Running Head: Employee Development

Employee Development and the

Park University

In today’s competitive business world, it is important to have fully trained and well-versed employees, which can help make or break an organization. By having an employee development plan, or career path if you will, it allows employees to set career goals. This allows companies to ensure employees are fully capable of performing their assigned duties. The following chapter, Chapter 9, discussed methods of employee development. This chapter covered current trends associated with formal education, effective development strategies, as well as how to design a development program. This review will focus specifically on mentoring, coaching and the benefits associated with each method of training.

Mentoring and coaching both want to achieve the same goal, a productive, highly motivated employee for their organization. A mentor is an experienced, productive senior employee who helps a less experienced employee (protégé) (Noe, 2010). A coach is a peer or manager that works with the employee to motivate them, develop their skills and provide feedback to the employee (Noe, 2010). Each of these programs foster an environment that shows that companies are concerned with employee growth and development and by partnering a new employee with a veteran employee companies can get new hires up and running much quicker able to make immediate contributions to the company (McCauley, 2007).

Mentoring can be an informal or formal experience but the major advantage of a formalized mentoring program is that it ensures access to mentors for all employees, regardless of gender or race (Noe, 2010). In having a successful formal mentorship program, it is also important to match the right mentor with