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The benefit of staff development is never more prominent than in SME's.

As an SME you'll probably have limited budgets, cashflow constraints, resource limitations or all of the above. When new projects, roles, technology or business opportunities occur it is essential that these are taken full advantage of in order to continue to develop the organisation; but the constraints and limitations described usually mean this is a stressful time but staff development is the key!

Multi-talented, high performing staff provide a breadth of skills that can really benefit your organisation at times of opportunity allowing you multiple outlets for workloads and options in terms of putting together project teams.

On of the biggest mistakes is to keep a team that simply meets the requirements of the tak at hand; allow room for flexibility, you never know what the future will hold. Don't box your people into narrow roles, SME's need the flexibility of people who can move from project to project adapting and applying their skills differently to each one. Employing one dimensional experts is the luxury of the multi-national where flexibility and the ability to react is far less important.

What are the other proven benefits of staff development?

1. Reduced staff turnover so you save on the cost of recruitment
2. Improved staff morale
3. Increased confidence and self esteem
4. Customer issue response and resolution times improve
5. Innovative and proactive people, keen to share their best ideas; they often know better than you!
6. Reduction in employee error or resource waste

What are the staff development initiatives you can implement?

These not all be expensive training courses, there is an abundance of untapped skill and experience within your organise just waiting to be accessed. There are many internal activities you can undertake to develop people via knowledge sharing. Have you tried:

- coaching
- mentoring
- apprenticeship opportunities to "grow your own"
- secondments to different teams
- cross-discipline working parties
- settng challenges or tasks that are a slightly outside of someone's comfort zone
- communities of practice with industry stakeholders and suppliers

"Bought in" options could include:

- leadership and Management skills training
- technical development courses
- personal effectiveness courses
- facilitated 'away days'
- business skills courses
- NVQ's or similar vocational qualifications

Never let the fear of your staff developing and improving themselves stop you from implementing and investing in the type of development activities listed above. Yes, some will seek bigger and better things at some point but that's human nature, those people would have left at some point anyway! If you give them interesting options and development opportunities internally you'll usually hang on to them a lot longer than if you hadn't!