Developing young talent as an opportunity for your company: The key to sustainable success

The challenges of the 21st century present companies with complex tasks. Demographic change, skilled labor shortages and the dynamic development of technologies and working methods are shaping the labor market and making the promotion of young talent an indispensable strategic task. As an integral part of personnel development, the targeted promotion of young talent represents a decisive competitive advantage within the corporate landscape. If young talent is systematically and sustainably promoted, you will have a pool of specialists and managers at your disposal that can ensure your company's long-term success. Read this article to find out what opportunities are available for your company and how to implement effective junior staff development in your company.

Promoting young talent within your own company is a key component in ensuring optimal staffing. It enables you to ensure that you have the right specialists and managers available at all times to support and drive forward your corporate goals. This is about strategic advance planning to prevent you from facing a shortage of qualified employees at crucial moments.

But talent development is more than just proactive workforce planning. It is a long-term investment in the stability, dynamism and future viability of your company. With targeted measures to promote young talent, you influence and control the professional development of your employees. You foster leadership skills, spark your employees' creativity and strengthen their commitment.

With a well thought-out and consistently implemented junior staff development program, you have the opportunity to actively shape and mold your company. You'll further develop the qualities you consider critical, while creating a corporate culture of loyalty, commitment and continuous improvement.

Consistent promotion of young talent offers enormous advantages and the opportunities for your personnel development. You as an employer position yourself against your competitors and sustainably secure your skilled labor base.

Overall, junior staff development offers a wealth of benefits. It gives you control over the quality and attitude of your future professionals and managers, helps you unleash the potential of your employees, strengthens employee loyalty and promotes integration. All of these aspects can help make your company competitive and future-proof.

To reap the benefits of targeted talent development, a few strategic steps are necessary 

Successful junior staff development always begins with strategic planning that is closely linked to corporate goals. It's not just about current needs, but also about future challenges and opportunities.

First ask yourself what competencies and skills are needed in your company to achieve your long-term goals. Think not only about current requirements, but also about future developments: Which technologies, methods or business models will be relevant in the future? What competencies will your specialists and managers need to successfully master these challenges?

Once you have made these strategic considerations, think about which roles and positions are particularly important to achieve these goals. Which specialists and managers do you need to implement your business strategy and ensure your business success in the long term?

At the same time, it is important to consider the future requirements for these roles. What skills and knowledge will these roles require in the future? How can you ensure that your professionals and managers meet these requirements?

All of these considerations form the basis for your junior staff development planning. They help you get a clear picture of where you want to go and the steps you need to take to get there. And they ensure that your talent development efforts become an integral part of your business strategy.

With clearly defined requirements and business goals in mind, the second phase begins: identifying talent and high potentials within your organization. This step is of tremendous importance as it determines who your future top performers and leaders will be.

However, identifying talent and high potentials is much more than just evaluating the current performance of your employees. Of course, outstanding performance is a strong indication of high potential. But it's also important to look beyond current performance and assess development potential.

This manifests itself in a variety of ways. It can be expressed, for example, in strong motivation, a high willingness to learn, a pronounced solution orientation or a special ability to work together. Equally relevant is the willingness of employees to take on responsibility and face new challenges.

To identify these aspects, regular employee appraisals are a crucial tool. They provide an opportunity to discuss employees' performance, motivation and goals, and to develop a better understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and development opportunities. These conversations also explore your employees' willingness to take on more responsibility and grow

Another way to assess your employees' potential is through assessment centers. In assessment centers, employees are observed in a variety of exercises and situations that test their skills, behavior and suitability for future tasks and roles. They provide valuable insights into how your employees behave under different conditions and help to assess their potential more accurately.

Identifying talent and high potential is a multi-faceted process that takes into account both your employees' current performance and future potential. It is a critical step on the path to successful talent development.

The next step is to derive concrete training measures that meet the identified needs and optimally develop the potential of your employees. This involves defining learning objectives that meet both corporate goals and employees' personal development goals, but also tie in with your company's strategic direction.

To achieve these learning objectives, a variety of options are available - from classic seminars and workshops to mentoring programs and individual coaching. Online training and varied eLearning formats, in particular, offer significant advantages:

Flexibility and scalability make it possible to carry out training measures in a targeted and efficient manner without disrupting operations. They also allow learners to set their own pace and review learning content whenever they need to. Online training can also be tailored to individual learning styles and needs, providing a personalized and adaptive learning experience. They offer the opportunity to deliver learning content in a fun and interactive way, which can increase learner motivation and engagement. In addition, they make it possible to monitor learning progress in real time and provide instant feedback, which can help increase learning effectiveness.

In this age of digitalization and mobile working, eLearning and online training have therefore become an indispensable part of effective junior staff development.

Now it is time to review the learning outcomes and ensure that the learning objectives set are actually achieved. The so-called learning objectives evaluation is a critical component of any continuing education concept. It helps to understand how well the content has been absorbed and implemented by junior staff, and where adjustments may need to be made.

An effective tool for learning objectives evaluation is regular feedback sessions. These provide an opportunity to look at the development of junior employees from their own perspective and that of their supervisors. The conversations provide space for queries, discussions, and setting new goals.

The review of learning outcomes and subsequent feedback creates a dynamic process that enables the continuous development of junior staff. The next development steps can then be derived and planned from the insights gained. Thus, this phase of review contributes significantly to the optimization and sustainable effectiveness of junior staff development.

All of these steps require time, resources and commitment. But investing in junior staff development is an investment in your company's future - an investment that will pay off in the long run. That's because it helps ensure that your employees acquire and develop the skills and knowledge they need to successfully meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, and ensure your company's long-term success.

Imagine an ambitious engineer Alexander in your company who is passionate about driving new solutions in product development. To target Alexander, you could create a customized professional development program that includes different types of learning activities.

Alexander has joined a project team working on the development of a new product line. In the process, he was assigned specific tasks that were aligned with his skills and learning objectives. These hands-on assignments allowed him to expand his technical skills while strengthening his problem-solving and teamwork skills.

Parallel to his practice assignments, Alexander completed a series of online courses. These courses were specifically chosen to expand his technical knowledge and develop new skills important to his future role as a leader. The flexibility of the online courses allowed Alexander to complete them at his own pace and review the learning as needed.

In addition to the online courses, Alexander also benefited from a mentoring program in which an experienced executive served as a mentor. In regular coaching sessions, Alexander was able to learn from his mentor's experience, discuss challenges, and receive valuable feedback.

After completion of each step, a comprehensive feedback session was held. This assessed Alexander's performance in the practice assignments, his progress in the online courses, and his development in the mentoring program. This conversation also provided an opportunity to evaluate Alexander's learning goals and plan next steps in his development. This ongoing evaluation and adjustment of the support program ensures that Alexander always receives the support he needs to reach his full potential and become a valued member of the company.