Low Cost Professional Development Ideas For Your Small Business

No matter the size of your business, you always want your employees to be the best out there, with superior training in a variety of areas. Professional development plans are meant to help shape your employees into better versions of themselves so they can help your small business expand at a healthy rate.

But professional development programs are often expensive, with pricey classes and certification courses involved. For a small business owner hoping to improve their employees’ skills, these programs are simply too much pressure on their wallet.

But not all professional development plans require you to pay a hefty fee. With the right planning, you can put together a professional development program that will help your employees and your business at the same time.

Professional development book club

All of the world’s wisdom comes from books. With the advent of the internet and other forms of media, we tend to forget that. Book clubs remain a popular way for staff in a business to bond and improve on their company culture. So why not put the two together?

As the owner of your small business, you can decide which books your employees should read as part of this professional development book club. Every few weeks, you and your employees will meet to discuss the book and what each person has learned so far. Not only is it a great method of learning, it also improves your small business culture.

Free courses online

Not all good courses have to cost an arm and a leg. Some are quite cheap and some are even free.

With just a little research, it’s easy to find several relevant professional development courses for your small business’ employees. Universities like Harvard and MIT provide hundreds of courses through open university programs. Other websites like Udemy and Coursera also offer free courses or courses that only cost a few dollars to access.

If you still want to access the exclusive courses that cost more, you can set an alert for sales. Many online learning websites have sales where pricier courses can be taken at a fraction of their original price.

Employee Skill Exchange

Your employees were hired because they had skills that all the other applicants did not have. They are unique individuals, with different talents that you find beneficial to your business. Having your employees teach one another enables a skill exchange that will be appreciated by both you and your staff.

Like the professional development book clubs, these teaching sessions can allow the staff at your small business to get to know each other better.

You’d be surprised at the formidable skills your employees possess, from speaking other languages to filing taxes. Giving them the opportunity to share will impact your small business in many positive ways.

Local Library Programs

In addition to hundreds of thousands of books, many local libraries also provide access to programs and courses that would otherwise cost a fortune. Subscriptions to newspapers like the New York Times and learning platforms like Lynda are just a few of the examples of professional development tools your library can provide to staff at your small business.

If you want to streamline the professional development process, you can simply ask staff to sign up for the same learning tools at the local library so they can track each other’s learning.

Professional development programs encourage people to learn newer and better ways of doing things. Your employees aren’t the only ones who can be taught new tricks that will improve your small business.

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