Employee development is important for both optimal company performance and the retention of your top talent. This article outlines a three-step approach to optimizing your employee development with Oracle Cloud HCM, including mapping skills to jobs, providing technology to facilitate conversations, and letting the business lead the process.

Benefits of Oracle Cloud HCM vs. on-premises

Oracle Cloud HCM solutions offer many advantages over traditional on-premises solutions. As technology continues to evolve, Oracle Cloud solutions have become increasingly popular due to enhanced features, security, scalability, and flexibility. With the ability to scale in the cloud, businesses can reduce costs related to purchasing and managing new or additional hardware.

Oracle Cloud HCM offers solutions on a single platform with real-time insights for managing employees and creating efficiencies around your employee-based development initiatives. By leveraging existing data related to hiring trends, training programs, performance metrics, goal tracking progress reports, job satisfaction surveys, and compensation packages, your business gains valuable insights into how employees are performing and can identify potential areas for improvement. The Oracle Cloud HCM employee and manager experience delivers contextual and relevant information at the right time to make better, faster decisions.

Employee development as part of talent management

Employee development is an essential component of the overall employee experience, directly influencing your talent management strategy. The approach focuses on investing in employees to enable them to reach their full potential and that your business can leverage the necessary skills and expertise to remain competitive. Effective employee development includes providing training opportunities, mentorship programs, and other resources, increasing employee engagement, transparency, and programs leading to skill development.

The three steps outlined below can guide your business to ensure you are taking advantage of available tools and technology to implement the right employee development strategies.

1. Map skills to jobs

An initial step in maximizing staff development is to map job-related skills. This requires a deep dive into the abilities required for various roles within your organization, which can offer valuable insights into what talent is needed. As part of this process, it is beneficial to create a competency-based job description that encompasses both hard and soft aptitudes. Additionally, your business should complete a gap analysis to identify areas where training or other professional growth opportunities may be necessary.

Organizations traditionally focus on their hardest-to-fill roles and those with the highest level of turnover. This enables employees to assess their skills, and that assessment, along with manager validation of employee skills, creates a view of job fit as well as areas for improvement and additional visibility into internal development opportunities.

2. Provide the technology to facilitate conversations

A second step to effective talent management is to have a way to effectively track and facilitate conversations about employee development initiatives. Oracle Cloud HCM provides a platform for constructive dialogue between managers and employees, allowing them to discuss goals, performance reviews, career growth, and feedback in an organized, guided manner. Furthermore, the analytical capabilities of the solution enable your business to measure progress and adjust as needed.

Not only does Oracle Cloud HCM help streamline communication across all departments in your organization, it also helps keep stakeholders up to date on any changes or decisions concerning staff development programs. You can use Oracle Touchpoints to drive employee and manager engagement in meaningful conversations about growth within the company and ultimately creating and tracking development plans.

3. Let the business lead the process

The third step in optimizing employee development with Oracle Cloud HCM is to allow your functional departments to lead the employee development process. HR facilitates conversations, but the business function should drive decisions around when and what to work on, enabling ownership of the process.

By focusing on employee development, your business can foster a culture of growth and value. Managers are aware of their employees’ professional goals and can set clear expectations for job responsibilities, encourage innovation by rewarding successful projects and initiatives, and offer opportunities for professional growth.

If your organization is looking to leverage Oracle Cloud HCM solutions to increase efficiency and productivity within your workforce, contact us today!

Watch our webinar on driving effective employee development with Oracle Cloud HCM

To learn more about building a successful employee development strategy, watch our webinar highlighting how Bank of Hawai‘i is leveraging Oracle Cloud HCM. In this recording, we discuss best practices and hear first-hand experience from Bank of Hawai‘i about developing employees in the cloud environment.