HBR Guide to Performance Management (HBR Guide Series)

CHAPTER 8

Understand Your Employee’s Wants and Needs

Employee development is a process for managing a person’s professional growth. Learning, building new skills, and working to one’s full potential is both rewarding for the individual and helpful to the organization as a whole. For your direct reports, it means getting the opportunity to focus on their upward mobility. For you, it offers a chance to boost employees’ productivity, motivation, and engagement while also retaining and growing your top talent.

Development is invaluable for your employees. Frederick Herzberg, in his classic HBR article “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” argues that growth is a powerful intrinsic motivator and can increase job satisfaction. Job seekers ...