Aligning Employee & Business Learning Agendas to Increase Engagement

By Samantha Howland
Managing Director, Executive Development

Many employers measure employee engagement to increase productivity. Numerous studies indicate that employees value challenging work and on-going development opportunities. As organizations invest in talent management strategies, they should align their development initiatives with employee engagement agendas. Organizations that connect their learning opportunities with targeted engagement strategies will improve near-term business performance while building a leadership pipeline for the future.

Why Employee Engagement?

In a knowledge economy, where workers contribute ideas and results that cannot easily be measured, business leaders need people who are connected to their jobs such that they go beyond normal expectations. To gain competitive advantage, leaders need to engage workers so they willingly apply discretionary effort to help the organization succeed. Peter Drucker introduced the topic of knowledge-worker productivity. He argued that businesses face a major challenge in gauging, inspiring and measuring the contribution of a generation of workers who no longer perform repetitive, rote tasks.¹ Drucker recognized that knowledge workers themselves, not their supervisors nor their employers, control their contribution levels. Further, in a knowledge based economy, workers must be viewed as a capital asset, not a cost. While costs must be controlled or reduced to increase organizational performance over time, assets must be grown. Thus, knowledge workers require that continuous innovation, learning and teaching be built into their jobs. Continuous attainment of new knowledge, experimentation, reflection and ultimately learning become critical to the work process.

State of Engagement Today

In a recent research study across dozens of major corporations, the Corporate Executive Board attempted to define employee engagement in a way that captured the current goals and efforts of organizations across multiple sectors.² They noted, “Employee engagement is a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or co-workers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply additional discretionary effort to his/her work.”

Many studies have been conducted over the past few years to determine the factors that contribute to employee engagement and the current state of workforce engagement in various geographies, industries and types of organizations. In fact, twelve major research studies uncovered 26 drivers of employee engagement.³ Each study emphasized that the emotional drivers – such as pride in one’s work and a positive interpersonal relationship with one’s boss - had four times greater impact on one’s discretionary work effort than other factors such as pay. While the absence of important factors such as good salaries or benefits can cause dissatisfaction, they are not primary motivators to engagement. Instead, primary motivational factors related to an employee’s sense of achievement, opportunity to contribute and advance and the recognition one received from his/her manager.

Table 1. Overall Employee Engagement Levels
Source: The Conference Board

However, across a range of studies, their research highlighted startling low engagement levels (See Table 1). In a recently published Towers Perrin global study⁴, only 21% of the employees surveyed around the world were found to be engaged in their work, or willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed. 38% were found to be partly to fully disengaged. In contrast, the study also found that employees exhibit optimism about their jobs and have a strong desire to learn and grow. 83% "look for opportunities to develop new knowledge or skills," and 84% "enjoy challenging work that will allow them to learn new skills." However, as the engagement scores show, they are not delivering their full discretionary effort because they do not feel their companies and leaders are meeting their needs and creating the conditions that will sustain engagement. Employees are not offered the learning they desire.

Beyond individual interests, an economic imperative exists for organizations to enable learning, growth and change. Rapid technological change, global competition and unique industry developments demand organizations to change and build new capabilities. Their skilled professionals must continue to hone their skills. To do this workers require learning opportunities. They must also be inspired to gain new knowledge, to experiment with it and reflect on the impact of that effort. If not, they may see their tenure as a risk to their job security in the broader market long-term. Like their organizations, they will fail without the ability to adapt. While most organizations today suffer from large populations of disengaged workers, they can use learning structures to help shift the paradigm of motivation.

Building the Link between the Learning & Engagement Agendas

Often workers have motivation and capacity to learn, yet the structures in which they operate are not conducive to experimentation or reflection. By connecting the portfolio of development opportunities to the motivations and desires of key talent, organizations can connect investments in learning to employee engagement. Consider the following process:

