Comms & Engagement – Let’s look at the evidence!

As we approach 2020 and the end of the tennies, we’ve decided to take stock of the more recent statistical and anecdotal changes across the enterprise people ecosystem. To reflect on how we’ve improved the function as technology has sophisticated and matured and how it has or has not had the impact we’ve hoped for on the working lives of employees. The tennies was a decade where dusty HR systems gave way to centralized management systems with email accessibility, which inevitably buckled with HR CRM and the employee application landscape emerged. Now enterprise people leaders have an abundance of choice on how best to align, engage, access or interact with their employees

So let’s take a look into if all this choice has resulted in all that much performative improvement!

 

Employee Engagement

 

in 2019, employee loyalty is decreasing: 43% of workers would be willing to leave their companies for a 10% salary increase, and weak company cultures are to blame! We found that less than one-third of people believe they have a strong company culture, which is something companies can really work on improving by implementing some quick actions!

Another issue comes with leadership teams: often cited as lacking self-awareness. In fact, while 39% of managers strongly agree that management within their organization is transparent, only 22% of employees feel the same way.

 

 

Last but not least: employees aren’t getting the recognition they deserve. Only a third of workers received recognition the last time they went the extra mile at work and just a quarter feel highly valued at work. This doesn’t look good! Providing recognition for excellent work is one of the best things an organization can do to maintain employee engagement.

Studies have linked employee recognition programs to everything from customer satisfaction, a belief in core values, and even employee retention. In the 2018 Employee Recognition Report, we found that employees who receive frequent recognition rate their enthusiasm for reapplying for their job 32% higher than workers who aren’t well-recognized! Efforts have remained stagnant though since 2017, which sounds terrible (and it is), but it can actually mean there’s a lot of room to grow in these terms.

 

But what about Frontline EE Levels?

 

Well, the cost of failing to engage your frontline is well documented. A disengaged frontline leads to: 

• 37% higher absenteeism.
• 18% lower productivity.
• 15% lower profitability.

There is a clear disparity between the value offered by engaged frontline employees and the lack of channels to engage them. The challenge for enterprises here is to implement the appropriate infrastructure to outperform the other 89% of companies primarily competing on the basis of customer experience!

One of the main reasons frontline employees leave is because they don’t feel valued or aren’t engaged in their organization’s culture. There are over 2 billion frontline employees acting as the link between their business and its customers, however, 85% of them feel they are left out of the loop. And leadership teams, it seems, are aware of this problem, with a recent survey by The Harvard Business Review revealing that 78% of executives believe that connecting and empowering frontline employees is critical to their overall success. 

 

L&D

 

2019 has also been the breakout year for talent development. As the modern workplace evolves, we see an imminent shift in the power, focus, and influence of professionals with L&D responsibilities!

In fact, talent developers are now able to shift focus to have an even bigger impact on the business. Executives are increasingly looking to talent developers to support the business in strategic workforce planning, including attracting and retaining talent, and ensuring their people have the right skills for today and tomorrow.

Enough with the words though, let’s make some numbers talk!

Looking at the 3rd LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, we’ve found out that, compared to three years ago, 59% of talent developers spend more of their budget on online learning and that 73% of talent developers say they use externally created content to train employees, whereas 85% of talent developers say they use internally created content to train employees.

Most importantly, the 82% report their executives actively support employee engagement in professional learning. By now, we know how important it is for employees to feel cared for by managers, so that figure really is reassuring! 

 

 

All of the above means that for the first time, professionals with L&D responsibilities have the budgets, teams, and executive buy-in to expand their focus beyond day-to-day challenges and this is why they’re focusing on closing skills gaps that are vital to staying competitive. They are doing this also because this is the best way to demonstrate the value of learning programs! In fact, they believe that closing skills gaps is the best way to demonstrate the value of learning programs. 

But how do talent developers demonstrate the success of L&D programs? Here are some important highlights:

• 67% of the respondents think that closing known skills gaps within the organization is vital
• 61% values an increase in EE with learning resources as the most important action
• 65% believes the focus needs to be on helping employees gain the skills needed to remain competitive
• 61% states that retaining top talent within the organization is tied to efficient L&D resources

 

Gamification

 

The interest in gamification seems to be constant. A simple search online comes up with 11 million pages with published content on gamification in business, statistics, and gamification studies. But does it work? Is employee gamification worth the publicity? In 2018, the answer was yes.

So what about 2019? TalentLMS turned to almost 900 employees and asked whether they had noticed any gamification elements in an app or software they use at work. Here’s what they found:

Employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%) and happier (88%) at work. 43% of them haven’t noticed any gamification elements at work and 33% would like more game-like features in their employee training software. Has the time to invest in Gamification tools finally come? 

If you’re thinking about it but still not convinced, just know that 61% of the respondents receive training with gamification and 83% of those who receive gamified training feel motivated, while 61% of those who receive non-gamified training feel bored and unproductive. Also, 89% believe they’d be more productive if their work was more gamified!!! Looks like these numbers speak for themselves. 

 

 

Let’s now put these figures a little bit more into context by taking a quick look at how the market appetite looks like.

The gamification market size in 2018 had a global value of $6.8 billion and is predicted to register an impressive growth of 32%, reaching $40 billion by 2024: The corporate sector worldwide will be the biggest buyer of game-based learning solutions with an expected Annual Growth Rate of  54% from 2018 to 2023. But what are organizations specifically looking to buy? Delivery platforms (45%), custom development services (43%), and packaged retail educational games (36.5%).

When evaluating all of these, keep in mind that company gamification training features are said to increase by 60% the level of employee engagement and enhance productivity by up to 50%!

Also – we’re already into the Generation-Z moment, which is something that needs to be taken into account: 75% of the global workforce by 2025 will be made up of millennials – a generation that grew up on computers and video games. Hence, gamification in the workplace will find a wider appeal to millennial employees! 

 

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Our hope is that people departments can cherry-pick pieces of our collation of data here to inform strategy, method, content or approach as we enter 2020, and hey if you’re still wondering how best to approach some of these challenges… Well, you can say hey to us! – hey@wearebeem.com

 

 

Resources:

• Gallup Research on EE
• TinyPulse EE Report
• 3rd LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report
• Harvard Business Review Analytics Survey
• Talent LMS research