Gaining Engagement & Retention

Without active participation with all stakeholders, a safety culture will not evolve and the safety management system will not reach its full potential. 

Engaged workers are invested employees, and they will look out for each other and for the company’s best interests, as employee engagement also shows consideration and care for the staff, which is spread through the company, creating a team atmosphere and providing a positive solution to health and safety concerns.

Businesses are needing new skills at an unprecedented rate as digital disruption spreads to every sector of the economy, but according to recent research by IBM,1 60% of executives say they are struggling to keep their workforce current and relevant.

Learning itself is being disrupted: Digital learning potentially offers a competitive advantage for employers in this new war for skills, as long as they can create the right learning culture.

• But how do you use technology to create a learning culture?
• What are the implications for performance and employee development?
• And what do the employees themselves want?
• These are some of the key questions that a recent white paper seeked to answer.

Key Findings

• The ever-quickening pace of digital transformation means it is critical that UK employers are able to access and keep talent with the right skills at the right time.
• 70% of UK employees surveyed said that learning is essential when choosing where to work, and 98% said it’s key in deciding to stay with their employer.
• 75% of the companies surveyed don’t have a learning culture and two-thirds don’t have a digital learning strategy in place, despite recognizing the benefits.
• 66% of UK HR / HSE / L&D professionals think learning and development is key for improving business performance, but only 33% measure the impact.
• Employees not only want to learn new skills, but more than 60% of those surveyed said they want to take control of how and when they learn.
• There is a disconnect between employees and line managers in the way performance and development is managed.
• While 64% of UK employees understand their company’s purpose, 53% don’t have a clear understanding of how they contribute to company goals.
• Almost half of employees in the UK feel that their organisation doesn’t value development enough to give line managers the tools they need to perform well.
• Digital platforms offer considerable benefits for learning, development and performance, but user adoption is still an issue for the majority of UK companies.
• Adoption can be improved by ease of use, but building a strong relationship between learning, performance and recognition illustrates tangible benefits for employees.

While 64% of UK employees report a clear understanding of their company’s purpose,

53% don’t have a clear understanding of how they contribute to company goals company goals.

How Do Employees Want to Learn?

The way businesses attract and develop talent is crucial to commercial succes, making sure they have the right people, with the necessary skills, working collaboratively in a productive and engaged environment, is a key priority for business leaders and therefore must be top of the agenda for HR / HSE / L&D professionals.

• At a time when most companies are reporting staff shortages and talent gaps, finding and retaining the best people has never been harder
• Many operators need to improve their digital and technical skills, some in order to use company tools and technology effectively, and others to have a better understanding of the sectors they work in.
• Specific job-related skills such as programming, project management and negotiation were also mentioned, as were the desire to have greater knowledge for personal and business advancement. With an eye on their futures, some also look for management and leadership skills.
• ·Employees seem to recognise that the world of work is changing, and their need is not merely to keep up-to-date but also to get ahead.

They want to learn quickly, and their learning needs are varied.

• Their employers must offer a variety of learning methods and content. It might be that some of this is driven by demographics.
• There is much written about the desire of the younger generations who are entering the workforce now, or have done so over recent years, to be constantly learning.
• This is often driven by the changing nature of their roles and the need to constantly be ahead of the curve as jobs are lost to technology, and new ones created.

Employees want information and knowledge as and when they need it

• Rather than purely being influenced by age though, it is more about the changing mindsets of all employees, and the shift in how they consume information that is driving this change.
• In their personal lives, people will search online if they want to get a better understanding of a subject or need to know how to do something.
• These behaviours will be followed through into their work lives, so approaches to learning need to reflect that employees will expect to have access to information and knowledge as and when needed.
• The classroom style approach to learning is clearly no longer their preferred way of up-skilling in the workplace. In fact it was found that 60%of employees want to learn during working time but at their own direction.
• This could be a result of their needing to overcome business challenges in real-time, hence wanting to solve problems as they arise.

