From small businesses to the largest blue-chip companies, employee development is an essential business function. Studies have shown that developing employees helps to increase engagement and employee retention, enhance company culture, build a leadership pipeline, and gain a competitive advantage. The larger the company, the greater the need for initiatives that can quickly be deployed at scale. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the world’s leading organizations to deliver immersive learning experiences that enhance employees’ knowledge, skills, and motivation; change behavior; and, ultimately, drive business transformation.
Here are some of the ways that training benefits today’s leading organizations
#1 Training increases engagement and improves employee retention
Employee turnover can be highly disruptive and costly for organizations. The average cost of replacing an employee can range from about one-third of their annual salary to double the salary. And if an employee chooses quiet quitting over leaving, businesses still lose out—a study by Gallup found that disengaged employees cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity.
We worked with a Fortune Global 200 insurance company that was facing challenges with disconnected HR practices that were causing low employee engagement. Many open roles were being filled by new talent from outside the organization, which was inefficient and expensive. The company wanted to promote talent from within by creating cohesive HR systems that combined individual skill development, career progression, performance management, and compensation in a transparent process.
In order to support the transformation of the company’s HR processes, Blueline created a tailored learning solution to help employees apply these new skills and tools. A two-day, team-based learning experience offered a safe environment for thousands of leaders throughout North America to build these skills, helping employees to make the permanent shift into the behaviors needed to create high-performing teams in the company’s unique environment. After the learning experience, leaders felt confident about having career and compensation discussions to ensure the ongoing engagement of their employees. Today, the company is one of Fortune’s top 5 most-admired insurance companies in the world.
Click here to read the full story of a management revolution.
#2 Training supports the growth of company culture
Today’s employees seek a supportive company culture, a shared identity, and a career with purpose and prospects. Organizations are reexamining workforce models, strategies, values, and culture, giving L&D departments a new mandate to facilitate transformation. We worked through this process with a consumer goods company that needed to establish a new vision and mission for a well-loved and long-lived consumer brand. The new mission focused on delivering growth through innovation, acquisitions, and market expansion while maintaining the company’s core values.
Blueline was called in to drive a massive transformation of an entrenched culture by putting the company’s vision, mission, values, and behaviors in the context of each individual’s job function. We created two workshops using a combination of learning visuals and scenario simulations. The first workshop for all employees focused on exploring the company’s vision, values, and behaviors using a learning visual that invited employees to go on a metaphorical journey. The second workshop used a learning visual and simulation to help leaders explore the new leadership standards and ways to reinforce desired behaviors. As a result of the training, leaders’ scores on proficiency with new knowledge and skills jumped from 51% pre-training to 99% post-training, with 91% of leaders stating that they would recommend the program to their peers.
Click here to read the full business leadership transformation story.
#3 Training gives companies a competitive advantage through upskilling
In today’s AI-driven, post-pandemic era, individuals must develop new skills to remain relevant and advance their careers. A 2021 report from Gartner found that a whopping 58% of the workforce will need new skills in order to continue be successful in their current roles. An example of one of the skills that can help employees and organizations advance at scale is the ability to access, analyze, and leverage big data.
Blueline was engaged by a Fortune 300 pharmaceutical company to develop simulations that would improve decision-making by making data more accessible to and usable by everyone in the organization. Blueline developed several business-unit-specific simulations made up of progressively more challenging scenarios. Each scenario was custom crafted to develop the skills and confidence of employees to use data and analytics in response to business questions. By advancing the data skills of all employees, the company was able to elevate its organizational performance and gain a significant competitive advantage over its peers.
Click here to read the full story of how a leading pharma company democratized data.
#4 Training increases leaders’ impact in a disruptive world
The pandemic was one of the most disruptive forces in modern business history. It led to economic and operational uncertainty and fundamentally changed people’s views on where and how they work best. Today, hybrid work is here to stay, but many companies are still struggling to navigate the dynamics of a geographically dispersed workforce.
We helped a Fortune 150 pharmaceutical company prepare their leaders to lead hybrid teams effectively using our ExperienceBUILDERTM digital design and delivery platform to produce two simulations that focused on leading teams and individuals in the hybrid workplace. The simulations dealt with a wide variety of issues, including ways to ensure equality of opportunities and information, preventing proximity bias, and more. Thousands of participants gave the learning experience an average rating of 4.5 out of a potential 5, and the client continues to use the simulations we developed to enhance their hybrid working environment dynamics.
Click here to read the full story of developing hybrid leaders.
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#5 Training helps to build a leadership pipeline
We recently interviewed 20 senior L&D executives from Fortune 500 organizations and multinational companies, many of whom identified a crucial link between coaching, career development, and retention. We saw this play out for a large pharmaceutical company, which sought to enable effective career coaching discussions that were equitable and empowering for all employees, while also developing a strong leadership pipeline.
To facilitate these conversations and more formally track its leadership pipeline, the company implemented technology to assess an individual’s likelihood of success as a leader. They turned to Blueline to design an immersive, scenario-based simulation to help supervisors navigate pre- and post-talent assessment development planning conversations with employees. The virtual, team-based design delivered a powerful experience. Senior leaders could share their wisdom from past experiences, while junior leaders brought a fresh perspective to complex interpersonal situations—conversations that had never happened before. Subsequently, several of these simulations have been translated into 10 languages and are being used by the client globally.
Click here to read about a new global talent assessment process.
See for yourself how effective training can benefit your organization
Listed above are a few of the many ways that training and development benefits an organization. These examples show how creating a culture that promotes continuous learning is crucial for improving employee performance and maximizing business impact and transformation. Investing in employee development attracts and develops high-potential employees and ensures current employees feel useful, supported, and valued.
When employees grow and develop, business follows suit through higher revenue, retention, and innovation. With the help of our synchronous, team-driven, discovery learning method that we’ve rolled out to some of the world’s leading organizations, you too can reap the benefits of a highly skilled and fully engaged workforce. Reach out to our team to learn more about building continuous training and development into the fabric of your organization.
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- Build the business case for immersive learning
- Demonstrate return on learning investment (ROLI)
- Gain buy-in from employees and executives for your learning and development initiatives
It’s your job to create your organization’s vision, and it’s our job to help turn that vision into a blueprint for success.
