How To Make The Most Of Your Professional Development Budget
/If you receive financial support for professional development (PD) from your employer, consider yourself lucky. Benefits like these are unfortunately still not commonplace even though they are known to contribute to job satisfaction and longer tenures. According to a study conducted by LinkedIn, 94% of employees would stay at a job longer if the company invested in their career. Moreover, the Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report indicated that 20% of employees quit for career development reasons.
20% of employees quit for career development reasons.
As a Compensation Strategist, I see companies provide funds for learning and development in different ways: employees may receive a dedicated dollar amount annually or a discretionary amount, generally requiring management approval and therefore funds may vary from employee to employee. Employers may also decide to increase employees’ base salaries to cover professional development expenses if employees wish to use their funds that way (see recent developments at Basecamp re: education allowance).
No matter how your PD budget is structured, there are plenty of ways to use these valuable funds to further your career, so don’t let them go to waste!
So how should you spend your training & development budget?
Dedicated PD budgets vary from company to company but it seems that many are ranging from $500 to $2,000 or more.
PD budgets vary from company to company but it seems that many are ranging from $500 to $2,000 or more.
When planning to allocate your funds, first think about your career goals. What do you hope to achieve in your current role — short-term planning. What direction is your career moving towards — long-term growth. And what are the gaps in your skill set that you can grow to achieve those goals?
By identifying your goals and the gaps in your skillset, you’ll make the most of your PD budget. If you haven’t started thinking strategically about your career goals or haven’t done an honest assessment about your challenges and opportunities for growth, working with a career coach is a great way to start this process. Aim at identifying your own motivations, interests, passions, and values and what skills your employers are valuing and rewarding.
When you’ve decided what your goals are and have a plan to start working towards them, you’ll be able a plethora of resources to advance your personal growth and career development. Below are a few ideas to get you started.
Levelling up your “Hard Skills”
Hard skills are technical knowledge or training that can be taught; where learning can be measured, like technical writing, coding, project management, or data science. Hard skills are valuable in the workplace and are often the first thing an employer looks for when assessing potential candidates. Thankfully, hard skills can be learned at home on your own time through online learning and training platforms as well as in virtual or in-person (hopefully soon again) conference settings. Here are a few options to consider.
DataCamp
DataCamp is a video tutorial platform that allows you to learn Data Science and other technical skills at home, at your own pace. You can learn statistics, data engineering, Python, or Machine Learning. DataCamp allows you to start with a free trial and offers affordable monthly memberships, so you pay as long as you’re still actively interested in learning.
Coursera
Coursera is a curated platform that brings together courses and degree programs from top Universities worldwide. Coursera offers courses in Arts & Humanities, Business, Math, Science, Engineering, Personal Development, and more. You can easily find classes that interest you and the platform offers free enrollment to test classes before you commit.
Coursera offers some certificate and degree programs as well, so you can learn your way to a degree part-time while staying in your current role.
Udemy
Udemy offers over 130,000 video-based courses. You can learn almost anything from Udemy’s programs, including design, marketing, economics, photography, and even software engineering. Each course is priced separately, and once you’re signed up for a class, you have full lifetime access to it.
Conferences — Virtual and In-Person
Although in-person conferences might be on pause, for now, you’ll find that many, especially tech-focused conferences, have moved into a virtual setting. Many use platforms like Gather or Hopin to replicate the in-person experience.
Nearly every field has industry-specific conferences, and depending on your employer, this might be included as part of your annual training, or you may need to set money aside from your PD budget.
Attending conferences can enhance your professional and personal development. It allows you to gain industry knowledge and skills, and make connections outside your usual environment. Many virtual conferences are offering breakout and speed networking rooms to replicate the in-person experience. Conferences are a great way for you to learn from a variety of people at the forefront of your industry.
Conferences allow you to level up those hard skills, while also working on your soft skills.
Deepening your “Soft Skills”
Soft skills are traits, characteristics, and behaviours that are honed throughout a career. In a report by LinkedIn Learning, creativity, persuasion, and people management were amongst the top soft skills that employers actively cultivated in current employees or were looking for in new hires. Here are some recommendations to level up your soft skills.
Leadership Training and Development
Becoming an effective leader takes a robust set of competencies such as self-awareness, interpersonal intelligence, and communication skills.
If you’re new to leadership, self-directed learning through books, podcasts, blog posts, videos as well as classes and training programs are great ways to start.
If you’re in a leadership role, whether new to it or seasoned, you likely would benefit from working with a leadership coach or a mentor (or a combination) one-on-one. Working with a coach can help you hone in on your own personal leadership skills and style. They’ll help you uncover your blind spots and sweet spots as a leader. You’ll work on actively developing your leadership skills and are held accountable. Working with a mentor on the other hand can help you learn from someone who has led teams like yours. They’ll provide you with first-hand accounts of what they did (and didn’t do). You’ll learn from their experiences.
Leadership coaches and mentors offer specific guidance on how to approach your role and your team. We love books, but sometimes we wish we could take the author out for coffee to ask them about our situation. That’s what having a coach or a mentor will do for you.
Performance and Career Coaching
Coaching is not just for leaders, it’s a great tool and resource for anyone wanting to level up in their career. As a matter of fact, coaching is expected to be one of the best employee perks in 2021. If your company doesn’t offer coaching as part of their employee programming, you can always allocate your PD funds towards it.
According to Compt.io coaching is considered one of 9 Best Employee Perks in 2021.
Working with a coach is one of the fastest ways to grow as an individual and in your career. That’s because a coach is guiding you directly, speaking to your particular strengths and, ahem, shortcomings. They turn the mirror on you and help you see things in yourself that you were blind to.
A career coach can help you identify where you want to go in your career, what opportunities are available to you (there are roles you don’t even know you might be perfect for), and what you can do to get there.
They’ll work with you to improve your mindset and help overcome self-limiting behaviours so that you can move forward without being stressed, overwhelmed, or discouraged. Career coaches are in your corner, supporting you and cheering you on as you take steps towards your goals.
For anyone that wants to get clear with their goals and start taking steps towards them, coaching is invaluable.
