How to Use Professional Development to Attract Talent
Are your employees satisfied with the level of professional development offered to them within your organisation?
In our new 2026 Workplace Trends Report, dissatisfaction with L&D opportunities emerged as one of three key issues driving almost half (49%) of employees to plan to look for a new job in the next six months.
Although satisfaction with professional development emerged as the highest in Ireland of the seven countries included (6% higher than the global average), still less than a third (29%) are satisfied with theirs.
So, as a low-cost option compared to offering higher salaries and more extensive benefits packages than your competitors, what can employers do to showcase professional development as an attractor for new hires?
We spoke to recruiting expert Aoife Hynes, Associate Director of Procurement at Morgan McKinley Ireland who is passionate about ensuring clients can do exactly that. Here’s what she advises to focus on:
1. Understand Where You May Be Going Wrong
Although employees’ expectations around L&D have increased, many employers may have competing business priorities and lower budgets and because of this, expect employees to develop naturally rather than having structured professional development plans in place, says Aoife. Also, overstretched managers need to be given the time and understanding of the ROI they’ll get from allocating time to develop their employees.
Professional development also needs to be considered at all levels: “People do enjoy being challenged and supported and we often achieve that in the early stage of someone’s career. But further on in their career, we need to identify opportunities for development and provide constructive feedback and stretch projects. It may not always be about moving up but getting new exposure and creating a culture of internal mobility”, says Aoife.
2. Give Managers Time to Prioritise Coaching
One of Aoife’s most foundational pieces of advice is that employers must actively free up or support middle managers so they have the time to mentor and coach their teams. In her opinion, overstretched managers who are forced to focus solely on "getting the job done" are the number one cause of disconnect around professional development:
“I think there’s a practical challenge for managers who are often under pressure themselves and find it difficult to dedicate time to coaching, mentoring and meaningful development conversations. Even where opportunities exist, they may not be communicated clearly or align to employees’ career aspirations”, explains Aoife.
3. Build Psychological Safety to Enable Stretch Goals
Next, you need to create a culture where employees are encouraged to take on stretch assignments and try new things, with the explicit understanding that mistakes are treated as learning opportunities rather than failures. This is where a lot of organisations struggle as they want someone to go into a new project and succeed from the get-go, but it’s vital for high performers in particular, says Aoife:
“High performers look for more than just a training budget. They look for clear career pathways, opportunities to learn new skills and exposure to different parts of the business and managers who will coach and challenge them. And an environment where they can step outside their comfort zone in a psychologically safe way, take on stretch assignments and continue to grow without fear of being penalised”, says Aoife.
4. Avoid the Trap of Creating "Accidental Managers"
Aoife notes that it’s also important to recognise that development looks different across the workforce and not everybody needs to be a high performer - in fact consistent performers are the backbone of most organisations. But don’t fall into the common trap of automatically promoting this cohort to middle managers before they’re ready:
“I think strong individual contributors are often promoted to people managers before they’re ready or they’ve received the necessary leadership training or support and it can have a massive negative impact on the individual, the wider team and sometimes the business. It’s essential to first develop someone’s emotional intelligence, their communication style, their ability to provide feedback”, explains Aoife.
5. Match Your Recruitment Promises With Reality
As valuable as it can be to showcase your development during hiring, it’s vital not to oversell it, says Aoife: “Ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time is harder to get right than a lot of people think. I’ve seen organisations oversell their development, someone goes into the organisation and the opportunity isn’t there and it can actually turn someone off even more than if it hadn’t been positioned that way.”
Her advice? “Not everyone can fast-track talent, so having structured career pathways is essential to manage expectations and support progression in a realistic, sustainable way. And don’t focus too heavily on formal training and budgets only - building day-to-day mentorship and coaching is just as important.”
6. Showcase Real Career Journeys From Staff
One of the easiest ways to ensure you’re presenting an attractive but realistic picture of your professional development is to partner with an agency that truly understands your business: “This can make a massive difference in attracting the right talent at the right time if they can can understand where the business is going in five years and communicate that to the candidate,” says Aoife.
You also need to move beyond the message of simply “we offer professional development”, explains Aoife: “Share what this looks like in practice. Bring a very strong employer value proposition to market. Maybe have videos where someone who’s started as an intern is now stepping into a director role or someone who came in with no industry experience and has now progressed. Try to sell that story to attract similar talent. And within job ads, share details about your internal mobility, too.”
7. Maximise Cross-Functional Projects and CSR Groups
If you can’t compete on expensive external training programmes, leverage internal knowledge-sharing, cross-functional project groups and peer coaching, says Aoife: “Demonstrate you’re investing in and care about your people. The opportunities to work on cross-functional projects can be very attractive for people to use the skills they have outside their day job.”
Another thing that Aoife is seeing in the market is the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) groups and employee resource groups (ERGs), particularly for younger employees or those driven to multinationals: “These types of groups can be very attractive because people feel like they’re giving back in certain ways, and they don’t cost anything so you can run these programmes internally too.”
Want to learn more about what’s really important to Irish employees? Download our 2026 Workplace Trends Report below – or speak to one of our consultants about your hiring.