Workers like control over when and where they learn

• Of those who opt to learn on their own but during working hours, the majority is also happy to do it in their own time.
• The remainder is happy to learn at times arranged by the company, but they are very much in the minority.
• Some typical responses that illustrate this include: “I like to learn in my own time at my own pace using digital resources” and “self-study with practical exercises.”
• The message is clear. Some workers do still expect their necessary learning to be organised and directed by their employers, but they are very much in the minority.
• The rest want to take responsibility themselves for how and when they learn, and the organisation needs to facilitate this.

Importance of Having a Learning Culture

•  It is seen that the opportunities for learning play a vital part in the attraction and retention of talent.
• Organisations who want to achieve successful and lasting commercial outcomes clearly need to make sure that these opportunities are part of their offering, both during the recruitment phase and once candidates join.
• They need to develop a learning culture that is central to their Employee Value Proposition (EVP), something that not every company is doing.

Promoting learning is key for hiring the best talent

Survey of more than 200 senior HR / HSE / L&D professionals in the UK found some recognition of the importance of learning when recruiting new employees, with 58% saying they always promote the opportunities for learning and developing new skills as part of the EVP and 37% saying they promote it sometimes

As this is so central in a candidate’s decision-making process on whether to accept or reject an offer, it may be that more companies need to do this automatically.

Employees need to take ownership of their own career development

• Research also highlighted another important reason why the approach to learning needs to be part of the employee offering, and that is because of the changing nature of who determines an employee’s career development plan.
• ·When asked who had the responsibility for this plan, the large majority of respondents agreed it was jointly between the employee themselves and their line manager, with the employee having the main ownership. The HR ateam, was found to be the least important contributors.
• This signifies a shift in organisational responsibilities as for many years HR professionals have taken a lead role in overseeing talent management and performance reviews, in conjunction with line managers and employees.
•  It would seem that now the main responsibility for HR / HSE / L&D teams might be to ensure that there is a learning culture in the organisation that will support employees in their growth and development.

Employee engagement is a priority for improving business performance

This was highlighted when HR / HSE / L&D professionals were asked about their main priorities for improving business performance.

These were “to improve employee engagement” and “develop better skills and knowledge.” Better productivity was also mentioned and could certainly be an outcome of improving the other two. In terms of immediate learning requirements, there were a range of answers, with many focused on having the capability for future needs as the business transforms, coping with organisational change and improving digital skills.

Management sees learning as a cost, not an Investment

• A number of the learning requirements identified within the survey also related to improving the learning capability of the organisation.
• Respondents mentioned “consistency of knowledge across the organization” and having “people willing to learn and change their mindset.”
• Some constraints were also articulated such as “lack of budget for providing a personalized learning approach suited to individuals” and “need protected time allocated to formal learning.”
• Overall, survey responses indicated some of the problems facing HR, as evidenced by these comments: “getting management to see learning as an investment and not just a cost” and “approval for time to complete training not seen as a priority despite huge employee turnover.”
• With businesses needing to improve capability and performance to help achieve commercial goals, and almost three quarters of employees believing they need learning to be able to do their jobs better, HR / HSE / L&D professionals need to take the lead in creating a learning culture and making the broad business case for its importance.

Three quarters of UK companies don’t have a learning culture

Current signs are that we still have some way to go. In our research, only 25% said they thought their business had a learning culture, with 16% saying that they didn’t, and/or it wasn’t a priority

The rest (59%) are on the journey but are not there yet. Most businesses now understand the need to embrace digital approaches throughout their organisation. In fact, many of the learning priorities voiced by both HR and employees were related to improving digital capability; however,  only 35% of respondents said that their organisations had a strategy for digital learning.

A further 29% are working on one, but that still leaves just over a third who have no strategy at all.

Two-thirds of UK companies don’t yet have a digital learning strategy in place, despite recognizing the clear benefits of having one.

