Moving from individual learning to shared departmental growth in higher education
Professional development is an essential investment in the people who make higher education work. Conferences, webinars, professional associations, and continuing education opportunities provide employees with valuable knowledge, new perspectives, and opportunities to connect with colleagues facing similar challenges.
But I believe there is an important question institutions should ask more frequently:
What happens to that learning when the employee returns to work?
Consider a financial aid professional who attends a conference and returns with new ideas about improving student communication. Or a registrar who participates in a workshop about records integrity and discovers approaches that might strengthen internal processes.
The employees have gained knowledge. But has the institution gained anything beyond the individual experience?
That depends, at least in part, on what happens next.
From Individual Knowledge to Shared Understanding
Professional development is often treated as an individual activity. An employee registers for training, participates, perhaps receives a certificate, and returns to the responsibilities waiting at their desk.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Individual learning matters.
However, higher education rarely operates through isolated individual contributions.
A change in financial aid processing might affect the Business Office. A revised admissions practice might influence academic advising. A new student services initiative might require participation from faculty, the Registrar, and institutional leadership.
When professional development remains confined to the employee who attended the training, institutions may miss opportunities to strengthen the broader network of people and processes supporting students.
The question should not simply be, "What did you learn?"
It might also be, "What could we learn from this together?"
The Relationship Between Professional Development and Employee Engagement
My doctoral research examined relationships among job satisfaction, work engagement, and counterproductive work behavior. That research reinforced my interest in understanding the organizational conditions associated with how employees experience their work.
Professional development represents one opportunity for institutions to demonstrate that employee growth matters.
But providing learning opportunities is only part of the equation.
Employees also benefit from opportunities to contribute their perspectives, apply what they have learned, share experiences, and participate in improving the practices that shape their daily responsibilities.
A professional development experience can become something more meaningful when employees are invited to examine realistic situations together, discuss alternative approaches, and contribute to decisions about how their departments operate.
Importantly, these conversations should not assume that every department needs improvement in the same areas. Some teams already demonstrate exceptional collaboration and effective practices.
Professional development can help identify and build upon those strengths just as effectively as it can help address emerging challenges.
What If Professional Development Became a Shared Departmental Practice?
Imagine a financial aid office setting aside time each month to discuss a realistic student eligibility scenario.
Rather than simply reviewing the correct regulatory answer, the team considers how the situation would be communicated to the student, documented, and coordinated with other departments.
Or imagine an academic affairs team examining a situation involving adjunct faculty inclusion.
Faculty and administrators might discuss communication expectations, professional support, and ways to create stronger connections between full-time and adjunct colleagues.
A human resources team might explore the employee journey, beginning with recruitment and onboarding and continuing through supervisor development, recognition, professional growth, and retention.
These conversations do not necessarily require an expensive retreat or an elaborate training program.
They require intentionality, useful material, supportive facilitation, and a willingness to learn from one another.
Turning Conversations Into Action
One potential limitation of group professional development is that meaningful discussion does not automatically produce meaningful change.
Participants may leave a meeting feeling encouraged, only to return to familiar demands and established routines.
For that reason, institutions might consider concluding professional development sessions with a few practical questions:
What existing strengths did this discussion help us recognize?
What did we learn from one another?
Is there one practice we would like to explore or improve?
Who should participate in the next conversation?
How will we determine whether our efforts have been useful?
These questions are not intended as a universal formula. Institutions should adapt professional development activities to their culture, staffing, operational responsibilities, and available resources.
The objective is not to generate another administrative obligation.
It is to make learning relevant to the work employees already perform.
A Different Way to Think About Professional Development
This philosophy is one of the reasons I have been developing practical professional development workbooks through Rosenboom Workforce Institute.
The objective is not simply to provide additional reading material.
It is to create resources that encourage discussion, realistic problem-solving, shared reflection, and opportunities for departmental growth.
The Better Together series, for example, is organized around facilitated group professional development because I believe some of the most valuable learning occurs when professionals examine real-world situations together.
Likewise, the Engaged Employees, Retained Students series explores the relationships among workplace experiences, departmental effectiveness, and the broader student experience.
These resources are intended to complement, rather than replace, conferences, professional associations, institution-specific training, and the expertise employees already possess.
The Opportunity Before Us
Higher education institutions are continually asked to accomplish more while managing changing expectations, limited resources, and complex operational responsibilities.
Investing in professional development remains important.
But perhaps we should expand our definition of what that investment means.
The value of professional development should not be measured solely by how many employees attended a session, how many certificates were earned, or how many training hours were completed.
We should also consider whether learning encouraged stronger relationships, improved understanding, supported employee confidence, or created opportunities for thoughtful institutional improvement.
Because the greatest value of professional development may not be what one employee learns, but what an entire team becomes capable of accomplishing together.
And ultimately, stronger teams create opportunities for stronger institutions and better student experiences.
Dr. Matthew Rosenboom is the founder of Rosenboom Workforce Institute, which provides research-informed workforce assessments, higher education advisory services, and practical professional development publications.
Explore the Institute's professional development workbook collections and complimentary resources through the website.