What do people, businesses, and tomato plants all have in common?
They prefer growth to stagnation.
Binge-watching and doom-scrolling are fine for a night or for a weekend (or during a 2+ year pandemic). But inevitably, talented people feel the pull of their recipe books, exercise routines, creative projects, and social groups.
It’s the same with work: Stagnation is the enemy. It leads to burnout, attrition, and sharp drops in employee engagement. And when that happens, people start to look elsewhere for growth. The latest research tells us that between 44% and 65% of employees are looking for a new job. Right now.
That’s a lot of stagnation. And it’s only through the opposite of stagnation, employee development, that businesses can reinvigorate and retain their best people. These principles will help:
Realize that learning and growth initiatives are critical and invest accordingly
94% of employees would stay with their organization longer if they were offered more learning opportunities, and 80% highly value learning opportunities when they’re evaluating new roles. This means that prioritizing learning, upskilling, and growth won’t just help you with employee retention—it will help you attract top talent as well.
Offer more robust employee development, including social and self-directed learning
Let’s face it: The average workplace training programs are uninspiring. They’re often made up of canned videos and quizzes that make learning feel like something you have to do rather than something you get to do. Worse still, employees often interact with these programs during onboarding, which is a new hire’s first in-depth experience with company culture. It’s a bad first impression.
Companies that attract and retain great talent use learning as a competitive advantage. They offer robust development opportunities focused on employee growth. And they make their learning engaging to stimulate the psychological circuits of mastery, autonomy, and social belonging.
Social learning creates environments where team members can collaborate, share knowledge, contribute user-generated content, and show off their accomplishments. And best of all, it gets your learners inspiring each other, creating a virtuous cycle of mentoring, growth, and engagement.
People also want to learn on their own in ways that are more unstructured and exploratory. Think about the recommendation algorithms of Netflix, Spotify, and Tiktok: These AI-powered tools create moments of discovery when they recommend content they think you’ll enjoy. Learning can work the same way, and a great LMS will serve learners content that helps them reach their full potential and unlock new skills.
Offer content for personal growth in addition to professional development
Personal development improves employee productivity and satisfaction. After all, no one leaves a job that’s making them a better person.
So maybe your web developer doesn’t need better public speaking skills to excel in their role. But those soft skills could help them excel in life—perhaps by relieving stress and making them excited to give a wedding speech instead of terrified. And who knows? That developer may end up becoming your next Solutions Manager, saving you up to 6x on hiring externally. In this way, employee development can build bench strength: their career path is the organization’s succession planning.
And from the employee growth side, imagine learning personal skills that also contribute to your career development. What could make learning more of a get to do than that?
The wrap up
No one wants to feel like they’re stagnant at work. Both current and prospective employees need high-value growth opportunities. That means building a company culture of learning. And that learning needs to be engaging, leverage social and self-directed paradigms (for both personal growth and professional development), and be made up of quality content that’s stimulating and valuable.
It’s a lot to consider. And it’s a lot of content to source or produce.
The right LMS can make employee development easy. Docebo Learning Suite has everything you need to build a culture of learning and growth, improving productivity, retention, and revenue.
And with Docebo Content, you can access the world’s best e-learning content, consolidated from hundreds of providers, covering thousands of the most relevant, in-demand personal and professional skills. It’s that easy. So jumpstart employee development and give it a try.
