Thriving at Work

The podcast episode discusses the importance of personalized development plans (PDPs) in revolutionizing employee engagement. PDPs tailor career growth and learning opportunities to individual employees, aligning their personal aspirations with organizational goals. These plans are dynamic and ongoing, involving continuous feedback and real-time adjustment. The episode highlights the benefits of PDPs, such as increased employee retention, creativity, and productivity. The guest, Athena Russell, shares her experience in implementing PDPs and explains the process of designing and implementing them in organizations. Technology, particularly AI, plays a crucial role in managing and creating personalized development plans. The episode also mentions a successful example of integrating PDPs at the Atlantic Hotel. Good afternoon, and welcome to Thriving at Work, the podcast where we explore innovative strategies and insights in human resource development to help people and organizations reach their full potential. I am your host, James McIntosh, and today, we're diving into a fascinating and a crucial topic, revolutionizing employee engagement through personalized development plans. So, employee engagement is a perennial challenge for HR professionals, but with advancements in technology and a deeper understanding of human psychology, we're on the brink of transformation in how we approach this issue. Personalized Development Plans, or PDPs, are at the forefront of this revolution. These plans tailor career growth and learning opportunities in individual employees, aligning their personal aspirations with organizational goals. Now, look at this. PDPs are not just about annual reviews, right, anymore. They're dynamic. Ongoing processes that involve continued feedback, real-time adjustment, and leveraging data analytics to create a truly personalized development experience. Today, yes, today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Vivian Russell, a renowned organizational development practitioner who has been instrumental in implementing these innovative strategies at leading companies. Before we dive into our conversation with Vivian Russell, let's set the stage by understanding the core concepts and the importance of personalized development in today's fast-paced work environment. Personalized Development Plans. It represents a shift from one-size-fits-all approach to employee growth. We recognize that the unique skills, the interests, and career goals of each employee organization can foster higher engagement, they can boost morale, and ultimately enhance the performance. Studies have shown that when employees feel their personal growth is supported, they are more likely to stay with their organization, contribute creatively, and be more productive. In this episode, we'll explore how personalized development plans are designed, implemented, and the role of technology in this process, and the tangible benefits organizations are seeing from the innovative approach. We'll also discuss the challenges and the best practices in creating a culture that supports continuous development and growth. Now, let's welcome our guest, Athena Russell. How are you doing, Athena? Hi, good morning, James. I am doing great. So happy to be here joining you on this interesting topic. Well, awesome. It's an honor to have you. So, a little bit about Athena. Athena is a wife, a mother of one, and a dog mom. The human resource professional, formerly a school counselor from the Bahamas, enjoys public speaking, cooking, reading, listening to country music, and attending a charitable event. She is charismatic and quick-witted, a young professional for over 20 years of experience in HRM, HRD, and education. She is a certified hospitality trainer and wellness inventory coach who holds a master's degree in human resource development. Athena lives to inspire and motivate others to fulfill their purpose through exploring their natural talents. It is a dream to bridge these skills gaps in her country by bringing both HR and education together through career development opportunities for each senior student. When people speak of Athena for many years from now, she likes to say that her words were honest, her friendships were genuine, and her impact is still felt from generation to generation. Thank you. Athena, anything you want to say before we get started here? Well, James, I'm just excited, you know, to have this conversation. I believe that it's something that we have to keep talking about so that people would understand the concepts, the motivations, and how to apply these things. And so, let's get into it. Yes, ma'am. All right, look, first, can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you became involved with, let's say, PDP? All right, so I think it started a long time ago in the school system as a school counselor and getting seniors ready for the world of work and understanding what their contributions need to be. Those who were, whether they were going to university or going directly into the workforce. And so, it was a common fact they had a personal plan. And so, after transitioning from the school system and going into human resources, it was definitely relevant for us as an organization. When we think about succession planning, we think about who's next, how are people going to grow? So, I ensured that we had personal development plans to assist us so that everything that is needed for that employee to get to the next level, we're able to put those into our mock-ups. Awesome. Yeah. All right, so the follow-up question here, how do you design and implement a personal development plan in an organization? All right, well, the first step in our personal development plan is after an employee has been hired and given their job description, given their job function, and they start to work through the product knowledge, understanding what the expectations are. Once we've had, let's say, our reviews, whether it's a 90-day review for the probationary period, moving into that, you know, mid-year review and then our annual review, we then would notice where the growths are, where the strengths lie with each employee based on our bottom line, based on the goals that have been set by our senior executive leadership. So, once