Employee engagement is a term that’s been passed along for years now. And for those of us responsible for attracting, retaining, and getting the most out of top talent – it’s always on our radar.
What is employee engagement?
We define employee engagement as the extent to which an employee is “all in”. Meaning, they’re fully absorbed and energized by their work, and therefore exert discretionary effort in their roles.
Even though there is still much debate about how to accurately assess and score an employee’s engagement level, we can’t deny that the highest performing businesses have seemed to get it right.
What drives employee engagement?
A recent study conducted by Learnkit, revealed a strong correlation between effective training and onboarding and an employee’s level of engagement.
This is good news for business leaders, because it means that providing your employees with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful in their roles (and therefore contribute to a positive impact on the bottom line) is also what significantly contributes to their engagement. It seems simple, yet many organizations are failing to provide their employees with the foundational skills, knowledge and training to perform well in their job.
Learnkit surveyed hundreds of employees across North America to determine the impact effective training had on their engagement and performance at work. In their study, Creating a Win-Win-Win Strategy for Your Organization the research findings shed light on a number of shocking statistics around the overwhelming number of businesses that are still practicing outdated learning strategies – if any at all.
Organized learning and training programs are only offered to employees once, or a few times per year, even though employees have indicated that they prefer to receive frequent, timely and specific training. As a result, workforces are disengaged, employees’ performance is lackluster and turnover is at an all-time high. In other words, poor (or absent) learning strategies are some of the biggest problems that business leaders face today.
Are you setting your employees up for success?
By implementing an effective onboarding program for new hires and by providing ongoing training you’ll be able to help your staff performance and contribute to their happiness in the workplace.
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Note:
This a guest post from my friends at Learnkit, a company that’s focused on improving the way that education is created and delivered. I’m always interested in sharing great resources with my community, and I like the work that these folks are doing. They’re also the organizers of the DisruptHR Community in Vancouver, British Columbia – which makes them super cool in my book. (And nope. They didn’t pay me to post this research on my blog, or to say nice things about them.)
To learn more about Learnkit, and how they’re creatively developing learning content to drive performance and improve organizational outcomes, please visit Learnkit.com.
