Creating a Professional Development program - in the transportation consulting industry

cmcdonough38

I am in the process of trying to create a Professional Development program at my company.  We're a small transportation consulting firm comprised of mostly civil engineers.  We strongly encourage employees to attend professional development seminars, workshops, continuing education and we offer tuition reimbursement.  However, there are some employees who go to "everything" and some employees who go to "nothing".  I'm curious if other companies have a budget "given" to each employee, if only a certain level of employee in the company can travel out of state to attend functions, etc.  I'd like to make some recommendations for this program and would like to hear what other companies have in place.

Thank you!

 

IT HR

If training and development are that important to the company then I would say add this to the job description.  "Required to attend at least 2 industry conferences/seminars a year."

I am in the IT industry.  We are required to maintain a certain number of certifications for certain designations with our vendors. We make it a part of our job description that employees will maintain and achieve certifications and also attend seminars/conferences. We pay for these things.  We decide which certifcations they will get and which conferences they go to.  Our employees can express interest in some of these things and we will consider that interest when we decide who is going to attend.