The two greatest challenges facing corporate Learning functions in 2023, Brandon Hall Group research shows, are upskilling employees at the speed of business and the inability to measure it effectively.

Unfortunately, the two go hand-in-hand. How do you know if you are developing skills to make your workforce future-ready if you can’t prove workers can apply new skills on the job?

That’s why Schoox, a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider, has solutions specifically designed to upskill and reskill employees and measure the results. Schoox can help improve the business impact of employers’ skills development. That’s important because only 10% of organizations believe their Learning function supports demonstration of skill proficiency to a high or very high extent, our research shows.

The benefits of effectively developing new skills — both for new hires and current employees — go far beyond improving their performance and preparing them for new challenges. Skill development attacks two other critical challenges that people function wrestle with: talent retention and engagement.

By making your workforce future-ready, you improve the odds your talent will stick around long enough for you to reap the benefits of having improved their skills. Here are just a few examples of the impact:

• Sense of belonging. When employees can improve their skills and their career opportunities, trust and appreciation for the employer — beyond the paycheck — increases. Your talent is more likely to stay, which makes it easier for you to build a pipeline of skilled workers.
• Job satisfaction. When employees feel supported in enhancing their skills, they’re more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. This leads to higher levels of commitment and discretionary effort, which often leads to greater loyalty, which leads to lower turnover.
• Increased employee productivity and innovation. Skill development improves your employees’ ability to perform effectively and efficiently. Skilled workers are often more confident, innovative and adaptable, enabling them to tackle complex challenges.

• Sense of belonging. When employees can improve their skills and their career opportunities, trust and appreciation for the employer — beyond the paycheck — increases. Your talent is more likely to stay, which makes it easier for you to build a pipeline of skilled workers.
• Job satisfaction. When employees feel supported in enhancing their skills, they’re more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. This leads to higher levels of commitment and discretionary effort, which often leads to greater loyalty, which leads to lower turnover.
• Increased employee productivity and innovation. Skill development improves your employees’ ability to perform effectively and efficiently. Skilled workers are often more confident, innovative and adaptable, enabling them to tackle complex challenges.

• Sense of belonging. When employees can improve their skills and their career opportunities, trust and appreciation for the employer — beyond the paycheck — increases. Your talent is more likely to stay, which makes it easier for you to build a pipeline of skilled workers.
• Job satisfaction. When employees feel supported in enhancing their skills, they’re more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. This leads to higher levels of commitment and discretionary effort, which often leads to greater loyalty, which leads to lower turnover.
• Increased employee productivity and innovation. Skill development improves your employees’ ability to perform effectively and efficiently. Skilled workers are often more confident, innovative and adaptable, enabling them to tackle complex challenges.

• Sense of belonging. When employees can improve their skills and their career opportunities, trust and appreciation for the employer — beyond the paycheck — increases. Your talent is more likely to stay, which makes it easier for you to build a pipeline of skilled workers.
• Job satisfaction. When employees feel supported in enhancing their skills, they’re more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. This leads to higher levels of commitment and discretionary effort, which often leads to greater loyalty, which leads to lower turnover.
• Increased employee productivity and innovation. Skill development improves your employees’ ability to perform effectively and efficiently. Skilled workers are often more confident, innovative and adaptable, enabling them to tackle complex challenges.
• Talent attraction. Organizations that prioritize skill development — and can prove their commitment and success — are more likely to attract the best talent.
• Employee agility. Industries are constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements, market shifts and changing customer preferences. Effective skill development programs help your talent stay current with trends and improve capabilities in alignment with emerging demands.
• Succession planning. As experienced employees retire or move on, you can increase the chances for a smooth transition in key roles by having employees prepared for higher-level roles. Most organizations struggle with their talent pipeline and succession planning — which has gained importance in the wake of The Great Resignation — helps maintain business continuity and minimizes the disruption caused by talent gaps.

Discover how Schoox brings learning and development together.

The post Skill Development Is Your Talent Retention Secret Weapon appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

This is an old saying that is highly relevant to talent retention: “You only get one chance to make a great first impression.”

That is why new-hire onboarding is so important. Onboarding is an employer’s first — and best — chance to connect with new employees in a positive way.

Unfortunately, most organizations are bad at it. A Gallup study found only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding new hires. Brandon Hall Group research shows that 9% of employers rank onboarding as excellent. And 56% are in the early stages of developing onboarding or have no formal process in place.