you've already understood the goals that have been set from our senior executive leadership, we need to now help these individuals to recognize what do they need to do. So, when we're designing the development plan, it's about having those conversations with the individual. What are your personal goals? What are your professional goals? And how are they aligned with the goals of the organization? We then need to break those down into different categories. You know, on the job training aspect, the self-development aspect, is this e-learning courses? Is it continuing education? What are all of those things? The competency model is also really, really important here because we look at our competency models and then we combine them with the skill sets that the individual brings. So, we can look at the department, whether it's from a revenue structure, you know, what is our guess at suction scores? What are we expecting to happen? And then we will be able to frame the entire model based on the individual or based on their goals aligned with our goals and set those in motion. And then we begin to track to see are these persons or individuals applying this. Coaching is also something that is very, very important that we've implemented in our community so that individuals will have someone to talk to, to be able to benchmark to see how they're actually growing and developing. All right. Awesome. Now, just to add on to this a little, that first question, I remember years ago I worked for the Fresh Market. We did something called partnering for performance. So, what you're actually saying is there should be no gray area when these individuals are, let's say, coached or even coming to an annual review. It's a constant, let's say, building of this whole plan in order to get that person to where we need them to be. It's not about trying to get them out the door. It's trying to get them to understand what the door is involved behind the door. So, yes, a great, great conversation. Can you share an example specifically of a company that had successfully, whether it be your company or anything, integrated PDPs and the outcomes they experienced? Okay. Well, definitely there are a few companies that come to mind. One specifically, I'm here now at the Atlantic Hotel. When we think about professional development plans, this is definitely ongoing. It's a part of each employee's goal setting. When we talk about performance reviews, right now we're in the process of changing over to a new system and in the implementation of setting goals for each individual, a performance development plan must be present. And so that means managers, leaders must sit with their employees to talk about the goals, talk about these plans, implement them, track them to ensure, like you would have mentioned, there are no barriers. You are completely understanding what the expectation is we have from a company standpoint toward you and what you have in terms of your professional development. Are we all aligned? Are we partnering to meet the goals? This might be totally off topic, but I have to be, I'm so excited because Athena is a good friend. I'm going to tell you, if it wasn't for her, I probably would have gotten through graduate school. On top of that, she is a super smart individual. So hearing her so regurgitate these things that we have talked about, I think, in novium for, when did we start graduate school? Some years ago here? And now I'm crazy enough to be getting my Ph.D., and I just watch for her to push me that kind of way. So yeah, I'm sorry. I had to do a chainless plug. It's okay. I like it. Yeah. What role does technology play? You know we're big on technology and creating and managing these personalized development plans right now. Oh, Jane, now that's a topic that we could talk about for hours because when we say AI is on the rise, I'm like, oh, AI is here, and it's been here for quite some time. And so even for learning and development and organizational development, we are now thinking about what else can we implement? How do we even give L&D a overhaul if necessary to bring in more technology? And so we're now having a case where we have employees actually creating their development plans. So we can see it firsthand what you think about, what you bring to the table, what your thoughts are relevant to the goals that you've given and the expectations because usually it's always been that top-down approach where we create it for you, and we tell you what we need you to do, and then we say go for it. But with technology, we want to be able to push it through our automated L&S system so that you'll be able to complete it. It's almost like a 360 per se. So you get to complete your plan. It comes back to your manager. Even in some cases, we're having peer reviews relative to these plans, and then we're all able to sign off that. We agree that this is a good way for us to go. I know with Child TTC, there's so much conversation around it. How are we using it? How is it getting done? But we have employees who are going through that system and seeing what is Child TTC pushing out for me relative to who I am, my personality traits, even just profiles and all of these system strength profiles to kind of even bring all of that together into one umbrella. Yeah, I think it's a... I don't know the final word for it. We're so nervous to use these tools now. And I'm going to tell you, I'm not old, but I'm getting into the age of like... I came from a master's program where these tools were all there, but they weren't there. So we had to really fight through our... You're shaking your head, but we had to fight through our thoughts and make sure that our papers made sense and made sure that our thoughts made sense. And not only made sense, but was on an academic level. So the tools that this generation has to them is just so vast. I mean, you can do an interview at home and you can have two screens. You can kill an interview with just AI or just DVD. So I totally agree with that, the concept. And yeah, we can talk about this all day. You're right. That is definitely a subject we can talk about all day. What are some of the common challenges your organization or other organizations face with transitioning to this approach? So it's so funny that you asked that question because