Assess engagement levels. In evaluating engagement metrics, review the level of desire for more learning and challenge. Are talented workers asking for development? Have they highlighted barriers to learning new skills and capabilities? Is the organization ready to address this group through a portfolio of methods to keep the group engaged? Do workers understand where to access development opportunities? Have they engaged in formal and/or informal development plans with their managers? Do they know what level of performance is required to gain access to company sponsored learning options?
Identify future capability requirements for the organization. What capabilities will the organization as a whole require to compete in the future? What skills and behaviors must be demonstrated by leaders? Ensure the corporate strategy includes a roadmap for future capability requirements in order to achieve long-term goals. Build the development curriculum to support the provision of these future needs.
Target critical talent segments. With scarce resources, learning investments must be aligned to strategically important talent groups. Determine who will be strategically important to achieve objectives across the industry over time. Consider what skills, behaviors and competencies these groups must possess in the future. Evaluate the availability of targeted talent groups in the market and the competitive dynamics to attract and retain them. Construct learning objectives and programs to address required competencies that both align to the needs of each group and engage the targeted populations.
Build learning opportunities for key segments that align with employees’ motivations and challenge their interests. Consider the right environment and format for learning with specific groups that align with employees’ motivations. How do targeted groups best learn? Are they available for classroom based experiences? Can they leverage eLearning modules to support skill development and access tips and templates? Do they congregate for key events on an annual cycle that can be leveraged? Also evaluate how new skills, ideas and behaviors can be practiced. Where will the participants have the opportunity to apply, improve and incorporate new capabilities into their work? Enable the connections between development situations and work situations to strengthen the learning muscles. Track associated engagement levels.
Provide opportunities for learners to influence others. Share new wins and publicly identify and learn from mistakes. Foster an experimental mindset as a means to growth.
Treat development as a continuous process. Learning should not be equated to an event or retreat. The learning task is not one to be checked off a list. Rather, development of skills occurs as a cycle. Introduce new knowledge. Provide time and space for experimentation, reflection and feedback. Learning ultimately occurs through experience. Measure impact after that cycle has been fulfilled.

Balance the Development Agenda

Programs designed to deliver technical and job-specific content naturally offer opportunities for employees to engage in learning and to stay current with industry practices or processes. However, as industries evolve, the jobs within them may begin to shift. For example, teaching insurance underwriters how to execute new policy types may not address the changing nature of risk management. Broader organizational and business topics should be incorporated into the learning agenda to instill the critical need for on-going development.

Company sponsored programs should clearly connect strategic, tactical, or technical topics for employees to their near- and long-term relevance within the organization and its industry. Where workers show an interest and motivation to gain knowledge and continue to learn and apply it in the context of their work, the system should support their development. The public support and reward for this desire and curiosity will be noted and likely emulated by others who seek to get ahead or to continue to secure their own jobs. Organizations can highlight the benefits from the learners’ deeper commitment, both in the context of better “on the job” performance, and also in the context as an engaged organizational citizen. Employees should be recognized for their learning.

Theodore Hershberg, a noted scholar of 21st century workforce dynamics, wrote “This rapidly changing economy requires workers who are flexible, adaptable, quick learners, critical thinkers and above all else, problem solvers. And these are precisely the skills our schools are not teaching.”⁵ The inherent skills and abilities required to fulfill knowledge-based roles and deal with the challenges in the workplace are in short supply. Workers who are quick learners, who can think critically and adapt have a competitive advantage are in high demand. Such employees can also serve as role models to inspire others.

The learning process is both evolutionary and iterative. Once engaged in learning, employees often feel compelled to keep learning. This suggests that organizations should find as many methods as possible to enroll workers into the learning cycle. They are likely to remain in that cycle once engaged. It should be noted, though, that learning alone is not enough as a sole source of motivation to do one’s job at the highest level. While the feelings of being challenged and awareness of opportunities to make an impact are key drivers of employee engagement and motivation, these must be balanced with strong internal relationships, connections to other people and dedication to a common goal in order to inspire the strongest possible employee commitment.

In a complex, rapidly changing business environment, successful organizations are those that learn quickly. By applying adaptive planning methods, businesses can identify future capability requirements. Clarifying future competency needs helps to identify strategic talent groups and build a learning agenda. By engaging key talent through the learning process, opportunities emerge for individuals and the organization. By combining the strategic agenda with a learning strategy, companies increase engagement, to influence both near term productivity and long term viability.

DSI works with organizations to design and deliver premier executive development programs linked to long-term strategy objectives. Identifying the differentiating capability set for the future ensures learning programs that support the requisite talent requirements. Our programs engage participants in addressing higher level critical thinking, innovation and strategy development as part of the overall education process. Combining development opportunities with organization building has allowed our clients to launch valuable business initiatives, with the added benefits of higher engagement among those involved.

Notes

¹Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st century (Collins Business, 1999).

² John Gibbons, “Employee Engagement A Review of Current Research and Its Implications” (The Conference Board, 2006).

³ These studies include Richfield (2001), Conference Executive Board (2003), Towers Perrin (2003), Bates (2004), Baumruk (2004), Corporate Leadership Council (2004), Gubman (2004), Drizen (2005), Oakley (2005), Smythe (2005), Towers-UK (2005), Walker (2005); for full references, see “Employee Engagement A Review of Current Research and Its Implications” by John Gibbons.

⁴Study surveying 90,000 employees in 18 countries, focusing on what drives attraction, retention and engagement. Global Workforce Study (Towers Perrin, 2007).

⁵Theodore Hershberg, “The Case for New Standards in Education” (Education Week, December 10, 1997) Vol. XVII, Number 16.

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