If you’re showing your employees how they can develop and thrive within your company, you run the risk of diminishing staff morale, poor employee retention rates, and an underskilled workforce. However, by filling your engagement calendar with career development activities, you can upskill your workforce and introduce your team to rewarding professional avenues to explore.
The Benefits of Career Development Activities
Whether you’re hosting 30-minute team-building activities or introducing mentorship schemes, career development activities will increase employee engagement, boost staff morale, and increase skill levels across the board. What’s more, by investing in professional development opportunities, you’re giving your team a clear roadmap to more senior positions within your company. This can help secure long-term loyalty, with experienced employees becoming a valuable asset to your organization.
Companies that offer career development activities also stand out as a more attractive prospect as an employer. This is particularly handy if you operate within a saturated market and talent droughts are making it hard to secure the best talent for key roles.
Career Development Activities: Pros and Cons
Pros: There are many reasons to introduce career development activities to your business. For starters, they’re an effective way to engage a disenfranchised workforce. They can give itchy-footed employees more of a reason to remain with your organization, while more junior members of your team can realize a long-term future with you as an employer.
Depending on the activity itself, the cost-reward ratio of career development can work in your favor. What’s more, most activities can be introduced with relatively few resources, with many of them suitable for businesses that operate remotely.
Cons: However, this isn’t true of every career development activity. Initiatives like mentorship schemes are time-intensive and require enough experienced employees you can assign to mentorship roles. Costs can also be a concern if you’re bringing in third-party solutions.
Additionally, it can be tricky to engage every single employee with career development opportunities. If remote working poses another obstacle, you’ll face even more of a challenge. However, you can appeal to wallflowers and enthuse disinterested employees with the right activities.
Tips on How to Make Career Development Fun
Even though the gains to employees are obvious, it can be hard to sell career development as anything other than company training. To increase uptake and improve engagement, make things as interactive as possible. Think about using breakout rooms and short team-building activities to renew energy levels and focus.
Don’t have the time in your schedule to commit to more formal professional development initiatives? Rather than ditch the idea entirely, occupy niches of time with bitesize activities that will serve a similar purpose. Collaborative exercises can improve team communication while helping you identify leadership ability in promising employees.
It’s also good to embrace social interaction, especially if your business is a remote one. Participants are less likely to see these career development tasks as a chore, while a connected workforce will improve interdepartmental communication and benefit you as a company.
15 Career Development Activities for Remote Teams
Worried that remote work means that career development has to fall by the wayside? Don’t be. Below, we’ve picked out 15 of the best virtual team-building activities for promoting career development and professional advancement.
1. Goal Setting and Development Planning Sessions
Help your employees visualize where they want their careers to be in the future with goal-setting workshops. Having a clear objective to work toward can be a real motivator, while development planning sessions can give employees the tools they need to get to where they want to be.
2. Mentorship and Sponsorship Matching
Pairing more junior employees with veteran members of your team is an effective way of promoting professional development. You can introduce this as a company-wide initiative, or look to senior staff for volunteers.
3. Strengths and Weaknesses Bingo
Create a list of common strengths and weaknesses relevant to your business, then ask everyone to raise a hand when they hear one that applies to them.
4. Team Brainstorming Session
This team-building game sees groups work together to brainstorm a list of skills that are relevant to your industry and essential for success.
5. Create an Online Jeopardy Board
For a fresh twist on this classic TV game show, create a bespoke Jeopardy board with categories inspired by the theme of career development.
6. Virtual Book Clubs
Rather than reach for the usual best-sellers, put together a book club reading list packed with industry-specific non-fiction, inspiring autobiographies, or editorial pieces relevant to your business.
7. Use Book Clubs as Inspiration for Virtual Trivia
You can make virtual trivia more relevant by tying it to another career development activity. Remember that book club reading list? Use key passages to create questions that will really test your employees.
8. Virtual Escape Rooms
A notoriously challenging team-building activity, online escape rooms can be a useful tool for seeing how well your employees work together. They’re also handy for spotting signs of leadership among your workforce.
9. Recordings of Past Events and Previous Speakers
Don’t have time to arrange a brand-new event? Use footage of past engagement events and guest speakers to inspire your team instead.
10. Negotiation Skills Training
Negotiable skills are essential in sales and customer-facing roles. However, they can also improve communication between colleagues and help overcome workplace conflicts.
11. Improve the Communication Skills of Your Team
Communication is key to a successful business. Whether it’s team-building sessions or more formal training, developing the communication skills of your employees is a worthwhile investment.
12. Emotional Intelligence Workshops and Training
Emotional intelligence is an often overlooked business skill that many people lack. Think about adding emotional intelligence workshops to your employee engagement calendar to address any shortcomings.
13. Career Path Discussions
Where do your employees see themselves in five years’ time? Hosting open discussions about career opportunities within your business can inspire loyalty and boost staff morale.
14. Online Hackathons or Innovation Challenges
You don’t have to be a developer to partake in a hackathon. Perfect for testing the gray matter of your employees, these tricky challenges may inspire some of your team to consider a new career trajectory.
15. Virtual Game Nights
A virtual game night is a great way to connect remote colleagues and foster better working relationships.
Deploying Career Development Initiatives with Gloww
Career development activities can engage and inspire your employees to remain in your employment and become integral parts of your organization. While hosting these activities online requires a slightly different approach, there are plenty of remote-first initiatives you can do to promote professional development and career advancement. However, you’ll need the right tools to get started.
Gloww provides you with a full-featured conferencing platform that will serve as the bedrock for all your career development activities and team-enhancing experiences. You can create unique sessions in moments or explore a huge library of readymade templates if you’re short of inspiration. With interactive polls, quizzes, and a host of classic games, you’ll have no trouble engaging your team.
Why not get started with Gloww today? Interested in learning about our advanced features? Take a look at our premium pricing options. Got a question about the platform? Get in touch with the team.
Career Development FAQs
1. Can career development activities take place online?
Absolutely. Many activities can be easily adapted for remote teams and online conferencing platforms.
2. What are some good professional development ideas?
Mentorship and sponsorship schemes can be a good way of sharing knowledge within your organization. Negotiation skills training and emotional intelligence workshops can also help improve communication and help with conflict resolution.
3. How can I encourage teams to participate in career development activities?
Incentivizing participation isn’t always possible, but you can sweeten the deal by putting a social spin on career development activities. Gamifying the experience with interactive activities can also make career development more appealing.
4. What are the 5 key areas of career development?
Key features of career development training include engagement, experience, and communication. Practicing effective time management and being open to feedback is also important.
