The importance of employee
engagement as a factor to build and maintain an efficient workforce cannot be
overstated.
There are a remarkable number of
reasons why employee engagement is paramount, including higher productivity, improved
business output, job satisfaction, and enhanced revenue. Studies
have shown that a highly engaged workforce is 21% more effective than a disengaged
one, yet only 36% of employees in the modern workforce are engaged.
The issue of disengaged employees
is even more glaring with the rise of remote work considering there is lesser accountability
on how employees are choosing to utilize their time. Now
is when organizations have to take employee engagement even more seriously by
understanding how to measure, enhance, and sustain it.
This is where L&D teams step
in. L&D teams play a key role in employee engagement by ensuring that
employees feel valued, are learning actively, and are able to achieve the career
goals they aspire for. Employee engagement should be at the core of every L&D
strategy because although employees value learning and development opportunities,
they also need to feel invested in this learning.
Here are a few ways in which you
can make employee engagement the central focus of your L&D strategy:
- Assess the L&D Needs of Your Workforce
Before you begin working on your
L&D strategy, you need to identify the training needs of your employees and
their skill gaps. Once that is done, you will have to evaluate the performance
of all your teams and then define your L&D goals based on this data. This
is one way to effectively measure the success of your program, in turn,
ensuring that employees are engaged in the training and development strategies that
are created for them.
- Avoid ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Training
One way of combating disengagement
is by providing employees with great online learning experiences that are
personalized to their needs. Just as the requirements of employees are
different, the training solution for them should also be unique instead of a common
training program in place. After all, what may work for someone in Sales may
not necessarily work for someone in Accounting or Operations. Your training
programs must cater to employees based on their needs and should be such that they
can take it anytime, anywhere, increasing their chances of assimilating more
information and applying it in their jobs.
- Focus on Right-Sized Learning
A good learning and development
strategy is not just about offering information, it is also about devising learning
opportunities that are right-sized. This means offering content that will correctly
fit into the time that employees have allocated for learning in their already choc-a-block
schedules. It is likely that learners may prefer watching a three-minute video related
to a topic that’s important to them, and then prefer spending the rest of the
time they have allocated to learning, reflecting on what they’ve just watched. Factors
like this have to be taken into consideration.
- Encourage Peer Interaction
In this remote work environment, employees
already have a lot on their platter to stress them out. One way for them to wind
down and yet acquire knowledge is peer interaction. You can encourage your
learners to interact with their peers using internal channels where they can share
notes, seek advice, brainstorm ideas, and inspire each other. Even though
learners are all learning in a remote setting, it does not mean they have to
learn alone.
- Ensure Self-Directed Learning
L&D strategies work when
employees feel empowered and not burdened by them. Self-directed learning can
offer major benefits to bolster employee engagement. Since it gives learners
control over their own development, it enables improved outcomes as employees
feel more autonomous and less tied down. Self-directed learning also allows
learners to pursue things they are most interested in by offering better relevance
in terms of learning content. Besides, it provides employees the flexibility
they need to fit corporate learning into their busy lives.
In Conclusion
While there’s a lot that’s often
spoken about employee engagement, the topic is such that the more it’s
discussed, the better organizations will be able to build an empowering
learning culture. Moreover, given that the work culture we knew from the pre-Covid
times is unlikely to return anytime soon, it is all the more imperative for
L&D to focus on a robust employee engagement strategy for a thriving
workforce that aligns itself with organizational goals.
Amit Gautam