Leverage Your Network for Efficient Professional Development

At GlassBuild America in Dallas, I was honored to take the Main Stage with a presentation on a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about. The reception to my talk was warm, so I wanted to share some takeaways from that session in case you missed it at the show. My talk, “Leveraging Your Network for Efficient Professional Development,” was about why companies should invest in the practice, how to do so and more. See below for some highlights.  

Why Invest in Professional Development?  

When we talk about professional development, we’re talking about training and related opportunities for employees to gain new skills and competencies. It’s a strategic tool for an organization's continuing growth, productivity, and ability to attract and retain valuable employees. 

By creating a high-development culture – one that values the growth of individuals – we’re better positioned to remain competitive, address skills gaps, instill learning into our corporate culture, reduce turnover and align employee development with our organization’s needs. 

A Gallup article updated in January 2024 cites several statistics relevant to this conversation: 

• Organizations strategically investing in employee development report 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain employees. 
• Nearly 9 in 10 millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities are very important in a job. 
• The number one reason people give for changing jobs is “career growth opportunities.” 

This data illustrates that the workforce – especially the younger generations – is hungry for learning and growth opportunities in their job, so if we develop a smart, intentional strategy around delivering professional development, we can improve our profitability. If we don’t, we may see employees heading out the door. 

Making it Happen 

So now that we have some hard data supporting the value of strategically investing in professional development, how do we do that? 

Sometimes it’s good to start by looking at the barriers that are hindering progress in order to identify a path forward. For professional development, some of the most common challenges are time, accountability, execution, access to meaningful content and metrics. 

To combat these first three challenges, companies must prioritize professional development as an essential component of their corporate culture and strategic objectives. This means setting clear expectations for training goals, accounting for training time as part of daily work, and recognizing training achievements in performance and advancement evaluations. 

The last two hurdles to clear are delivering relevant content and measuring outcomes. 

Developing relevant content in-house can be exceptionally time-consuming and onerous to maintain. But it doesn’t have to be your responsibility to develop that training material – leverage your professional network. 

Trade Association Education Offerings 

Trade associations are prime resources for training content. Trade associations are service-based organizations that generally exist to advance the industry they support. In many cases, one of the ways associations do this is by offering industry-focused education. And, since they represent a variety of companies and sometimes a broad scope of products, they offer unbiased information built using the knowledge and expertise of professionals from across the industry.  

For example, FGIA’s own Education offerings include the recently revamped FenestrationMasters Version 3.0, which delivers technical content reflecting current documents and standards as well as code requirements in an interactive platform. Plus, there are two a la carte modules available addressing fenestration product performance requirements and insulating glass fundamentals. 

For your employees, online training allows self-directed, just-in-time, on-demand instruction. Employees in e-learning situations have more control over their time than they have in a classroom. To keep employees engaged during online development activities, the training should deliver content in small, easily understood pieces.  

Tracking Progress 

Once you’ve created the space for training and set up the framework for a consistent and accountable infrastructure, and you’ve leveraged your professional network to efficiently help build out your training program, you need to measure your results. 

Evaluation is a critical component of an employee development program. Those responsible for the program are accountable not only for what employees learn but also for ensuring that employees transfer that knowledge to work performance. Assessment of employee training and development should include key performance indicators, choosing the right assessment method, tracking employee performance and sharing feedback. 

How can your company make moves in this arena? Think about it and plan for 2025.