Enhancing employee engagement through strategic learning and development

In today's competitive business landscape, employee engagement is no longer just a buzzword; it's a vital factor that directly influences your organization’s success. That’s why it’s worth your attention.

You’ll often find that learning and development and employee engagement go hand in hand, so if you’re looking for ways to increase employee engagement, this blog is a good place to start.

• Why does employee engagement matter?
• How strategic learning and development enhances employee engagement
• Building effective programs
• Overcoming challenges and measuring success
• Learner engagement is the key to organizational success

Why does employee engagement matter?

Essentially, your employees are what makes your business tick. Without them, your business won’t continue to grow or achieve success. That’s why keeping your employees engaged and onside is critical.

The benefits of enhancing your employee engagement include:

• Improved productivity: Valued, motivated employees are often more productive.

• Enhanced job satisfaction: Higher job satisfaction equals higher employee retention.

• Innovation: Engaged and motivated employees are often more creative and innovative.

• Reduced absenteeism: Your employees will love coming to work if they're engaged.

• Positive culture: A positive organizational culture helps retain top talent and enhance your reputation.

• Financial performance and business growth: All of the above feeds into positive business performance and growth.

41% of employees consider their organization’s career advancement opportunities a very important factor to their job satisfaction.

How strategic learning and development enhances employee engagement

Learning and development is centered around building skills, which has countless benefits for employee engagement and business success.

Enhancing skills and developing new ones contribute to career advancement for employees, making them more engaged as they’re motivated to drive their professional development.

As learning and development progresses, increasing confidence comes with it. Employees will become more comfortable with new tasks and expanding their roles, leading to self-assuredness, job satisfaction and employee engagement.

When employees feel more capable, confident and engaged with their roles, you’ll likely see an uptick in their performance, contributing to business growth. Investing in training is a win-win for your organization.

Learning and development and employee engagement also make your employees more adaptable. New skills bring solutions to problems; employees can draw on a wide and varied skillset to get the job done.

However, one of the biggest contributors to employee engagement is recognition and reward, and learning and development serve to deliver this. You can provide feedback and awards through training, making employees feel satisfied and aware of their strengths and weaknesses to be more engaged in their roles.

Disengaged employees have an 18% lower productivity rate.

Building effective programs

So, now you know that learning and development is the answer to increased employee engagement, how do you go about building an effective program?

First, you’ll need to clearly outline what you want to achieve with your program, whether enhanced employee engagement or upskilling, to fill a skills gap. Lead a goal-setting session, conduct SWOT analyses and consult with the wider team to build clear needs and objectives.

Then, you’ll need to develop content and delivery methods to fill these skills gaps and advance your business towards the learning and development goals. Learner engagement should be front and center at this stage.

Finally, you’ll need to consider assessment, evaluation, feedback mechanisms, and recognition and rewards. This all ensures employees are getting the right feedback and recognition, and you can quantify what effect your program is having.

The beauty of building an effective program is that you can ensure it’s aligned with your organizational goals.

If you don’t have the time, experience or resources to build a program in-house, it’s well worth considering partnering with a digital skills provider who'll do all of the above for you and have the technology to help your teams succeed.

According to 92% of employees, employee training programs that are well-planned have a favorable impact on their level of engagement.

Overcoming challenges and measuring success

With any business initiative, challenges always come up along the way. That can be low lesson completion, unsuccessful outcomes or failure to keep your learners engaged and motivated.

Working with an experienced upskilling partner avoids this. You can lean on their support to ensure your program is tailored to your business needs, you receive dedicated support to address your most common issues and their interactive content always keeps your employees engaged.

On top of that, only a handful of providers use pre- and post-assessment surveys to measure success. While it’s all good rolling out a strategic learning and development plan, you need to make sure it’s actually working and where to make improvements. Qualitative and quantitative surveys and post-lesson feedback to capture and measure the direct business impact of learning.

Learner engagement is the key to organizational success

The bottom line is if your employees are unengaged, your business isn’t likely to develop as well as it could if they are engaged. That’s where learner engagement comes in to solve the puzzle.

If you’d like to find out more about learner engagement, the science behind it and how it impacts your organization, our learner engagement hub has all the answers.