Combat the Great Resignation With Employee Training and Digital Experiences
By Ramesh Ramani, CEO, ExpertusONE
Employee satisfaction is directly tied to employee training. Learning and development directors and managers understand this to be true because they see it play out in everyday workplace operations. This connection, however, may come as a surprise to those in leadership who are not as closely involved in the operations of employee training.
For many, the first thought that comes to mind at the mention of workplace training is a set of mandatory courses that most employees don’t find engaging. But this is an outdated perspective. Employee learning in 2021 is much more than clicking through presentation slides to learn about generalized topics. Workplace learning and training in 2021 are the vehicles through which companies engage with team members, support individual employees’ goals, and transform the way the company operates.
Employee training can solve the problem of high resignation rates among today’s workforce.
Experts have reported over and over again in the last months that employees are leaving their companies in droves, even if they have not lined up another job. This is a significant problem for companies and has led to a shortage of talent. The root cause of the problem is not that employees don’t want to work, it’s that they don’t feel engaged at work. McKinsey calls it “The Great Attrition” as employees leave their places of work to find better opportunities that give them a greater quality of life and more satisfaction at work.
The way employee training will solve this issue of high resignation rates is by engaging employees and cultivating a sense of belonging. Yes, a simple learning and development strategy can go as far as meeting employees’ needs, offering them new career opportunities, and encouraging retention.
This is the best time for companies to invest in their tech stack and choose workplace eLearning technology that encourages engagement and facilitates growth. Outdated legacy LMS systems will not serve employees well at this time because they are cumbersome to work with and do not offer engaging content. Companies must instead invest in digital LMS platforms so that their employees can learn in a way that suits their individual needs and stay engaged with the training initiatives.
Employee training as a solution for disengaged workplaces
The pandemic significantly changed the way we work and, as a result, we are encountering disengaged workplaces. Of course, it is much more challenging to engage with colleagues when teams are partly or wholly remote. Many companies were creative in the way that they cultivated community during the pandemic, hosting happy hours and coffee breaks virtually. This has somewhat ended as companies have adopted more concrete schedules: hybrid or remote work is set as the strategy for the foreseeable future.
This has naturally resulted in disengaged workplaces and the problem has only been magnified by the fact that many companies have a combination of in-office, remote, and hybrid employees working at any given time. Meetings may happen with half of the team in the office and half broadcasting from their homes. Communication could be split between video calls, messaging systems, and emails.
Companies can fill this engagement gap by providing engaging courses and training that give employees something to talk about with their coworkers, no matter where they’re working from. The ExpertusONE platform makes it easy to communicate with fellow course “classmates” by providing integrated video conferencing tools. That way, should two learners want to discuss a point in the course or ask a manager a question, they can do so on the platform. ExpertusONE’s LMS can also integrate with popular workplace apps like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams so that employees can communicate about courses in the applications they already use for other tasks.
Related post: Why a Digital LMS Creates Better Employee Experiences
The best way to facilitate engagement among employees—whether they’re working from home or the office—is to make it accessible. With ExpertusONE, another part of the engagement equation is solved with the interactive elements of the LMS. Content creators can add quizzes, multimedia assets, and polls throughout the course to keep people interested—alongside that existing capacity for communication within the platform.
Employee learning to encourage growth and advancement
Don’t limit your understanding of employee training to simple onboarding courses or HR-related topics. Employee training can be used to help employees manage their productivity, achieve personal and professional goals, and grow in their careers. According to McKinsey’s research, one of the main reasons employees are leaving their companies is because they don’t have a sense of belonging or see a future at their company.
Company leaders can create engaging course material that cultivates company culture and gives employees opportunities for growth and advancement. LMS training tools can be used for more than onboarding courses. Learning and development managers can provide leadership training, stress management courses, or even health and wellness topics that could pertain to remote or hybrid workstyles.
Related post: 5 Employee Training Trends and Why Companies Should Focus on Engagement and Collaboration
For employees who want to advance their careers or move up the corporate ladder in their fields, LMS technology can be a helpful tool. Managers can create clear directives for upskilling so that employees know which certifications or skills need to be attained before being promoted to the next level. ExpertusONE’s LMS uses artificial intelligence to recommend courses to each user based on their unique preferences and needs. As it pertains to career advancement, a user could get recommendations for courses required in their department to move to the next level.
Workplace training as a means to develop a competitive advantage
Healthy competition is part of engagement in the workplace because it encourages employees to pursue their careers by developing existing skill sets and seeking out new ones. An enterprise LMS platform helps companies encourage this healthy competition among employees and, overall, yields a more competitive company.
ExpertusONE’s LMS platform offers tools like gamification to show fellow learners what courses their peers and colleagues are taking. For employees seeking to advance in their careers, this can indicate where they have room for improvement and which courses to take as a next step. A department or company-wide leaderboard shows who has completed which courses, celebrating those learners who prioritize training. And even further, managers can check in on employee compliance and reach out to employees who have not completed their training—all from the app itself.
Related post: Employee Engagement From a Distance: Why Training Is the Foundation for Engagement Success
Yes, employees are leaving companies in droves but there are plenty of ways companies can use technology to fix this problem of The Great Attrition. Employee engagement can be facilitated through digital LMS tools that offer interesting content, collaborative settings, and top-of-the-line technology that keeps employees coming back to upskill and learn more about their fields. This is a critical moment for leaders to optimize their tech tools to cater to the unique needs of employees and help promote overall retention. The key factor in any company’s success at this time is their ability to take care of the whole employee, including both professional and personal goals, so that the employee chooses to stay around for a longer period of time. Corporate learning and development is the solution to these high rates of resignation. If leaders invest in our employees, as they should, companies overall will benefit. When tech stacks are optimized and employees are prioritized, “The Great Attrition” becomes “The Great Attraction.”