Schoox, a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider, believes onboarding is perhaps the most important step in retaining talent. Their onboarding solutions make it easier for employers to effectively train employees as soon as they arrive so they can quickly contribute. They’ll also feel ready to do so. This is especially critical in high-turnover, front-line-focused work environments like restaurants, retail and manufacturing. In these verticals, new hires often need to be trained quickly on almost every aspect of their job.

Some companies focus onboarding on initiating new hires to the culture and treat skills training as a separate process. In reality, learning should be the driver of teaching new employees about the culture and at the same time preparing them for success.

Brandon Hall research shows that many organizations are using the following learning approaches during onboarding:

• Experiential learning (81%)
• Formal in-person instructor-led classes (72%)
• Peer-to-peer learning (70%)
• Microlearning (62%)
• Goal setting (61%)
• Coaching/mentoring (48%)
• Assessments (47%)

Many research studies show that the biggest driver of talent retention is creating great employee experiences. That process starts with onboarding. You can make a great first impression or struggle continuously to change a bad one.

If you are one of the many organizations looking to reimagine onboarding, I’ll leave you with a few critical questions to consider:

• Is your onboarding a standalone training event or a sustained journey to proficiency with ongoing support and reinforcement?
• Does your onboarding deliver the message that the organization cares about employees’ skills and career development and will support them in their learning journey?
• Is your onboarding scalable?
• Are you able to capture enough data to assess the impact of onboarding both on individuals and the organization?
• Does your onboarding approach help new hires build a social network of mentors and co-workers?

Watch Schoox’s onDemand webinar “People-First Employee Onboarding” at eLearning Industry.com to learn more!

The post Great Training During Onboarding Drives Talent Retention appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

Today everyone expects the same level of personalized, responsive service with everything they do—including their learning experiences. Fulfilling the need for smarter learning technology in business setting, however, is often considered “easier said than done.” That’s where learning experience platforms (LXPs) enter the picture. 

LXPs are considered the most exciting development in employee learning—and, as a result, are on a fast track to greater popularity among corporations, extended enterprises, and franchise businesses in the next decade. Interest in and demand for LXPs accelerated in 2019, according to Gartner. The LXP market in 2020 was approximately over $508.5 million. The market is expected to surge at a CAGR of 25.3% according to the recent research report.

LXPs are different from learning management systems (LMS.) While an LMS focuses on course administration, learner assessment, and tracking learners’ activities with reports, the purpose of an LXP is to deliver the components of a personalized learner experience through social, collaborative, mobile, and microlearning tools. The systems often utilize machine learning to assess employees’ skills and recommend content.

LXPs are a front-end layer that typically resides on top of an LMS. They integrate with existing internal and external “trusted sources” of knowledge and learning, including LMS and corporate HR systems to present learners with a holistic learning experience. An LXP puts learners at the center of their own professional education experience by tailoring suggestions to their preferences and personalizing all aspects of learning. They also enable L&D teams to be leaner, more agile, and more strategic.

But what if you want both LMS and LXP capabilities in one platform? This is a great question and an ideal goal. One option is to overlay LXP functionality on top of an LMS. This isn’t ideal, however, because there is a fundamental lack of integration between the applications, which means that employees must log into two systems to access the functionality—an outcome they won’t appreciate.

Schoox Delivers Built In LXP Tools

An ideal learning system should deliver the best of both worlds—both administering the L&D program and creating exceptional experiences for learners. Schoox brings the two sides of learning and development together in one platform, thereby, creating a single seamless user experience. 

Here’s a quick look at the capabilities of each and the result from the perfect union of the two. 

Organizations that have already deployed a blended LMS-LXP system are able to easily execute effective employee learning programs that are more experiential and immediate, and that target content for delivery when and where it’s needed. 

These dual-focused learning applications are checking all the boxes of a modern employer learning program—including social, collaborative, mobile, and microlearning. Checkers & Rally’s is a perfect example. 

Checkers & Rally’s Fun, Engaging, and Mobile Microlearning

Checkers & Rally’s learned that teaching the tricks of the trade to its 11,000-strong team members doesn’t always require long lessons. Instead, to learn how to “serve up the perfect fry,” for example, workers simply watch a fun, short video demo on their phones or one of each store’s two iPads. Then they immediately put the new knowledge to work during their shifts. This has made learning more immediate and experiential—and, as a result, more effective. 

