Career Development Initiatives that Can Work in Favor of Millennials

A well-designed career development program provides the right guidance and training for workers to improve their professional careers.

Career development initiatives, in this regard, are constructive and help employees develop professionally. Furthermore, they create benchmarks for the performance standard and lead to succession planning.

However, when it comes to designing career development initiatives for millennials, they have a thirst for career advancement and technology. They value opportunities that can upgrade their experience, skill sets, and careers compared to Baby Boomers and Gen X.

With the right learning opportunities and career development choices, millennials can accomplish anything. This is where leaders or employers need to come up with effective career development initiatives they can take for millennials.

Not sure what types of career development initiatives will work in favor of millennials? Here are some to help you.

Before you get into the process of creating objectives for a career development program, it is better to align training needs with the goals of your business.

For this, you must draw the short and long-term objectives of your business. Once you know the business objectives, it becomes easier to assess the knowledge, competencies, and skills they need.

Investing time and efforts in young talent development will save you the resources you need for new employees. Plus, you can make a career path for the employees by offering them advancement opportunities such as promotions via development initiatives. It is one thing millennials crave and can help you retain them in your company.

As a leader, it is wrong to think that you know everything about the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Career conversations are vital for having a better understanding of the career aspirations and skills of each employee who works for you.

This is the point when self-assessment comes in handy as employees start evaluating their performance and the challenges they face. It helps them identify where they struggle the most and provide them with insight if they need additional mentoring.

Social networking and digital technology have become an integral part of everyone’s life, and millennials are no exception.

Having a personal face-to-face connection is crucial for millennials in order to advance in their career. You need to make sure that you allow your employees to build a branding profile on different networking forums. These can include Facebook, LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, and Twitter. Let them be vocal about their career options and priorities to break career development options.

Overall, we live in an age of millennials, which is very different from prior generations. They don’t settle for a job that is rudimentary, static or doesn’t allow them to grow professionally. Thus, leaders, managers and executives must offer effective career development initiatives to this generation to make the most of their potential.