How to Use Online Learning to Grow Employee Engagement

One of the most distressing statistics in recent years is the decline in employee engagement across organizations globally. This trend has been steadily increasing over the last few years. The cause of this decline in engagement is an interesting question. Many popular theories put the blame on everything from increased volatility in the labor market to economic instability. 

There are currently many ways to try to keep employees engaged. Some of these are fairly rudimentary, such as stuffing stockings with small gifts at Christmas, while others are more complex, such as major restructuring of the organizational hierarchy. If you are looking for a fairly quick, low-cost, highly engaging solution that your employees are already familiar with, then employee learning is an ideal solution.

When it comes to utilizing technology in the everyday workplace, there are vast benefits to doing so. One way for organizations to capitalize on this data is through online learning tools like canva education. One of the best ways for companies to engage their employees is through online learning. This article will detail why online learning is an effective way to engage employees. 

Many studies and experiments have shown that employees who invest in their own education and development will be more engaged and create a greater value to the organization. It has been found that 60% of people with a bachelor's degree strongly agree with the statement, "I want to further my professional and personal goals." For those with a master's degree, the statistic jumps to 79%; and for those with degrees as high as a postgraduate degree, 84%. It seems that as education levels increase, employee engagement also increases. 

The whole process of gaining knowledge and continuing to learn is a continuous conversation. Online learning is a great tool like canva education for those with smart phones and iPads and allows you to engage and set goals and track your progress.

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is a measure of the level of commitment and energy employees have towards their work. It refers to the connection between an employee and their work. Employees are not engaged when they show a lack of motivation, a lack of commitment to their company, or a lack of connection to their mission. Engagement can be encouraged by simply connecting with employees, giving them autonomy to do their work, and cultivating a work-life balance. There are a number of ways that employees can document their work for others.

The emotional attachment of the employee for their work and for the company they work in, is known as employee engagement. If they are engaged they will work hard and they will go the extra length for the company.

Employee engagement has to be done consistently to get better productivity in the business. It is all because of engagements within the organization they can know each other and perform the best for the Company.

Employee Performance is an important goal for many companies. The thing is, many of them don’t really know what it is. Employee engagement is the commitment, involvement, and involvement of an employee in their work. Employees are not engaged if they are not internally or externally motivated, uninterested, unmotivated, uninvolved at work, or just disengaged. The best way to increase employee engagement is to give them rewards, showcase the work they do, and give them opportunities to share their work.

Benefits of Employee Engagement:

1. Better Employee Health
2. Lower Absenteeism
3. Higher Employee Retention
4. Greater Employee Loyalty
5. Better Customer Service
6. Higher profits
7. Better work quality
8. Greater Productivity
9. Higher Sales
10. Higher Stock Price

Employee engagement is so important for businesses. It can improve productivity, decrease absenteeism, and improve retention. Which means happy employees means happy customers. It's easy to think of engagement strategies in terms of engagement programs or company culture, but you can also increase employee engagement in your company by showing your employees that you care about them.

Companies with engaged employees are more innovative, productive, profitable, and stay profitable for longer. But, if the employees are not engaged, they will not work effectively and this will in-turn have an adverse effect on the company.

Employees in an organization need to keep up with the latest threats, risks, and data and work according to the applicable rules and regulations. Policy management helps organizations ensure all employees know how to operate and comply with their policies.

Moreover, a less engaged employee means an employee that doesn’t wholeheartedly work for the company and therefore they are more likely to leave the company. This gives rise to another problem and that is employee churn.

Top 5 Reasons why Employees are not engaged:

1. They don’t love the work they do.
2. They do not believe that the work they do is important or valued.
3. They do not feel involved and empowered.
4. Their needs aren’t being met.
5. They don’t feel cared about.

Moreover, the main reason why employees are not engaged is the feeling that they are stuck at one place.

When an employee does the same work without being promoted or progress, they will feel stuck and the work will feel more like a daily chore.

The employee is working hard for you and the growth of your business, and therefore it is your duty that you take care of the growth of your employees. The only way for an employee to grow is by gaining knowledge and learning new skills.

The employee is not doing the job just to help the company grow and make provide, while they are stuck in just that job. Different studies have proved that the main reason why people leave their job is that they feel that their current position does not provide them with growth opportunities.