The “short video blasts are incredibly popular with our staff,” said Krishawna Henderson, the QSR’s Director of Diversity & Learning Development and manager of its innovative “Crazy Good Learning” program. “The number of employees logging onto the learning platform has doubled year over year, and team members are eager to put into practice what they’ve just learned.”

Learn more about Checkers & Rally’s success and the power of Schoox to support learning programs for front-line workers in our new report, Real-world Learning for Frontline Workers: Top 5 Learning & Development Must-haves for Employees Working on the Go.

The post How Are You Fulfilling Your Employees’ “Moments of Need”? appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

These days, mobile connectivity seems to be a prime necessity for most people. We use our mobile phones to do everything—order dinner, watch our favorite movies, manage finances, and keep in touch with friends. Training should be no exception.

As of 2021, the number of unique mobile internet users stood at 4.32 billion; in other words, over 90% of the global population of internet users utilizes a mobile device to get online. And that’s not all—these numbers are expected to increase significantly as tech-native generations enter the workforce.

According to research from The Center of Generational Kinetics, there are already more millennials currently working than any other generation, while Gen Z is the fastest growing generation in the workforce all around the world. These generations not only prefer mobile options, they’d rather have entirely mobile experiences. With these digitally savvy employees joining the mix, businesses can no longer afford to put off mobile-first strategies across operations, especially learning and development programs.

What Makes a Great Mobile Learning Experience?

In such a digitally connected world, mobile workers arguably have an even greater need for reliable technology for everything they do—especially training. Here are some hallmarks of a strong mobile learning experience:

• Intuitive User Experience: A mobile app is only as good as the experience it provides. For training, businesses should ensure they’re choosing a platform that offers an equally smooth experience via mobile.
• Accessibility: Learners should have training available at their fingertips in moments of need no matter where they perform their jobs. Within a few taps on their phones, they should be able to access content to help them perform their jobs better right as questions present themselves. They should also have access to important information about their progress, user profiles, course completions, and more when out in the field or on the go.
• Microlearning Opportunities: Since people already spend so much time consuming media on their phones, learning through small, bite-sized pieces of content on their smartphones often feels more natural to learners than sitting through hours upon hours of training in-person or on a computer. If training content is delivered in a way that resonates with employees, they’re more likely to engage with it—and most importantly, they’re more likely to recall the information when it’s time to perform their skills in real-time

What Makes the Schoox Mobile App Different?

Not all learning management systems are equal. Some don’t offer a mobile app at all, while others charge a premium for it. Here’s how Schoox is different:

On-the-Job Training

A major benefit of Schoox is the ability to manage and track all kinds of learning within a single platform, including on-the-job training (sometimes called in-person instruction or observational learning). This enables L&D teams to create hybrid learning programs which incorporate both virtual elements, such as videos or online seminars, as well as in-person training and assessments to ensure knowledge retention. The Schoox mobile app is particularly useful for businesses which need to teach their employees physical skills where work actually happens—whether that’s in a kitchen, out at a construction site, or inside a hotel room at a sprawling resort.

Social Collaboration and Gamification Tools

Learners can chat with colleagues, share knowledge with one another, collaborate on group tasks, join private group discussions, and post on the company newsfeed all via the Schoox app. Gamification features like badges, rewards, and leaderboards help foster healthy competition between individuals or teams and encourage continued engagement with learning content. These kinds of features can help foster a greater sense of community and belonging, especially among remote or distributed teams who may not get the chance to connect with colleagues in-person.

Training Program Management

Trainees aren’t the only employees on the frontlines—there are plenty of managers there, too. The Schoox mobile app allows managers to manage training, assign coursework and assessments, track in-person instruction, and more—empowering them with everything they need to stay on top of their employees’ training in the palm of their hands.

A Powerful Mobile App at No Additional Cost

Regardless of age or technology proficiency levels, the bottom line is that most people prefer using mobile devices over desktop computers. That’s why we include the Schoox mobile app at no additional cost, helping businesses ensure all learners have access to training content whenever they need it, through a device they already know how to use.

How Mobile Learning Helped Phillips 66 Lubricants Transform Field Training

For an example of mobile learning in action, consider Phillips 66 Lubricants. As one of the largest finished lubricants suppliers in the U.S., it needed a better way to ensure field marketing and sales representatives have the information they need to sell both its new and existing product lines when out in the field. A team of one at the time, Bill Brown, former Director of Marketing Operations, was looking for an LMS that could help him deliver training materials from corporate to a network of more than 430 distributors in 76 countries, where assigned unit managers can manage training within their own businesses. Most importantly, he had to find a solution that was mobile-ready.

