Research indicates it is engaged employees who are likely to be the innovators, driving growth and revenue for their companies, which means a lack of engagement costs businesses real money.
Cultivating those leaders
Research also indicates a correlation between talent development and employee engagement. DecisionWise, a talent management consulting firm, states that “an employee’s perception of internal growth and development opportunities is one of the more important predictors of employee engagement.”
If engaged employees are bottom-line contributors and talent development is positively correlated with employee engagement, you would expect that most organizations promote a culture of learning, and commit necessary resources to create a thriving talent development function. Yet recent research says otherwise.
The big stats
In the 2016 report Building a Culture of Learning: The Foundation of a Successful Organization, key findings include, for one, that only 31 percent of organizations have a strong culture of learning. A culture of learning is one in which employees continuously seek, share and apply new knowledge and skills to improve individual and organizational performance.
However, 71 percent of talent development professionals agree to a high or very high extent that a learning culture results in greater levels of employee engagement. Some other benefits, according to the majority of participants are improved individual and organizational performance, increased ability to effectively respond to change and better ability to retain and compete for talent.
Leveraging the data
It’s time for talent development to drive real strategic impact. For organizations that are serious about competing in the global economy and are interested in attracting the best and brightest employees, building a learning culture and committing appropriate resources to talent development is critical.
Proof is in the results. Organizations that excel at strategically using talent development are recognized annually. These organizations are the benchmark in our annual State of the Industry report. Among key metrics, they offer more learning hours and their employees take advantage of the learning opportunities at higher rates than other organizations. Further, the research report The Value of Learning: Gauging the Business Impact of Organizational Learning Programs shows that learning effectiveness is greater in higher performing organizations.
The bottom line? Talent development is key to creating a world that works better.