This is the first in a four-part series on getting individualized career support for free.
You’re feeling unsettled in your career. Perhaps you wish you were more engaged and fulfilled in your day-to-day work. Or you’re taking on more responsibility and don’t know how to handle the new tasks and direct reports. Or you know there has to be more possible in your career but can’t figure out how to progress.
However you cut it, something’s off.
So you start searching for articles and books for ideas. You find some solid advice and guidance, but start to realize that there’s no “one size fits all” approach to your specific career challenges and questions. Unfortunately, even if you can find information applicable to your situation, it likely won’t be enough. When workers were randomly assigned to self-coach or have a coach, researchers found that “independently performing exercises without being supported by a coach is not sufficient for high goal attainment,” as written in Frontiers in Psychology. In other words, personalized coaching was necessary for actual gain.
These findings align with other studies that have found that coaching creates many improvements including lowering job stress, improving career satisfaction and engagement, and facilitating overall well-being.
All in all, creating fulfillment, impact, meaning and purpose at work is nearly impossible to do on our own. We need someone to guide us, to speak to our specific situation, and to hold us accountable as we work toward our unique goals. It’s no wonder, then, that increasing numbers of organizations have been hiring internal coaches or contracting with coaching companies to support their employees, a welcome trend.
But what do you do if you work at an organization that doesn’t yet offer coaching? Are you left with the choice of being unhappy at work or covering a hefty coaching bill on your own?
Thankfully, you may be able to secure high-quality career coaching without paying a dime out of pocket thanks to professional development funds.
What Are Professional Development Funds?
Professional development funds are a pot of money offered by organizations for employees to develop career-relevant skills. The funds typically range between $500 and $5,000 per individual per year, but they vary greatly by organization, as is clear on this list compiled by Hoppier. In some cases, there is a lifetime cap per individual, or the funds must be used within a certain number of years of joining the organization.
While the funds are often allocated for each employee to use on an annual basis, some organizations have a pot for the whole organization to use that need to be accessed on a first come, first served basis each fiscal year.
It’s important to note that there a variety of names for professional development funds, including professional development plans (PDPs), career advancement funds, career development funds, and career development grants. Given this, keep your search broad as you dig around.
How Can Professional Development Funds Be Used?
Many of us are “cognitively stuck” about what professional development funds can be used for, thinking they’re solely for conferences, courses, and trainings. Most organizations actually frame professional development funds as being available for any “career-related” training, education, and/or support. That’s a broad bucket!
During the pandemic, when conferences were cancelled or converted into less stimulating online versions, many employees got creative and realized that breadth. Rather than let their allocated funds go to waste, they began using the funds for one-on-one coaching and other forms of personalized support. In my own coaching practice, I went from billing all of my coaching clients privately two years ago to having nearly a quarter of my clients’ coaching currently being paid by their organizations.
I certainly fell into limited thinking about professional development funds myself - even though I’m a coach. While working at a college that offered annual professional development funds, I let thousands of dollars go because I found the low efficacy of mass trainings to not be worth my time and/or because conference travel felt prohibitive when I had young children. Now I realize I likely could have hired a professional coach to guide and support my professional skills and goals all of those years. What a loss!
Which Organizations Offer Professional Development Funds?
A wide variety of organizations offer professional development funds - it’s not just large, for profit institutions that do so. In fact, while it may be counterintuitive, all of my clients who currently use professional development funds for coaching work for nonprofit organizations. I have a number of clients at Fortune 500 companies and they’re all paying out of pocket for career coaching.
When I asked one of my nonprofit clients about this odd trend, she explained it this way: “Nonprofits can’t pay us as well as a for profit company could. So the way they attract and retain us is by saying, ‘You can grow here. We’ll support you in developing.’” Nonprofits - even tiny ones - often put money behind that promise in the form of professional development funds. Since many people don’t actually access the funds that are available, professional development offers a much more affordable way for organizations to attract and retain employees than increasing individual compensation.
In other words, don’t count your organization out, regardless of its size or type.
How Can I Find Out If My Organization Offers Professional Development Funds?
The starting point, of course, is to check the employee handbook or talk to your HR department. You may be surprised to find that the funds are literally sitting there for the taking.
If you don’t find anything, or if your organization is so small it doesn’t have a handbook or an HR lead, then talk to your supervisor and co-workers. They might not be familiar with the term “professional development funds” or your organization might use a different phrase, so ask broad questions like, “Did you ever use money for conference travel? Did you ever get reimbursed for taking classes online?” If anyone has, then the funds either exist - or likely can exist with a bit of advocacy.
What If My Organization Doesn’t Offer Professional Development Funds?
If you dig around and can’t find any hint of funds available, that’s not a non-starter. A number of my coaching clients advocated for professional development funds to be added to their organization’s offerings and others negotiated for individual annual funds for their own use.
In Part Two of this series, to be published this week, I’ll offer step-by-step instructions on how to advocate for professional development funds that don’t yet exist. Part Three will cover how to justify the use of professional development funds for coaching and individualized support if your organization thinks narrowly about the use of funds, and Part Four will discuss how to time the use of your professional development funds for optimal impact.
How To Get Personalized Career Support - For Free - Forbes
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