Schoox transformed learning and development at Phillips 66, empowering each part of the company to leverage the LMS to work toward common goals. What was once incomprehensible, password-protected product information in text-heavy powerpoint slides is now a robust library of engaging, bite-sized microlearning opportunities complete with hundreds of courses and content assets—all accessible through whichever mobile device field operators already have on hand.

Want to learn more about how Phillips 66 was able to achieve this stellar mobile learning experience? Check out this case study and others in our report: Real-world Learning for Frontline Workers. 

The post Mobile Learning for Frontline Workforces: Why it Matters and How to Get it Right appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

Clarity for Goals Management 

Many businesses utilize goals in Schoox to rally individuals or teams toward common objectives. Goals can be quantitative, such as sales targets or other numeric quotas; or more qualitative, like “increasing customer satisfaction.” 

Goals are often integral to an employee’s learning and development journey in Schoox, but they may be left abandoned for a number of reasons—like changes to job responsibilities, evolving business needs, or time constraints. We updated how goals are labeled and displayed for more clarity between different goal stages and a better overall user experience. Here’s a rundown of how goals will be labeled within Schoox at various levels of progress:

• Goals with 100% Progress Completed  → Now automatically marked “Completed” 
• Currently labeled “Archived” → Now show a “Completed” status
• Abandoned Goals → Can now be manually set to “Archived” 

Goals previously marked “100% Progress Completed” now are automatically marked as “Completed.”

We also added the ability to select “global settings” on goals to determine the default behavior for all goals, which can either be set for an individual as they move throughout the organization or be applied to all individuals within an organization or sub-unit which hold a particular job or role. This new option can be found in Advanced Settings. 

Higher Quality Feedback on Performance Reviews 

Companies often introduce a calibration stage in performance reviews as a checkpoint to ensure feedback is fair, free of bias, and constructive. Since companies may tie annual compensation increases and bonuses to performance reviews, this step serves as quality control to ensure equitable practices. 

We enhanced workflows in Schoox to allow organizations to implement this crucial step in their performance review processes. Implementing a calibration step enables senior-level management to review feedback and adjust scoring prior to delivering the feedback to an employee and completing the performance review process. 

Administrators may now also tailor the rating scale with behaviorally anchored ratings level descriptions associated with specific performance areas. This helps reviewers provide more consistent ratings that align to organizational expectations and avoid potential misinterpretations or bias of general descriptions. 

Admins and managers can customize ratings scales with behaviorally anchored descriptions.

Streamlined Reporting 

With Schoox Report Builder, customers can easily leverage one of our 110 pre-built reports or customize the fields to create custom reports and access critical information about courses or curricula, scores or training results, individual users, various groups of users, content, and more. With Schoox, L&D teams can easily customize user permissions, compare metrics across different groups, and segment data in a way that makes sense for specific business units. Reports can be recurring, scheduled in advance, or created on an ad-hoc basis.

This quarter, we consolidated scheduled reports and basic reporting functionality into Report Builder so that it’s the “one-stop-shop” reporting area of the Schoox platform. Here L&D professionals, admins, and managers will now find all currently scheduled and new reports, as well as options to run ad-hoc reports. We also improved the backend engine that powers reports, making the function more efficient overall, and introduced a number of smaller enhancements to improve flows and user experiences. 

A view of Report Builder in Schoox.

Microsoft Teams Integration for Live Sessions

Schoox is now integrated with Microsoft Teams. Admins and managers who conduct virtual events via Schoox via may now launch and track events through their Teams accounts. This allows for a better user experience and eliminates any learning curves for users who are familiar with the Microsoft Teams platform. 

Biometric Login on the Schoox Mobile App 

For an additional layer of security when accessing their Schoox account, users can now log into the Schoox mobile app using biometric authentication on any compatible iOS or Android devices. For example, a user might choose to use a fingerprint or face recognition scan rather than typing in their password to log into Schoox on their phones or other mobile devices. 

Schoox is designed for how humans actually learn. We’re always enhancing our platform so organizations and their  employees can get the most value from their knowledge bases to get more done. 

Discover how Schoox can meet your learning needs, schedule a demo!

The post Schoox Quarterly Product Roundup: Performance Module Enhancements, Improved Reporting, Biometric Login Options, and More  appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

While attending the funeral of a transgender woman who had been a victim of violence, the Resource Center advocate recounted this quote from the woman’s eulogy: prejudice rarely survives experience. This poignant message of hope says that engaging people of diverse backgrounds, and sometimes with vehement differences, will one day help us overcome what divides us.

