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In part 1 of our professional development article series, we talked about what professional development is and how to engage with it. In this article, we’ll briefly cover the importance of professional development but delve into the benefits of professional development.
Why Is Professional Development Important?
Industries are constantly improving their processes and businesses have to stay ahead of the changes. People who stay informed about new developments and are improving their skills are better equipped to work in any field.
Professional development (PD) prepares you for whatever job you have next. Maybe you’re on track to eventually enter a leadership position, engaging in development will prepare you for the responsibility to come. Even before you get hired, PD will keep your skills sharp during the off time and make you more attractive to hiring managers.
Personal Benefits of Professional Development
Professional development is often talked about from the perspective of businesses, but there are so many benefits to engaging in development on your own time.
Learn New Skills
Skills aren’t just things you write on a resume, they help you get your job done effectively and improve your range of work. Skills are broken into two categories: soft skills and hard skills.
Soft Skills
Soft skills are the skills that revolve around social interactions, effective communication, and correct thinking. They’re important for leadership positions, and managerial roles. Courses on communication, individual leadership classes, and emotional intelligence are all great classes for people wanting to improve their soft skills.
Hard Skills
Hard skills are technical skills that cover a specific ability. These are things like welding, using specific software, typing speed, and certain certifications. These skills are required to fulfill a specific job. Most hard skills are easier to learn and get certified in. Courses like social media marketing, proposal writing, and event planning are all courses that teach hard skills.
Advance Your Career
Most people want a job they can move up in. A career that has opportunities for advancement. This could be baked into the employment package - attending company-created courses and staying on track for promotions and advancements. However, that’s not always the case.
Investing in professional development will give you new skills and abilities that will help you advance your career.
Try to be strategic about which courses you choose. If you work in development, taking courses about business law might not be the best use of your time. Instead, choose courses that further develop your understanding of your field.
Improve Your Confidence
Starting a new job, getting a promotion, and taking on more responsibilities at work is exciting, but it can be nerve-wracking. Do you have the right skills, knowledge, and ability to do the job right? You might not even know the skills that are most important for your new role.
Engaging in professional development can make you more confident in your work by teaching you new and important skills. If you’re developing yourself with leadership courses and hard skill certifications, then you’ll be better equipped to step into whatever role you have next.
Increase Your Enjoyment
We get it, doing the same thing every weekday can quickly become a monotonous nightmare and boredom can quickly make you yearn for a different job. If you're lucky, your job is engaging and you’re provided with ample opportunities to develop. However, if you’re like half of the people in the United States, your job is boring.
Engaging in professional development can help you enjoy your job more by giving you new ideas and skills to try. However, doing this could prove difficult.
Depending on your work situation you may not be able to engage in PD within work hours. If you have a desk job you may be able to read some articles before your day starts or during off-time here and there. If you’re too busy during work to do this, you could talk with your supervisor about scheduling PD time or take courses outside of work hours.
Improve Your Motivation and Productivity
Maybe instead of being bored at work, you just don’t feel motivated and can’t seem to get out of an unproductive funk. No matter how much coffee you drink you can’t seem to get those quarterly reports done.
Professional development can help snap you out of any funks and clear brain fog by engaging your brain in a new way. PD is also about realigning yourself with the importance of your work. Networking PD is a great way to do this. Hearing other people’s perspectives in your field about why your job is important can help motivate you to get more work done and enjoy it.
Prevent Burnout
Working head down and hyper-focused might be important for those quick deadlines, but it’s not sustainable in the long run. If you get to the office and work work work every day, eventually you will experience burnout.
Teachers are especially susceptible to burnout, and it’s been noted that professional development is effective in preventing burnout for educators. This same idea can be applied to other fields of work.
Similar to motivation, PD can reignite passion for a job. This can happen in several ways.
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For teachers, it’s good to be reminded that children are important and that what they do is tremendously helpful, even if their students aren’t grateful.
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In other fields, PD can be a nice change of pace. It gives workers a chance to talk about something other than their clients or work that needs to be done.
If your work doesn’t offer PD opportunities you can try to make your own by engaging with coworkers about whatever it is you’re learning outside of work.
Professional Development For Individuals and Employers
PD doesn’t just have to be something that businesses provide. You can, and should, take your development into your own hands.
You can do this by reading articles from journals that cover trends and new information about your job field. Or you can take online courses to receive credentials or other skills important to your field.
For all your professional development needs, the Regional Economic Development Center at Yavapai College has you covered. We offer career resources, job fairs and events, as well as online courses. Use our resources to jumpstart or advance your career.
Continue learning about professional development by reading part 3: Setting Professional Development Goals.