How to leverage L&D data to enhance employee retention

Organizations should understand the link between employee development and employee retention. When employees have room to grow and develop, it increases their job satisfaction and creates more career advancement opportunities, thereby reducing turnover.

However, you can improve employee retention further by using L&D data. Using data ensures your organization can create personalized development strategies so employees are more engaged, more productive, and have greater job satisfaction.

With this in mind, we’ll examine how you can use L&D data to enhance employee retention, including the steps your organization can take to use data you likely already collect. 

How does professional development support staff retention?

When businesses invest in the development of their people, it directly improves employee retention. A 2023 study by LinkedIn found that 94% of employees would stay with their employer longer if it invested in their learning and development.

But what are the reasons for this? Does it purely boil down to more opportunities for progression and salary increases? Not quite. While pay rises and bonuses are a big incentive to keep employees on board, there are plenty of other reasons to invest in employee L&D, including:

• Increased employee confidence
• Improved job satisfaction
• Improved productivity and efficiency
• Creating new career progression opportunities
• Helping your organization fill skills gaps
• Ensuring employees feel valued
• Helping employees achieve their professional goals
• Building a culture of learning in your organization

These factors build loyalty to your organization and prevent frustration, anxiety, and burnout. In turn, employees are less likely to seek alternative employment.

What data should you use to understand the effectiveness of your learning and development program?

Creating an effective learning and development program that your employees engage with shouldn’t be a trial-and-error process. Doing this prevents your L&D strategy from being as effective as possible, meaning growth and development stagnate.

Your organization should use L&D data to maximize the effectiveness of employee learning. And the good news is that you likely collate this data already, such as reports you can generate through your learning management system (LMS) and data related to:

• Engagement
• Employee retention
• Learning outcomes
• Assessment scores
• Satisfaction surveys
• KPIs
• Learning support requests
• Review and 121

Depending on the type of learning your employees have focussed on, you may also be able to use data related to customer feedback, sales targets, and revenue.

How can you use this data to improve employee retention?

Data is a valuable resource for improving employee development, which in turn improves employee retention. To do this, consider the following steps.

Collate the relevant data

Collate data as soon as possible using your LMS, employee surveys, performance management tools, and other relevant systems. This type of data is likely something your organization already collects.

Analyze the data

Analyze the data to identify any trends or patterns and gain insight into engagement and training ROI. There will likely be a crossover between engagement, learning outcomes, and employee retention data. Can you use this information to spot areas of improvement or opportunities to increase retention?

Create a personalized employee learning strategy

Use the above insights to create a personalized learning strategy. Personalized development plans at scale are an effective way to develop and upskill your workforce. These plans also ensure employees develop in ways that align with their goals and your overall business goals.

Introduce ways to increase L&D engagement

There are several ways you can increase engagement in your L&D program, including:

• Promoting a culture of continuous learning
• Building development into performance reviews
• Allocating time for L&D into workloads
• Providing learning materials in various formats
• Gamification
• Rewards and recognition

Rewards and recognition are an excellent way to enhance employee retention. For example, a study by Deloitte found that businesses with recognition cultures have 31% lower turnover rates. When used as an incentive to increase employee learning, rewards and recognition can positively impact both employees and your business.

Communicate the benefits of L&D to your workforce

It’s vital to communicate the benefits of learning and development with your employees beyond pay rises and career development. A culture of learning relies on transparency and communication. As such, you should focus on sharing successes and opportunities and offering employees the  resources they need to develop.

Use data to continuously improve L&D

As well as using data to improve your employees’ learning and development strategies, you can also optimize your overall L&D program with data. Continuously assess what works and what doesn’t to make data-driven decisions that will maximize your team's chance of success.

To learn more, check out our blog post featuring five tips for long-term employee retention.

How Go1 helps

At Go1, we can support your business’ learning and development strategy through eLearning courses. We integrate with hundreds of LMS’, so you can use data to continuously refine your employees’ learning and growth. 

Speak to one of our experts today to see how we can help, and download our 5 new thinking habits for a smarter, stronger L&D. Or, book a demo to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.