American women were in crisis before the U.S. supreme court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. According to research from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), women lost 12.2 million jobs between February and April 2020, reversing an entire decade of job gains. And in its June 2022 fact sheet on labor statistics, the NWLC reported that, while May marked 17 consecutive months of job growth, women are still down almost one million jobs since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization created even more disparity for women in the workforce by eliminating protection for abortion, resulting in its criminalization, depending on the state. So, how should companies with U.S. operations react? Some would ask, is it wise for companies to comment on such a divisive issue?

We believe companies are responsible for fostering a fair and equitable work environment. As an organization that places the utmost value on supporting our people, Schoox has decided to provide financial assistance to U.S. employees who need to travel to a different state for abortion access. The benefit is available to all employees, including team members who are not enrolled in the company medical plan, and serves to bridge the healthcare gap created by the Dobbs ruling.

Beyond resolving the disparity in the company health plan, Schoox remains committed to the principle of bringing your whole self to work—whatever that looks like. For this reason, we do not shy away from tough topics. We find a way to listen, learn, and engage – with the hope that our shared stories will one day overcome our differences. 

Resources:

Resource Center – Nonprofit providing education and services to the LGBTQIA+ community

National Women’s Law Center – Nonprofit advocating for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights 

The post How Do We Foster a Fair and Equitable Work Environment After the Overturn of Roe v. Wade appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

Training Onboarding

The onboarding process to training is one of the most crucial aspects of the new hire journey, which is why it’s so important for employers to get it right. A positive training onboarding experience sets the tone for an employee’s overall impression of a new employer and encourages continued engagement in learning programs.

Enhancements to the onboarding feature include a redesigned onboarding profile for better navigation and a smoother user experience for learners. Time-sensitive information, such as the number of days or weeks remaining to complete a course, is displayed more prominently so learners can quickly determine their top priorities and complete training on time.

Additionally, admins may now set different academy introduction videos for distinct user groups, enabling L&D teams to customize the first impression and academy login experience for learners, managers, and admins. These updates provide greater flexibility to L&D teams to design more effective introductory and onboarding training programs.

Courses and Curricula

At the heart of any L&D program are the courses and curricula created to increase learner knowledge and skill levels. We’ve simplified this process for L&D professionals while amplifying the effectiveness of courses and curricula for learners.

Schoox now enables admins and managers to automatically reassign and reset the progress of courses and curricula for employees who were previously deactivated within the system. The update is especially convenient for businesses employing temporary, seasonal, or rotating workers.

Admins and managers may now elect to make all lectures hidden or visible to only certain groups of learners, as well as configure notifications about employee course completions by individual course, giving managers greater visibility into employee progress on learning goals.

Courses and curricula are only useful if L&D professionals and training managers can confirm their employees learned the necessary information, so we’ve updated exams to allow questions to be separated into different categories, levels, and topics. Arranging exam questions into different sections makes them more manageable and clearer for learners, and it enables training managers to drill down into specific skill sets or subject areas in an organized way.

On-the-Job Training

On-the-job training (like observational checklists or in-person evaluations) reinforces virtual instruction and ensures knowledge retention among learners. Managers can confirm—through direct observation—whether an employee can perform specific job tasks like standardized opening and closing procedures, assembly line processes, or housekeeping rules. These tasks can be configured to require signoff from the trainee, training manager, or both for completion.

In Schoox, on-the-job training (OJT) tasks can be part of a larger course or curriculum, or independent or “standalone” tasks for special training purposes. With our latest update, admins and managers can now reuse standalone OJT tasks in multiple courses or curricula. A new report for standalone and course-connected OJT tasks displays learner progress for each. And learners have a new homepage gadget that allows them to quickly sign off on any open OJT tasks as soon as they log in to their Schoox academy.

These enhancements expand how L&D teams can use OJT tasks to test knowledge retention and skill levels among employees, and provide a more intuitive user experience for all. Furthermore, the new report ensures L&D teams and managers have insights they need to design OJT tasks that truly help their employees learn the skills they need to perform their jobs well.

Academy Settings

Schoox can be customized to reflect any company’s unique organizational structure, preferences, and brand for a custom digital learning environment known as your business’s “academy.” Academies are typically unique to an individual business or unit, and a single company can have multiple academies for distinct brands, departments, geographies, or sectors. New enhancements give admins and managers greater control over their academy-level settings, to impact all users of the system.

