The role of employee engagement in a culture of learning

Building a learning culture at your organization is vital to ensure your employees deliver quality work on time and within budget. With a learning culture, employees can also apply their creativity and innovation to help keep up with competitors in an ever-evolving business landscape.

However, creating a culture of learning can be challenging, particularly if employees are disengaged, as 85% currently are, globally. Disengaged employees typically lack the motivation and drive to proactively learn, meaning they’re less likely to make the most of L&D programs and retain information.

So, how exactly do you engage employees and build a learning culture? We’ll analyze the importance of building a culture of learning via your employee engagement strategy, including actionable tips to engage employees.  

For a deeper dive, check out our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs.

Defining employee engagement and culture of learning

Employee engagement and a culture of learning feed into one another, contributing massively to the overall success of your business. Without one, the other cannot thrive.

Employee engagement simply means how invested employees are in both their roles and the success of the business. Engaged employees want their team to succeed and understand that their work makes a difference, which encourages them to develop and upskill. They’re more likely to be productive, efficient, and innovative, and less likely to seek employment elsewhere.

A culture of learning develops when employees proactively look for opportunities to learn and develop their skills and knowledge. Naturally, the more employees learn, the more likely they are to perform in their roles. A learning culture also encourages collaboration, teamwork, and communication, thereby enhancing your organizational culture and increasing employee engagement.

The importance of employee engagement in a learning culture

Employee engagement and a learning culture go hand in hand. It’s almost impossible to have one without the other. If employees aren’t engaged, you cannot foster a learning culture because disengaged employees don’t have a learning mindset. On the other hand, becoming engaged encourages employees to adopt a learning mindset, which helps them proactively seek development opportunities.

When employees are engaged, it can improve the following areas, which all help foster a strong learning culture:

• Motivation
• Job satisfaction
• Performance
• Efficiency
• Innovation
• Creativity
• Problem-solving
• Adaptability

Further, employee development and upskilling allow your organization to promote from within more often, which increases retention and prevents lengthy and expensive recruitment processes. Engaged employees can also do wonders for customer retention.

For more information, check out our blog on why employee engagement is important for improving customer retention.

The consequences of a poor learning culture

Just like plenty of positives come from having a strong learning culture, many negatives come from a poor learning culture. In fact, a poor employee engagement culture can actively harm your business. For example, a report from Breathe HR found that poor workplace culture costs the economy £20.2 billion a year.

As well as the financial impacts, lack of engagement may also impact your business in the following ways:

• Greater skills gaps
• Absenteeism
• High employee turnover
• Limited innovation
• Inefficient ways of working
• Lack of productivity
• Inability to recruit top industry talent
• Reduced adaptability or even resistance to change
• Poor reputation
• Poor employee development 
• Poor job satisfaction

How to improve engagement and create a culture of learning

Your business doesn’t need to reinvent itself to boost company culture and employee engagement. There are plenty of ways to improve engagement that your business can quickly and affordably implement.

Your leadership team plays a crucial role. Without leading by example, how can they expect their employees to engage? Leaders should demonstrate how individuals can make a difference and ensure open, honest, and regular communication. 

Additionally, leaders must be prepared to invest. This includes offering access to learning technology and tools (such as a learning management system to streamline the process) as well as providing learning resources and ensuring employees have enough time to learn. Further, encouraging continuous professional development will emphasize that learning doesn’t need to be assigned. Rather, it can be autonomous and self-directed.

Rewards and recognition are another way to improve engagement. This doesn’t always mean monetary rewards, either. Shout-outs and gamification are great ways to engage employees in learning without significant investment. Similarly, collaborative learning not only improves engagement but also boosts teamwork and communication.

How to measure employee engagement

Offering employees the tools, resources, and time they need to improve engagement is one thing, but it’s also important to measure engagement so you know your strategy is effective. To measure employee engagement and identify what’s working and what’s not, explore the following tips:

• Learning analytics and data, which is easy to pull and comprehensive if your organization uses an LMS
• Surveys and questionnaires, which can be anonymized to encourage honesty
• 1:1s and reviews, to encourage direct feedback on individual experiences
• Individual performances and targets
• The overall performance of the business since implementing changes
• Absenteeism rates
• Employee turnover rates
• Customer feedback

To learn more, read our blog on how to measure employee engagement. 

Inspired to boost engagement? Download our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs, to get started! Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.