9. The Staff Development Process

Staff development is not only the declared favourite activity of most HR professionals, but one of the few all-round positive terms in HR, indeed in the entire field of business administration. It involves the promotion and professional development of employees and thus aims to secure the future of the organisation. In order to achieve the necessary qualifications, employees are taught knowledge, mindsets, behaviours and skills. In addition to the benefits that the supervisor and, as the case may be, the entrepreneur as the employer expect from it, the career and the employability of the employee are also at stake. When it comes to imparting skills, the age factor in staff development has several facets: This is reflected in the fact that an employee who is 55 years old today is unlikely to still be working productively in 10 years’ time unless they engage in continuous training; or because the same 55-year-old will not absorb new knowledge in the same way as a 25-year-old. And finally: do training initiatives after a certain age still pay off from an organisational point of view?