as an organization, at some point, I just finished facilitating a new course on Generations in the Workplace. And history is showing that all four generations are here. We learn differently. We use technology differently. You know, the baby boomers were dealing with the television and then social media was on the rise with our millennials. Now we have this gen Z influx that's coming into the workplace. And they definitely are digital natives that were born with this advantage. They're looking like we're not doing it your way. It's too long. It doesn't make sense. Can we just do this through TikTok? Can we send this through another avenue? And so some of the challenges is trying to ensure that all generations are being touched to the common goal of whatever the vision of the mission, the goal of the organization and the program is. And so it's also helping, you know, different levels of leadership to understand who's on their team and how they would prefer their TVPs to be created, what they see for themselves, how we're going to use these technology and devices. And so I think it's about more awareness, more education, more understanding and acceptance of all the different generations, of what we bring to the table, about how do we bring all of these new knowledge and technology, you know, to crush the goal, whatever that may be for your organization. So I'm excited about it. I am too. So here's my last question. And, you know, with this question, I ask you to kind of wrap our segment up with some insightful conversation, anything that we can provide our guests here today, any data, anecdotes, practical advice, all these things. But my last question is, how do you ensure continuous feedback over time and real-time adjustments in these PDPs? What does Athena do? So definitely for real-time, that is where the coaching model is taking place in the workplace. So there are regular sessions that force them down. In a lot of cases, how we go into that vision of the use of technology is to have those conversations, whether it's through Slack or, you know, through Teams and having those one-on-one sessions with our particular team members. But I think it's a constant approach of touching with people often enough. We are big on roundtable discussions and focus groups and big time, where we are bringing our teams together and talking about, you know, the PDPs and, you know, what's working, what's not working, how do we leverage, how do we change. I think what we cannot forget is we're still all in human form, and the human form still requires touch and big time and conversations, regardless of the amount of technology and the influx that we have. There's a peel away to get into a room and say, let's talk about it. That's, hey, your thoughts, let me really just have those conversations with you. And then be able to, let's think about this around the table, so that we continue to get best practices from that. So, I guess in, you know, wrapping up our segment today, I think it's important for us as organizations to continue this approach with the personnel and the professional development plans, because people still want to know how they're going to grow. How are they influencing the organization? Is their work even meaningful? And, you know, to know if your work is meaningful, it means somebody's talking to you. Somebody's talking to you about it. Somebody's giving you some feedback on what you should do, what else can be done. And then people want to be able to see the measurements, see the analytics, and see themselves. If I started here a year ago, you know, what is my potential for being at the next level in the next year or two? And what are those pieces that go in there? And so, for me, I want to always put a budget for mentorship. Mentorship is another portion that we can add on to those PDPs, because somebody's already done it. Somebody's done it well, whether it was 30 years, 40 years ago. What may have shifted and changed is the time and the current trend. But at the end of the day, it's still the narrative of we want to work together as a team, and we want to not forget people and the things that they would like to accomplish within the organization. That is awesome. So, I'm going to ask Athena to stop. Again, this is my friend. I haven't talked to her in a little while. We normally kind of chat here and there with our busy lives. She's working out and going all over the country. I'm going through school again and trying to go all over the country at the same time. If you don't mind holding on for me, Athena, I'm going to wrap this little session up. But what a fascinating conversation with our guest, Athena Russell. Give her a hand. Awesome. She is awesome. And let's unpack some of these key takeaways from our discussion. So, first, it's clear. PDPs, personalized development plans, are not just a trend, but a fundamental shift in how we approach employee growth. We focus on the individual strengths, interests, and career aspirations. Organizations can create a more engaged and motivated workforce. Also, secondly, the role of technology cannot be overstated. From data analytics to AI-driven feedback systems, the technology enables real-time adjustments to ensure the development plans remain dynamic and relevant. And then lastly, what I gather from this great conversation, while the benefits are substantial, the transition to PDPs require a cultural shift within the organization. It's about offering an environment that values continuous learning, open feedback, and personal growth. Leaders must champion these values and provide necessary resources to support to make this shift successful. In conclusion, professional development plans offer a powerful strategy to enhance employee engagement and performance. By leveraging technology, focusing on the individual's needs, organizations can create a thriving workplace where employees feel valued and empowered to achieve their full potential. I want to thank you for tuning in to Thriving at Work. Thank you, Athena, again. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. Stay tuned for more insights and strategies to help you and your organization thrive. Until next time, keep motivating and empowering your team. And I coin myself as the deacon of HR development. Have a great day.