Importance of Professional Development

Introduction

Training and Professional Development is the process of improving an employee's skills and competencies to maintain and improve performance. It includes skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement. Planning professional development with each employee, and implementing that plan, is essential to an effective performance management system. Colin (1998) indicates the field is lacking in information related to career transitions. Generally, each field of study offers no collaboration or guidance in how to shift from one field to another.

Coogan and Chen purport, women's career development is more complex than that of men due to a number of internal and external barriers to success. These barriers include early gender-role orientation, family responsibilities, and employment inequities. All of these factors complicate and hinder women's career choices and opportunities for advancement.

Being successful in any field requires the individual to think carefully and strategically about their skills, objectives and the areas in which they need to develop. Engagement with personal and professional advancement should also relate to one's long term career goals. Pursuing development opportunities can be useful both as a way of thinking through what one wants to do long term and as a way of developing and evidencing the skills that are needed to move to the next stage in a career.

Purpose of Professional Development

Many successful people follow a plan for their career. This can vary from a detailed plan to a broad direction which allows chance to play a role too. The most useful plans are based on thorough self-awareness and knowledge of career options open to you. These include career structures, types of work, recruitment methods, and what support, training and development is available.

Women must have the courage and the initiative to take responsibility for their professional development. The age-old excuse that women are "not interested" in specific positions or are too busy with family issues is invalid. In all of the instances, a woman must think about values, strengths and areas requiring development and be informed about the requirements in different careers. Self-evaluation is only one side of personal review. When possible it is important to get feedback from others about skills and abilities.

Professional Development Challenges for Women

Although the past several decades have seen women make incredible strides in the workplace, there are still several elements of the business world that keep them from achieving true equality in their chosen fields. There are five difficult professional development challenges for women. Hogue (2010) argues the work experience for women today is complex and multifaceted. Many industries maintain a glass ceiling; many industries and companies do not have a culture that permits women to obtain the highest offices. Hogue suggests that perceptual change is necessary but cannot exist without action (p. 256). Women deserve the opportunity and are as competent and valuable; women are competent enough to serve in top-level leadership positions and warrant an opportunity to advance with gender being a factor.

Holland and Cortina (2013) finds that 58% of women report some type of sexual harassment on the job and about two-thirds of them of American women identify with feminism (p. 302). When the two factors collide, they increase women's vulnerability. In many workplace settings, women still have to endure sexist behavior,