Hi,

I am looking for creative ways you (or colleagues you know) have used learning strategies in your company to impact employee retention.

For instance, a few I have used are: holding a learning "open house", book clubs, job shadowing programs, lunch and learns, and employee-facilitated training (on their hobbies or passions).

1) What did you do?
2) Were you able to quantify (empirically or anecdotally) that it helped with retention)?

I look forward to hearing your responses!

Thanks!
Dave

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dave M,

Well, you know what they say -- People don't leave companies, they leave managers. Do you have leadership development and are the people in management positions held accountable to actually apply the things they learn?

Absolutely, I totally agree that the #1 reason people leave a company is the relationship they have with their direct manager. Management development is important.

Piggy backing on the idea of a free-agent learner, people will be more willing to stay with a company that they can grow and develop with over moving to a competitor for more pay. I am not just talking about career progression, but personal growth. There are a lot of creative, low-cost ways to introduce personal [or professional] development within a company, which says to an employee, we value you.
I have seen this done in companies and people get personally excited and involved by opportunities to learn and stretch, even if it isn't job related. This one company was named a "best place to work". I remember once I loaded a bunch of books out of my office and took them around like a book-mobile and checked them out to people.
So, I am wondering what you all have done, or have seen done, that creates encourages an atmosphere of personal and professional development, which may impact retention.

Hi Dave

I'm not sure about innovative and creative ways of using learning strategies to counter retention issues, but I did instigate a management development programme and overhaul the orientation programme specifically to improve staff retention.

I conducted a very detailed investigation in to why staff were leaving. I spent a lot of time building relations with the Unions in order to get them on board and so endorse the need for their members to be very honest with me in my investigations.

The 2 biggest root causes for the veru high attrition rates were (1) poor line manager clarity about their roles and associated poor line management skills, particularly performance management and communications. The second contributor was the recruitment process and orientation programme. The recruitment process mis represented the nature of the front line jobs, and orientation did very little to support new staff members.

I had very specific data from over 100 interviews and a survey of almost 500 personnel to build the case for the 'fix' - a very targetted management development programme and overhauled orientation programme.

These programmes were designed around accelerated learning principles for maximum impact and minimum disruption to operations.

Attrition rates dropped by over half as a result.

Best wishes,

Martin

Hi Dave - what I'm saying is that IS what improves employee retention. I'm saying - expend your creative energies on an amazing leadership development program and accountability initiatives. Then, these amazing leaders/managers you've helped develop can (should) turn around and develop their employees in creative, innovative ways.

Bookmobiles and other creative learning stuff is fine, but that, ultimately, is not what retains employees. Good leaders encourage development and retention. ...which is why I asked -- do you have an amazing leadership program, and are those folks held accountable for applying the things they learn?