Almost 88% of businesses offer their employees professional development opportunities as a perk. That’s according to a survey of 4,000 randomly selected employers in a study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Even so, another large study found that a significant percentage of employees say they are not satisfied with the professional development opportunities made available to them.
The fact is that workers want more than a paycheck. Professional development makes them better employees, but it also makes them happier with their jobs because they feel they are “getting somewhere” when they can improve their skill sets.
You can give your employees more of what they want with the following free professional development resources:
The Seven Secrets of Authenticity – Offered by Udemy, this course teaches how to increase one’s personal effectiveness across a range of skills. It shows how to “stand up for a project you believe in” and the art of “recognizing what to do and what not to do.”
Technical Writing Essentials – Learning the skill of technical writing is a major career booster. Oregon State University offers a superb course on learning this skill. Many freelance technical writers start at $75/hour.
Google Python Class – This is a free course that will help people with little coding skill lean Python coding. Python is a programming language used to create websites, software, automated tasks and for accomplishing data analysis. It’s an excellent skill to pick up for just about any employee.
Managing for People Who Hate Managing — A terrific learning program by the American Management Association. It draws upon the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to show how people can be categorized as “thinkers” or “feelers.” Thinkers lead with their heads while feelers lead with their hearts. This course teaches how to discover where you fall in the thinker-feeler spectrum and how you can hone your position to improve management skills.
Business Statistics – Offered by the Saylor Academy, students gain an introduction to business statistics and how they are applied in the workspace. It shows how statistics are gathered, analyzed and then put to practical use.
Making Sense of News – More important than ever today, this course offers skills in sifting through and judging the quality of the barrage of news we encounter daily from hundreds of sources, from social media sites to major media outlets like CNN and Fox News.