A new report reveals that 59 percent of respondents plan to invest in professional development as a retention strategy in 2019 to keep their best employees – second only to increasing pay at 61 percent. The report ranks preferred professional development programs and also provides specific insights into these programs by gender, industry, occupation and generation. The results show that management and leadership training is the most popular type of professional development, followed closely by professional certifications.
Key findings include:
- Management & Leadership training was the top-ranked employee professional development program with 32 percent of respondents stating it was the training they were most interested in pursuing; followed by professional certification (30 percent) and technical skills training (17 percent).
- Several professional development programs proved to be less popular, as they were ranked “most interesting” by less than ten percent of respondents. These include teamwork/interpersonal skills training (8 percent), employer-subsidized degree (7 percent), communications/public speaking (4 percent) and diversity and inclusion training (2 percent).
- Men were more likely than women to say they wanted professional development to get a promotion (37 percent versus 32 percent), while women were more likely to state the reason was to receive a pay raise (35 percent versus 30 percent).
- Employees in the healthcare industry indicated they were most interested in professional certifications (36 percent) from the selection of training program options. Likewise, employees in human resources were the most likely to want professional certification (43 percent) when compared to other occupations.
- Millennials were more likely than Baby Boomers to be interested in professional development across the three top programs: management/leadership training, professional certification and technical skills training. However, Boomers were more interested in teamwork/interpersonal skills training and public speaking training than Millennials.
Please view the full report, courtesy of PayScale here
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