After recognizing the same, many companies are taking various initiatives to ensure that the employees are engaged. Yet, one of the simplest ways to do so is ongoing education.

As a business owner also you must have to learn and understand different things in an online business workflow. It is not always about employees to gain the skills in regular intervals. You also need to be more engaged with them in order to understand their working approach towards the organization.

How to Use Online Learning to Grow Employee Engagement

1. Talk with your team about what they want to learn:

The most important thing that you should do before providing your employees with online learning is that you should ask them what they wish to learn.

If you make them learn what you want them to learn, this will just result in another disengagement as they will not learn what they are not interested in, and therefore if you are going to provide them with online learning, at least ask them what they want to learn.

This doesn’t mean that they can learn anything. Whatever they learn should be in sync with the company’s objective and the skills and knowledge that they gain should be profitable to your business/company too.

Let’s say you are running an import export business and have store management software or logistics software and the employees are not able to figure out the workflow in the application then you as an owner must develop the training learning culture so that they could understand the tool easily and work with productivity.

Sit with them and finalize what they should learn that can help them and the business grow at the same time. When you talk with them, you will also come to know about their weaknesses and strengths and this is what you can focus on in their online learning courses.

1. Make time for the employee to pursue their online learning:

If you think that you should just provide the employees with online classes and then your work is done, you are very wrong here.

If you are providing your employees with online learning and then you expect them to learn at their homes, you are just turning the blessing into a punishment.

The employees have to maintain a healthy balance between work and home life, and if they are supposed to learn at home, when do you think they will spend time with their family and relax?

As you provide your employees with online learning, you have to provide them with time to learn too. Provide them time in office only so that they can learn. Let’s say your creative lead wants to work more on their design skills to both benefit the business and their own resume: you should be encouraging their progress. 

You may think that this is a loss at your side, but look at the bigger picture here. With the new knowledge and skills learned, your company will have a huge ROI.

Provide them just a few hours every week for their online course and be ready to get a great ROI in return.

1. Change the onboarding material to online material:

When a new hire joins the company, they most likely go under the training program first. They have to learn how your company works and what work they have to do.

The process at most of the companies is a one month training in which they are trained for everything they are going to work on. The onboarding training is a “once and done” training.

The best learning is when we put into practice what we learn or else we tend to forget that thing. The same thing happens here, after the training, the new employee is supposed to put into practice only a portion of what they learned in the training and therefore they are bound to forget some of the information after a few months.

To avoid this, your project scope is to provide the hiring training by online means, or to provide online materials of the hiring training that the employees can refer to after the training so that they can review it anytime.

1. Encourage the employees to create and share their courses:

A healthy learning culture is one where people are not only gaining knowledge, but they are also sharing the knowledge with others.

Teaching is considered as a form of mastery in the subject. If one employee is teaching another employee, the employee that is teaching is now gaining mastery in that subject. The additional benefit here is that if an employee creates a course by themselves, this course can be used to train the replacement of this employee, if they decide to leave the company, or if they are promoted.

Various communication tools can be used to share the courses and knowledge. Moreover, you should create a group of all the employees and you should share motivational and useful blogs every week.

1. Accept A to C Learning Ideas:

For the training that you provide to your employees, you would obviously want to invest in training that is synced with your business strategy, however, it is not always easy to draw a line from point A to point B.

For example: The course that helps in improving the leadership quality or team work is recognized as A to B connection. But what about a course to improve the French or personality of a person. This is considered as A to C connection. It is hard to think about the profit that it will provide the business, however, such training opens the door to many opportunities for the employee and also for your business.

Another A to C connection is exercising. It is very effective for physical and mental benefits. If there is a program to support and encourage workers who want exercise in their daily schedule, the company will get fit and active employees. However, accepting these training programs to be conducted can be difficult for the company.

The company should not accept all the training ideas, but they should at least look at the benefits and they should have an open mind for all the possibilities.

Conclusion:

Online learning is a low cost way of building employee engagement and satisfaction. It holds various benefits for you and your team. It is a pocket-friendly option for your business and your team to grow. Engaged and happy employees are more productive and will help your business in achieving higher profits. Follow the steps mentioned above to use online learning to effectively grow your employee engagement.