Admins and managers may now elect to hide expired course certificates from user profiles, creating a cleaner user interface that focuses on the information learners need. A new custom non-removable field in user profiles allows managers to edit an employee’s birthday on their behalf as employees often leave this field blank.

We also improved the customer experience for handling deactivated and reactivated users, allowing admins and managers to send automated notifications to reactivated users when they can once again access their academy and all the resources within it. Lastly, we improved authentication for deactivated users, so they are now redirected to their Schoox community profile if they try to log in to the academy or access their certificates. The enhancement makes for a smoother user flow for deactivated and reactivated users—a major plus for businesses which rely on seasonal or temporary workers.

Stay tuned for more as we continue to upgrade the features and functionalities of Schoox to meet the evolving L&D needs of enterprises, extended enterprises, and small to midsize businesses.

See these and other Schoox features in action—schedule a demo with us.

The post Schoox Quarterly Roundup: Improvements to Onboarding, On-the-Job Training and More appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

However, it can be a tricky process. One simple change can affect every single part of an organization.

If a new initiative is to be introduced in your organization, you need to be prepared. Most organizations focus on project management, process management, or some kind of implementation methodology. However, this overlooks one key area – the people affected by the changes.

In this episode of The Learning Xchange, Matthew Brown (Schoox’s VP of Learning and Brand Success) explores the steps organizations need to take to implement change effectively.

Listen to the podcast below or keep reading.

Why learning and development is key to implementing initiatives

The key to implementing a successful new initiative is to have everyone on the same page, aware of the changes, and eager to get involved. That’s where L&D professionals come in. Who else is better placed to understand people and how to drive engagement?

L&D professionals are uniquely equipped to see all areas of an organization and provide support where needed.

How to manage requirements across the organization

One way to start is to get it all down on paper and document the requirements of everyone. What does everyone need for this new implementation to be successful?

Start with the global requirements of the organization. What’s going to apply to anyone and everyone affected by this implementation?

Next, use a department or team-specific approach. Some things will only apply to a small subset of the organization.

You may walk away with multiple lists, but this can help you better understand how changes will affect everyone.

Triage the requirements

Once we have all this documented, the next move is to triage the requirements. This is where you work out which requirements are critical versus which are just nice to have.

When we designate something as critical, it’s vital to document and discuss everything thoroughly. The more specific these conversations are, the better.

Once you get a better understanding of what’s critical, you can reprioritize things and streamline the run-up to the big launch of your company’s initiative.

Engaging people in the initiative

The next stage is all about the people. How do you engage the people in your organization? Who do you need to be engaged in this project?

This is something a lot of places overlook. It’s easy for us to get locked into just identifying the active, core project team – the people who will be directly involved in executing the changes.

While these team members are key, you also need other perspectives.

You need your key decision-makers, those who will help make new decisions and keep the project oriented to its goals. You also need your stakeholders, those who have a stake in the project, either from contributing feedback or other input.

Also, think about those who don’t have process ownership but may be affected by these changes. You can split them up into three different groups:

1. The champions

These are the people in your organization who are advocates of the team or the new changes coming. They’re on board with the coming changes, have enthusiasm, and are willing to support others.

2. The anti-champions

These are the types of employees who have more of a “sit and wait” mindset. They may even openly challenge the ideas and are naturally skeptical.

It’s important to have both representations from champions and anti-champions to get a true slice of your employees’ mindsets.

3. The influencers

Look at where the influence is coming from in the organization and strategically bring these individuals into the fold of the project. These may or may not be reflected in your champions or anti-champion groups, but it’s important to get balanced perspectives.

If you only have champions in your influencer group, the initiative is undermined from the beginning. People will be suspicious of a project that people have only nice things to say about.

You may want to avoid any negativity, but be brave and get those visible anti-champions on the project as well. You may be able to convert them to advocates by the end of the project.

Get feedback

Once you have all the requirements written down, you can circulate them through the entire group to get feedback. The earlier you do this, and the larger the group, the more time you save in the long run.

By getting feedback early on, you’re identifying barriers and obstacles sooner before they negatively impact the project.

Be realistic about the launch of your initiative

The next tip is to be realistic. Sometimes we can all be guilty of delaying a launch because we want it absolutely perfect. The problem is that these delays can mean you miss out on the ideal timing when there’s engagement and momentum.

