I have a bone to pick with most business—small and large—when it comes to professional development. Specifically, it’s the lack of professional development that frustrates me. There’s an attitude in too many workplaces that reading trade magazines, going to professional events and so on are wastes of time, or at best something that workers should do on their own time.

That’s foolish and short-sighted. An employee who isn’t learning something new pretty soon loses their value. In our organization, budget doesn’t always allow for us to send employees to classes or events, but we do offer them time during the work week to pursue their own professional development. That means reading about new technology, freelance writing for other publications and even networking with their friend, family and so on.

Spending time on Facebook and Twitter accounts isn’t viewed as unproductive here. Surfing the internet is encouraged. So long as the work gets done when it needs to get done, the rest of my employees’ time is their own.

To those of you who are skeptical about whether this works, I’ll be upfront and say it doesn’t work on its own. It’s part of our office culture, and it’s something we manage as much as we manage any other aspect of the business. Here are a few things we do to avoid major problems when it comes to getting the work done:

Deadlines should come early and often.
It’s not enough to give an ultimate deadline and hope everything is done by then. Deadlines should be set on a weekly, if not daily, basis for things that need to get done in order for a project to be successful. We publish magazines, so there are deadlines for coming up with stories, conducting interviews, turning in stories, editing them and so on. The same goes for our electronic publications.

Be specific about the work that needs to be done and when.
Take the above example. It’s not enough to say “here’s a deadline for coming up with story ideas.” Try to be more specific: “This is the deadline for coming up with 10 story ideas, including potential sources and tentative headlines.”

Hire Hard Workers
I admit this is easier said than done. It takes a lot of sifting through potential employees to find ones who will work hard no matter what you throw at them. And also you have to be willing to pay them what they’re worth.