The culture and tools supporting employee development need to evolve

Employees are taking more responsibility themselves

• For their development and learning. In fact, for many it is the reason they choose to work and stay with their companies, and their line managers need to support them.
• As approaches to employee development are changing, so too does the culture and tools that support them need to evolve.
• The need to embrace both a learning culture and a digital strategy to improve both business performance and employee capability, must be a priority for HR.

The Link Between Learning, Development & Performance

• As already mentioned, in the survey of HR / HSE / L&D professionalprofessionals illustrates that many companies see developing the skills and knowledge of their employees as an important priority to improving business performance.
• 66% of respondents ranked it as either important or very important, compared to 41% who gave the same rank for improving productivity and 34% who gave the same rank for staff retention.

However, there is quite an alarming paradox here, as this reveals that the situation here is unfortunately less than ideal.

Despite such a strong link between learning and development and business performance, only 33% of respondents measure the impact of learning and development on business performance 66% of Conclusion

• In conclusion, we can clearly see that learning and development has a vital role in driving business success at a time when the development of new and relevant skill sets is absolutely critical. HR / HSE / L&D think learning and Developments are key for improving business performance, but only 33% measure the impact on business performance.
• If employers are finding it hard to measure impact at a company level, then how are things working at the employee level when it comes to performance reviews and development plans?

Almost a third of employees think the annual review is ineffective

1.    Despite changing thinking around performance and talent management, it was telling that 32%of employees reported have had no kind of performance or development review in last 12 months.

2.    Of those who have, 32% were still having their development planned as part of a once a year annual performance review.

3.    Unsurprisingly, dissatisfaction was high with 15% of employees feeling that their last appraisal was unfair and 29% feeling that the performance review process their company is running as a whole is unfair or ineffective.

UK workers think their company doesn’t value employee development

4.    It seems that many employees hold their line managers responsible for company failings in performance reviews and development plans.

5.    Only 55 percent felt that their manager had the right skills and approach to help them with learning and development, and 44% felt that their organisation doesn’t value employee development enough to give line managers the tools they need to perform well in their roles.

6.    Consequently, 23% felt personal development plans and performance reviews were seen to be a tick box process by their manager and disappointingly only 11% felt their manager listened and acted like a coach

Almost half of employees in the UK feel that their organisation doesn’t value development enough to give line managers the tools they need to perform well

Over a third of workers feel their skills aren’t being used

• The end result of this is that despite reporting a strong desire to learn new skills (particularly digital skills), over a third of employees feel that their existing skills aren’t being used properly by their company.
• A worrying trend when you consider that companies already recognise how closely skills and knowledge are tied to business performance.
• It is clear that there are some fundamental aspects of performance management and employee development that need to be addressed for a shift towards digital learning to be truly effective.
• This should rightly worry many companies, there are also some clear signals from employees about how the issues can be fixed particularly when it comes to focus, feedback and support.

Less than a quarter of employees value the annual performance review

• Only 23% of employees want the traditional annual performance review to continue, with 52% wanting a process that reviews their performance more than once a year and 25% not seeing any value in performance reviews at all.
• Of those employees who had been surprised by their line manager’s assessment of their performance, 57%expressed a preference for regular check ins and regular feedback.
• Perhaps most important, is that the majority of employees want their line managers to give them a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

How Companies Can Create a Learning Culture

1. So far, we’ve seen that employees are hungry to learn and have clear expectations of how their employer should be helping them acquire new skills, as well as fully utilising the skills they already have.
2. However, they feel they are being let down by line managers and systems and processes that are no longer fit for purpose.
3. At the same time, many organisations are struggling to create a learning culture and the business impact of learning and development is not being adequately measured.

Learning at the speed of business

• This creates a serious situation for many employers at a time when digital transformation is changing business and markets at an exponential rate, and the demand for new skills within organisations has never been higher.
• It’s clear that new thinking is required that puts an emphasis on speed and empowerment, both for employees and their line managers.

