees who want to expand their skill set, and don’t enforce learning as it will lead to frustration and burnout;
• Create a reward and promotion system that supports employees who engage in further training and certifications.

To conclude

Retaining talented employees has never been more important, especially in the technology sector. 

Due to the high demand for software engineers, data analysts, and IT professionals, it’s important that you help your employees succeed in their professional development goals before they decide to move to a company that does it.

Overall, investing in ongoing education and training will help:

• Improve employee engagement and productivity
• Provide career growth and advancement to your team 
• Boost employees’ skills and knowledge
• Allow employees to stay up to date on industry trends
• Prepare for future challenges and diversified projects
• Boost your employees’ confidence and also their credibility

Through proper learning initiatives and resources, you not only help your employees achieve their career goals and expand their knowledge but also help them stay engaged in their work and motivated as they keep learning new things, instead of doing the same thing over and over.

As they expand their skill set, providing some mobility in terms of projects, tasks, and challenges can also be a great way to retain your IT employees.