Personal development – a team perspective

Encouraging the workforce to undertake a journey of personal development will nurture a range of ‘soft’ skills. Not only will staff thrive as individuals, the business will also reap a range of benefits. This ultimately leads to a stronger, happier and more productive team.

Similarly, COVID-19 has caused a radical disruption to the way people now work. Flexible hours and remote working mean it’s even more important that we build in time for our own personal development and support opportunities for people to explore new interests and passions.

Nurturing our team

At Entec Si we firmly understand the value of this approach. We’ve consistently provided a range of opportunities designed to nurture personal development. These have included our new people focused operating model, Mental Wealth Working Group and Academy Practice. So we asked some of our team what they thought about personal development and their goals for individual growth.

What does personal development mean to you?

“I think of it as being not only how you are in the workplace but also how you have resilience, how you adapt change, how you manage your own wellbeing as well.”

Sue

“For me personal development isn’t just for work, it’s for outside of work too. You might not know exactly where you want to be or what you want to be, but under that huge overarching goal there are baby step goals that you keep picking your way through. That’s how I view personal development, as a continuous self improvement set by yourself and driven by yourself.”

Charlotte

“Generally it can mean becoming a better version of yourself. For me personally, I’m trying to figure out at the moment what is it that gives me that drive and what routes I want to go down. I think you can be the best at anything but if you don’t have that drive it is a loss cause.”

Eilis

“For me the journey of personal development is a process of constant learning. Personal development is part of your journey in whatever role you do.”

Julie

“Personal development to me means being able to develop myself, my skills and knowledge for me. Personal development is learning and gaining experience of skills that I need to have effectively to be able to move forward with my career.”

Ben

“For me personal development all relates to skills, quality and behaviours. I believe everybody has a set of skills, a set of qualities and behaviours. And I believe that everybody would like to improve themselves in a certain way.”

Sofia

What are your personal development goals for this year?

Identify my leadership style and working on leadership skills with Jude Jennison
Write an article about a piece of client work for social media
Charlotte

Build my LinkedIn space to be personal to me and what I represent
I would like to complete the internal project that I took onboard at the start of lockdown three and be available for other internal opportunities
Eilis

Gain more experience at communicating with clients
Pass my apprenticeship exam
Learn more about resource management
Sofia

Further development of multi-tasking abilities
Proactive approach to work and home-life management – finding a better middle ground between home and work-life while working from home
Ben

Develop an oxygen mask approach to wellbeing, with personal wellbeing as a priority, to fuel my personal resilience to support those around me
Keep checking both my personal and our team priorities regularly – are we on track, what adjustments do we need to stay or track or improve?
Have fun and help the team have fun!
Sue

The focus I have at the moment is around developing my leadership brand, by producing articles, linking with people through social media and developing the strengths of the Entec brand alongside the Tim brand
Tim

Enhance my leadership skills to start to think more strategically
Move away from day-to-day management and working with the leadership team to develop the company moving forward
Julie

Start your own journey

We hope that you’ve found our team’s experiences of personal development inspirational. As Julie suggests, personal development is a journey, so explore whatever interests you and enjoy where it takes you.