Last week I asked my employees to submit to my some ideas on what they'd like to see in terms of education and development for the upcoming year. I am an ardent supporter of continuing and lifelong education, especially for those of us in the technical realm.

Here are a few of the points that have been brought up so far. I’m fielding these ideas because I’m really curious where other companies/manager stand on continuing employee education and training. Is it promoted in your organization? Do you pay for it? Do employees take advantage of it??

Please comment!

1) Everyone should have the authority to purchase books to a level of $200 - $500 per year as long as they plan to read them or use them as reference material. They should purchase them when they want without prior approval and should expense them. They should know that they are the property of the company but they are allowed to keep them as long as they are employed.

2) We should encourage people to attend one-hour cyber seminars.

3) We should allow people to take e-learning type courses such as the one below. These tend to be in the $500 area and would require approval through the normal form via HR.

4) There needs to be a tie between the educational time and expenditure and their job (pretty obvious, but it needs to be stated).

5) People should expect to do most of their continuing education on their own time, but not all of it, because allowing them to train during work hours shows that the company is willing to invest in their knowledge. If management wants to invest, it will encourage them to invest even more in themselves.

6) Concentrated time should be given to people to do self-study. I see this as a 3-5 day activity once per year rather than miscellaneous time during certain times of the week. Miscellaneous time doesn't work well enough. It helps on short-term projects and incremental improvement, but not significant moves.

7) There needs to be a tie between the long term vision of the department and what people should be educated on. This way, you are spending education dollars on a likely-to-happen project. Sharing the vision is the first piece and asking what education each person needs to have to accomplish the vision is the second piece. Suggesting a course/book can be useful because people often don't know what they need.

8) Encourage management knowledge sharing. Pass around influential articles and books. This type of ‘executive knowledge sharing’ has a tremendous impact on getting employees focused on what management is focused on through the gentle nudge of reading an article on a pertinent topic. Subtle, but very effective in shaping perception and direction.

Great suggestions, all.

Microsoft does some of this, but not all. We have a set "training" budget for the group, which divides up among the employees. Ave in my group is somewhere around $1200 per year. Some internal courses have a fee, most don't.

I encourage my employees to go to industry conferences or things like American Mktg Association courses.

I also strongly encourage professional mentoring with another employee with tenure in the field the employee is interested in.

Finally, MS pays up to $5500 per year for college, something I make it a point to allow an employee to attend, and work around if possible.

Keeping an employee learning and engaged is one of the most important things I think a company can do. Employees will come to work every day with new ideas, a fresh perspective, and will approach things more creatively.