Technology is the key enabler for learning and development

• This reveals that the situation here is unfortunately less than ideal. professionals have a key role in developing a learning culture that is reflective of the employee value proposition and makes sure their Companies are positioned with the skills they need for digital transformation.
• Many of the stakeholders identified this, pointing out that learning and development “underpins the progression and changes in the work environment and ensures that people are aware of change and the knowledge to be the best.”

But how should they do this: Enablement via technology and digital learning are a key part of the answer.

Digital learning more cost effective than traditional methods

• If implemented effectively, modern learning management systems (LMSs) can empower employees to manage their own learning, while at the same time help line managers move into the coaching role that businesses need them in.
• There is also a shorter-term cost benefit here with 54% of the HR / HSE / L&D respondents surveyed feeling that digital learning is more cost effective than traditional approaches. However, self-directed employee development will only work when technology works as an enabler rather than a complicating factor.

Two key considerations that all stakeholders should be taking into account here.

• Firstly, making sure that any technology solution is fit for purpose in terms of the learning expectations of their employees, and
• Secondly paying very close attention to user adoption as a key indicator of effectiveness.

60 percent of employees want to learn at their own direction

• ·In terms of being fit for purpose, it is critical to be in step with how employees want to learn. In our survey, 5 out of 6 employees indicated they didn’t want traditional classroom learning, 60% wanted to learn at their own direction and 46% wanted access to a system that allows them to learn at times to suit their lifestyles.
• When asked directly about their learning preferences, comments such as “I like to learn at my own pace using digital resources” were fairly typical.
• While many of the employees surveyed expressed a preference for a laptop as a favoured learning device at work, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are also becoming a natural part of learning because the vast majority of people use them.
• A blended approach to digital learning with any time, any device access would seem to be the most sensible way forward.

5 out of 6 employees don't want classroom learning, 60% want to learn at their own direction and 46% want to learn at times to suit their lifestyles.

Technology is the key enabler for learning and Development

HR / HSE / L&D professionals have a key role in developing a learning culture that is reflective of the employee value proposition and makes sure their companies are positioned with the skills they need for digital transformation.

Many of the respondents to our HR / HSE / L&Dsurvey identified this, pointing out that learning and development “underpins the progression and changes in the work environment and ensures that people are aware of change and the knowledge to be the best.”

But how should they do this: Enablement via technology and digital learning are a key part of the answer.

Value increases user adoption and keeps employees engaged

• Whilst user experience and adoption are both important, it is the value to be gained by employee and employer that should be the main driver of learning.
• Workers believe they need more learning to help them perform their jobs better.
• This boost to performance will ultimately help with their rewards, satisfaction and engagement.
• They are more likely to stay, and their managers better placed to achieve successful commercial results.

However, this role is very different to how things have been in the past.

1. With the development of new skills now being so critical to business and career success, employers want faster learning, employees want self-directed learning and line managers need to be the coaches that get the most out of the organisation’s potential.
2. HR / HSE / L&D professionals need to enable this process by developing a learning culture, introducing appropriate learning technology platforms and keeping a close eye on user adoption.
3. This will improve engagement and therefore help the attraction and retention of key talent, whilst also boosting motivation and productivity to achieve successful business outcomes.

In conclusion: we can clearly see that learning and development has a vital role in driving business success at a time when the development of new and relevant skill sets is absolutely critical.

1. Employee engagement drives performance: by improving retention, customer loyalty, productivity, safety and ultimately, profitability.
2. Engaged employees care: about their organisation and work to contribute towards its success.
3. Employees are less likely to leave: for another job, or take unauthorised leave.
4. They are more likely to work better: faster and more safely. Importantly, they are also more focused on the customer experience, ensuring that customers are happy and profits are maximised.
5. In today’s world of economic uncertainty: engaging employees is critical to ensuring an organisations longevity and profitability.