You have to go a long way to find any employee truly engaged with their work these days. According to Gallup’s State of the Workplace report released in 2014, only 13 percent of workers feel any sense of engagement with the work they are doing to make a living.
Engaged workers matter because they are the loyal ones who will go the extra mile, offer the innovative idea, and work with passion when needed to meet deadlines and keep a company going. Actively disengaged employees can harm a company, acting out their disgruntlement and unhappiness. Companies despair when they think that the price of engagement may be too high an investment for them to offer during tough and competitive times. But it doesn’t have to be.
One highly effective way you can change the morale and engagement in your workplace is to offer training as part of your employee development activities. Even with a very small budget, you can offer online courses that send the message you believe and value to your employees as you want to tie your employees to you for the future.
The problem with offering training as a motivator for engagement in the past was that it was expensive, difficult to set up, and unable to be customized to what each employee had an interest and aptitude in learning. All that changed with the creation of excellent online courses.
An expert in anything is just a click of a keyboard away. A specialized program is available with a quick search. In today’s training world, the employee can select when they will learn, what they will learn, and the pace they will learn it. A wish for training expressed one morning can be met with that afternoon.
The link between online learning and employee engagement has been charted by industry players like Lynda.com. Their research shows besides learning skills and knowledge, employees studying online also experience a boost of motivation, confidence and positivity, prerequisites to feeling engaged with your work.
By selecting online courses, you can bring your employees face-to-face via a computer screen with some of the world’s foremost experts in a wide-ranging variety of subjects.
Employees feel they are worth something to you when you make investments in them. Online learning is a good platform which to build their renewed engagement.
Do you believe online training can increase employee engagement? Share with us your thoughts and opinions.