Instead, you could prioritize and deploy the changes that matter most in phase one. This shows that you are taking action, driving change, and are solving problems. It doesn’t matter if it’s not the whole thing yet, but it gets the ball rolling.

Communicate often

When making any major changes that affect the whole organization, communication is the secret ingredient to success.

Don’t be afraid to communicate often and throughout the entire project. Poor communication can cause even the best implementations to fail.

Even if your team is working hard, you’re hitting all the goals and milestones, you can still trip up if communication isn’t clear.

Introducing a new system or process is a big change, and everyone reacts to change differently. Finishing up your project, launching it, and expecting everyone to get on board straight away is just not realistic.

Instead, you should communicate throughout the build-up to the launch and afterward as well. Everyone will know what to expect then.

You can start communicating openly about this in a few ways.

1. Sow the seeds

One way is to introduce it when you start documenting requirements. You can start to sow the seeds here and build excitement, even if you don’t explain the full scope of the project just yet.

2. Use cascading messages

Make sure you also check in with your leaders at regular intervals. Get them involved from the start and let them see what’s changing. This will help them to better understand the changes, and they can start to instill confidence in the employees.

3. Use direct messaging to all employees

As well as going directly to the leaders, we should also go directly to the employees. Some company cultures make this harder but going to the teams that will be driving the process makes the project much more inclusive.

If you just rely on cascading messages, it can create the wrong impression and perpetuates a strict hierarchy of who gets the exclusive information.

4. Connect feedback to action

The final piece of communication advice is to connect feedback to action. Whenever we receive feedback, we should always approach it with the intention that we will act on it.

Everyone wants to be seen and heard, so when employees give feedback, they need to know that it’s contributing to real action. It shows you’re truly valuing your employees and their opinions, which is one of the quickest ways to build trust and confidence.

Remember to celebrate the success of implementing your initiative!

Finally, it’s also important to remember to celebrate. Sometimes we can be too focused on the work, the processes, and hitting all the timelines and budgets involved with the initiative that we lose sight of the celebration stage.

Celebrating is a clear signal of progress. It’s a way to create a positive connection across the organization and to just have fun. This is where you just let loose with all your thoughts and celebrate the milestones your team has reached.

If we can celebrate all of that, it creates an expectation for people. It shows that we should never stop learning. We should never stop growing and evolving.

The post How to Successfully Implement a New Initiative in the Workplace appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

Creating an effective strategy to develop and retain your employees can have several benefits beyond just the employee. It can also improve the performance and growth of your business.

But first, employers should understand the reasons why employees leave their jobs to begin with.

Most commonly, an employee leaves due to:

• A negative corporate culture
• Not feeling valued
• No room for growth
• Having a bad relationship with their manager

Once you can identify the specific reason an employee leaves, you can begin addressing the issue more effectively.

Following is a list of strategies you can implement to start building a culture where employees feel engaged, motivated, and driven to succeed and grow alongside your business.

Eight strategies to hang on to your employees

1. Treat employees with respect.

Most importantly, show employees that you respect and value what they bring to your organization. As a result, it will motivate them to be as invested in your company’s success as you are.

2. Ask for feedback.

Ask employees why they work at your company and if they feel any improvements should be made. This not only promotes trust, it also gives you the specific information you need to make things right.

3. Provide mentorship.

Mentor your employees regularly to continually build trust. Doing so will help them envision a path to success within your organization.

4. Play fair.

Being just and fair is an essential quality for managers. Showing favoritism or dabbling in office politics will undoubtedly create a negative impact on the entire team.

5. Have their back.

Also important, stand up for your employees whenever the need arises. When employees know they have your support, they can build and solidify trust.

6. Show recognition.

Take time out of your day to acknowledge each of your employee’s achievements. It goes a longer way than you may realize toward boosting morale and productivity.

7. Provide opportunities for growth.

A recent Software Advice article on employee trends found that 49% of small-business employees we surveyed told us they haven’t developed any new skills during the pandemic. In fact, 30% of employees chose learning and development (L&D) opportunities as the most important factors they consider when evaluating a new job after the pandemic.

With this in mind, be sure to provide training activities for employees. They help you better assess their strengths and areas for improvement so you can better develop them.

8. Give them a platform.

Empower employees to present their current projects, performance data, or other activities. As a result, you’ll also increase their confidence, improve their sense of role ownership, and boost productivity.

Getting started

In short, an organization’s culture is an essential factor for employee development and retention. And it begins with leadership.

