Combatting the great resignation with Learning to retain staff
Sarah Mian, Head of Learning Content at The Access Group spoke at Learning Technologies about employee resignation rates in the UK and what is motivating staff in the workplace in a post-pandemic world. She explores how learning and development opportunities and technology can help to improve employee retention and drive greater business outcomes.
The working landscape has changed irrevocably post-pandemic, but the last few years have brought about ongoing disruption in other ways too, whether it’s conflict, economic challenges or the environmental crisis. To adapt to emerging challenges, organisations have learnt to be ready for anything, and become truly agile.
With disruption, comes impact. One of these is the Great Resignation or the Great Attrition. The UK quit rate is at an all-time high and with that comes a subsequent skills shortage and new hire challenges which brings about economic impacts for businesses. However, taking time to look at why people quit can reveal opportunities to combat resignation rates and improve employee engagement and retention.
The business impact of high employee turnover
High staff turnover can be costly for any business. Did you know, the cost of hiring is around two times an employee’s annual salary, while the cost of onboarding is around 16%? On top of this, organisations face delayed revenue and productivity with having to hire new employees as a result of poor employee retention rates.
But there’s another impact to consider, and that’s the people in your organisation. The people left behind when someone leaves are likely having to pick up more work and can end up feeling more stressed. These employees are also more likely to leave, putting organisations into a spiral of decline.
We can only work out how to address this if we understand why people quit.
What are employees looking for in their work and employer?
Recent research by McKinsey found some starkly different views from employers and employees as to why people quit. Employers thought it was about pay or the ability to work remotely. But actually, employees said it was about being valued - by your organisation and your manager - and having teammates you could trust along with a sense of belonging and having flexibility to their work.
Post-pandemic, people are increasingly questioning what they want from their work lives and employees are asking for more. They are looking for relational, rather than just the transactional elements, of a job and employer; they want to feel valued, connected and have opportunities to grow both professionally and personally.
Interestingly, McKinsey research showed that 36% of people left with no job to go to. This may seem high, but in this buoyant job market, that’s now possible to do. People are continuing to ask what is meaningful to them in their work – if they’re going to spend so much of their time working, does it matter to them?
Your organisation’s approach to learning and development needs to reflect this shift but where do learning and development (L&D) teams start?
4 key things to consider when designing a people-focussed learning strategy
1. The power of the human
We can start with a more human-centred approach to the design of our learning. Getting to know your learner is vital; tapping into their motivations and learning about what they care about. When someone really cares about something, they will approach it with energy, enthusiasm, focus and curiosity. If you can harness that energy, that is where the power lies; not in the system you use, but in the human who uses it.
However, instead we often end up stifling our people with technology that feels clunky and multiple systems that don’t all operate together, putting them off completely and creating more stress rather than removing it. The process of using the tech feels cold and impersonal.
If we think about your first day at a new job in a physical workplace for example, you’ll likely have your screens set up how you want them, your chair at the right height, a picture on the desk and your snack box - it’s personal to you and what you want and need. We now need to consider how we can personalise our virtual workspaces too - with all of the things you need day-to-day, and delivered the way you want it.
Then with humanising our learning technology, we need to consider how our learning is delivered – whether that’s through mobile, bite-sized content or video for example. The breadth and standard of learning content we provide as employers reflects the value we place on our employees, their time and what they want out of their learning. Even if it’s compliance training like information security for example, or top-down learning, if you make it meaningful and more specific to your organisation and learners, we know that people engage with it more, get more value and are more likely to remember it.
2. The power of the community
Whilst the new working landscape has created more flexibility for many of us, it’s also raised challenges for employers around disengagement, isolation and loneliness of employees. People don’t leave organisations where they feel a sense of community, so the more we can foster communities and create social virtual environments for our people, the stickier our organisations become. The technology we use and invest in needs to facilitate this; to allow us to create connections, have conversations and harness the energy of those communities.
We know that people learn better from people. According to Richard Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning, people learn better when they believe they’re involved in the conversation, even if they’re not. The knowledge is in the room is an apt statement here. If we empower our people to become content creators and share their knowledge, then we harness the power of the talent we already have. A great way to do this is using video and it’s easy, human and agile, allowing us to respond to change quickly.
If we can create content together, we can also celebrate success together - recognising and rewarding each other, amplifying what we’re doing and creating a ripple effect that filters out, disseminating knowledge and facilitating growth in a more human way.
3. The power of growth
Once we’ve created the security, self-esteem and belonging for our learners, we can support our employees to grow. This is often where organisations can fall down. Growth tends to be manager-led and actually we need to find a way to empower our employees to lead their own development.
To do this we need frameworks for employees to be involved in creating their own goals and objectives, with the ability to drive feedback from individuals, their managers and teams, and measure and shape their own performance.
With a massive 70% of employees feeling under-skilled, it’s more important than ever to utilise skills assessments to identify skills gaps and then develop collaborative pathways for employees to support their development with a blended approach to learning. From connecting people with coaching and mentoring, internally or externally, and identifying talent internally that can help support and mentor new employees, helping you to develop your future talent pool and unlocking opportunities for internal mobility and succession planning.
All of this can be done on a learning and career development system. By implementing a continuous cycle of growth, employees are less likely to leave, they’ll be more engaged and we’ll begin to close the skills gaps.
4. The power of data
How could we possible know which direction our learning needs to take in this constantly changing environment without the data? Data allows us to test, iterate and improve. In our reimagined workspace, we need as much information about our workforce as possible and in a holistic and integrated way.
This benefits our people too. Employees want more of what they care about, so the bigger view you can have of your employees, the more personalised you can make their learning experience.
As a busy learning and development professional, I want to see this information in one place, at the same time. I want to see what content is used the most, measure engagement levels and test and tweak what works best for my learners and measure the impact.
How can technology help to engage and retain employees?
The great resignation can become the great attraction by utilising technology to harness the power of humans, community, growth and data within your organisation.
7 ways integrated technology can support your learning and development strategies:
- Develop a greater employee experience: Make employees feel welcome with the ability to personalise their new virtual working environments and work how they want to, in the flow and on-the-go.
- Provide meaningful learning content that matters: Curated and personalised for the specific needs, skills and learning style of your people.
- Leverage technology to enable employees to connect with others across your organisation: Facilitate social connection and conversations that helps people share and spread knowledge, and recognise and reward success.
- Develop frameworks to help employees to take charge of their own development: Give them the ability to set and measure their own goals and objectives and track their performance.
- Provide clear pathways for employees to grow and develop: Focusing on the skills they want and the skills your organisation needs, along with coaching and mentoring.
- Connect employees with opportunities within the organisation: This will help with identifying and developing future talent.
- Analyse your people data holistically: Get the insights you need to test and tweak your learning and development approaches and measure your impact.
At The Access Group, we provide a range of digital learning solutions that can be tailored to your business - including a dedicated LMS, over 1000 specialised eLearning courses, career development learning systems and gamified learning solutions.
Get in touch to speak to one of our digital learning experts to find out how our eLearning software can help drive employee engagement, performance, compliance and experience.
