We are offered many employee benefits when given the long-awaited offer letter. We’re familiar with health benefits, the company 401K match, the personal time off allowance each year, and family leave policies. However, another benefit among companies is on the rise: the Professional Development Budget. This employee perk provides a lot of value, but is still so new that not many know how it can be used or how truly valuable it is to an employee’s career growth.
A professional development budget is a planned budget set aside for each employment to use for courses and materials needed to analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate, and maintain employee training or retraining. This can be applied to so many things! So, how can you use your professional development budget to get the most out of this perk?
Go Back to School
Have you considered going back to school online to earn a new degree or certification? Your professional development budget could pay a portion of the tuition each year. Higher education, especially that needed to grow your career, is expensive. If your employer needs a certain specialty or certification required for the nuances of the job, but isn’t looking to hire someone new, it’s in both your best interest to use your budget to earn the required education credentials while currently working for them.
Attend a Conference
Before the pandemic, and hopefully following when we return to normal, employees could use their professional development budget for out-of-state conferences. The budget could cover travel expenses, hotel stays, and admission tickets for the event. Now, with conferences all virtual, the budget can go a lot further. With admission or registration costs as the only expense, employees now can use their professional development budget to attend more conferences each year.
Get Exclusive Access
Your professional development budget can also be used to gain exclusive access to programs like Lynda.com, and premium versions of Creative Cloud or other essential tech or creative packages. You have to rely on free or cheap programs at home for personal use, but if you can properly defend that these programs are vital to success at your job, you don’t have to settle for less than premium at work.
Increase Your Training
Do you have a skill that you’d like expand, or a tool you’d like to learn to use? There are online training courses from Udemy, Udacity, and Skillshare that can help you. Even better? Your professional development budget can pay for those courses. Learn code, how to improve your professional writing, or how to use Photoshop – whatever you need to be successful at work!
Buy New Equipment
Yes, your professional development budget can be used to buy new stuff! If your computer is slowing down with age, or if you want a fancy wireless keyboard and mouse, a case can be made that you need an upgrade with your budget. Our tech is as much part of our success and development as our skill set and leadership abilities.
Conclusion: It’s an investment in your career and your future, which tells you a lot about your company and how much they value you. Keep following our blog for more tips on effective job hunting, and look for the latest episode of our podcast.
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