When leaders visibly demonstrate their commitment to an organization’s mission and values, they empower employees to do the same.

The eight strategies above are only just a small number of other initiatives organizations can take to generate a positive and productive work environment.

To learn why organizations choose Schoox to helps organizations develop a productive, engaged workforce, visit our website.

The post 8 Effective Strategies to Develop (and Keep) Your Employees appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

You feel blindsided. You didn’t know that they were unhappy, or that they were actively seeking other employment opportunities. You’ve just lost one of your best workers. Why?

That’s a great question—and one we’ll answer in this article. We’ll discuss why top-performing workers often leave, and what you can do to prevent “brain drain” at your business. Let’s begin.

Why top-performing employees leave

1. You’re not paying them enough money

Okay, this one is pretty simple to understand. Money isn’t everything, but it is a big thing. If you don’t compensate a top-performing employee appropriately, chances are that they will find another company that will.

Job-hopping is very common in the modern business world, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of their career, an employee can expect to change jobs up to 12-15 times. And this number is even higher for younger workers. Staying at a job for only a year or two is no longer a stigma, people expect it!

If an employee can find a competitor who will give them a better salary, there’s not a lot you can do about that. However, you can take steps to boost employee engagement and ensure that they can always talk about their compensation.

If you make it clear that your employees are free to talk to you about getting raises or bonuses, they’re more likely to come to you before they start looking into a job at another company.

2. You’re not challenging them

Top-performing employees have many traits in common, no matter what industry they may be in. They’re passionate, driven, motivated, and hungry. They always want to learn more and they devour corporate training videos and e-learning materials.

So, what happens when they are no longer challenged by their work? The development of employee skills is important, but if an employee begins to feel inadequately challenged, they may become unmotivated and seek a different job.

Again, this can be solved by having an “open door” policy for employees and regularly asking them about how they feel about their current position. If you start to notice them using social media at work, or if they’re on their phones quite a bit, for example, these could be signs that they don’t have enough to do, or that they’re unengaged and would relish a new challenge, like learning a new skill or earning a promotion.

3. They don’t have a clear path for advancement

One of the most common reasons that top-performing employees leave is that they feel like they’ve “peaked” in your company, and there is no clear way for them to continue up the corporate ladder and earn more responsibilities or compensation.

When an employee feels like their career has plateaued, they’re more likely to become disengaged. As a result, the quality of their work may suffer. Even if they are a top performer, they may not see the point in doing more work than they have to because they won’t be rewarded for it.

This problem is best solved during the onboarding process. When you hire a new employee, you should make their path of advancement quite clear, including details about requirements for earning a promotion, a raise, or additional compensation.

By doing so, you can quickly create a culture where employees understand the value of their hard work and how they will be rewarded for “going the extra mile.” In many cases, simply providing a clear path for advancement is enough to retain your top talent.

Speaking of providing clear paths for advancement, you may also want to consider integrating your LMS with your performance management system.

In a recent Software Advice survey report, 5 E-Learning Trends Shaping the Future of Training, Sr. HR Analysts Brian Westfall and Sierra Rogers found that integrating employee training and performance management software systems and data is having a large impact with significant benefits. For instance, “employees can automatically receive personalized e-learning content based on areas of improvement, while managers can observe if training investments are actually improving employee performance.”

And organizations are catching on. In fact, Gartner indicates that 43% of L&D professionals plan to integrate their LMS with their performance management systems—making it the highest planned future adoption rate of any LMS feature. Definitely something to consider.

4. Your corporate culture needs improvement

Unfortunately, sometimes employees leave because they don’t like your current corporate culture. This is a difficult problem to deal with, because changing corporate culture requires buy-in from C-suite executives and managers. It also may require a change of corporate policy from the ground up.

Still, you should do your best to encourage a more active and engaged corporate culture. You can take steps such as:

• Creating more flexible schedules for employees
• Allowing some employees to work from home
• An “open door” HR policy that lets employees voice their concerns
• Encouraging collaboration between different teams and departments
• Providing a way for anonymous feedback and suggestions from employees
• Implement more transparent management communication policies

Changing your corporate culture is not easy, but it may be the key to retaining your best workers.

Keep your top-performing employees happy and engaged

It’s not always easy to keep your best workers around, and there’s never any guarantee that they’ll stay with your company for the long term. But with these simple tips, it’s easier to understand why they may leave, and take steps to prevent this from happening.

The post Why Top-Performing Employees Leave—And What You Can Do About It appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.