Overcoming Employee Engagement Roadblocks With Luke Megarity
Luke Megarity is the president and COO of iTacit, a leading LMS and digital workforce platform. He has helped numerous businesses grow by helping them redefine the relationship between management and staff. His authentic passion for learning and employee satisfaction has earned him the Global Exporter Award as well as the title of EY's Entrepreneur of the Year. Luke's vision for the future is to create innovative workplaces, especially virtual ones, that achieve next-level employee engagement and satisfaction. Today, he's speaking with us about next-gen workforce development and overcoming the tech learning curve.
What do you think is one of the most overlooked employee engagement roadblocks? Can you offer organizations a tip or two to take engagement to the next level?
One of the most overlooked employee engagement roadblocks is the "real" employee experience. I don’t mean employee engagement platforms specifically—a bit biased here, but they’re great! The real roadblock is truly understanding the employee journey and the real challenges every member of staff encounters. Most employees just want to come to work and do a good job—our role as leaders is to not bog them down with bad processes, technology, or politics.
Another thing I can’t repeat enough is that stronger communication in the workplace unlocks engagement opportunities. It’s really the starting point for stronger employee engagement. By that I mean two-way communication that is open and honest.
When that’s done at scale through a technology like iTacit, it could come in the form of a pulse-poll or survey to understand employee feedback. It could even be enabling communication between the same role across locations, or unifying employees with better two-way communications between unrelated teams.
When you start connecting your organization and enabling communication through secure channels, you can then identify trends, opportunities, and pain points for more structured engagement programs and process improvements.
Is there a common misconception that you believe prevents organizations from fully leveraging L&D apps for recruitment and onboarding?
Honestly, I’ve encountered nothing but positivity from HR teams and L&D leaders with respect to apps like iTacit. Of course, it’s taken a lot of hard work, education, and training sessions with potential clients, organizations, and groups of employees. Once organizations really see the true potential of an end-to-end L&D app, they’re usually energized to take full advantage of the range of features.
If there’s one misconception that holds back some organizations, it’s the assumption that there’s a steep learning curve with an L&D app. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. At iTacit, our passion is in making an intuitive User Interface that is comfortable for a wide range of staff. Learning the ins and outs of iTacit is fast and easy for various profiles, including employees who may not have a high degree of digital literacy.
When you have such a dedicated support team behind a platform, like at iTacit, organizations shouldn’t have any concerns about implementation, and leveraging a platform to its maximum. We’re here to help, support, and guide HR teams to get the most out of their platform from recruitment to onboarding, and throughout the employee’s tenure.
What is one of your standout eLearning client success stories?
We’ve been fortunate enough to work in close collaboration with Seaboard. They’re a premier transport group here in Canada. As a 24/7 operation, with a diverse mix of employees, they came to iTacit looking for a solution to meet their training challenges. We worked closely with them to get iTacit in the hands of their drivers and to make sure every employee had easy access to the necessary training materials.
I’m ecstatic to see how they’ve fully embraced digitalization to provide meaningful training for their employees through our platform. iTacit has really allowed Seaboard to reach their employees in their own time. Instead of relying on in-person training sessions, they use eLearning through iTacit to ensure all their drivers and operators are up to date on mandatory industry and compliance training.
It’s been awesome working with Seaboard. Their employees have really appreciated the flexibility that iTacit provides from a training standpoint, and adoption has been widespread throughout the workforce. It’s a true success story on how offering flexibility, autonomy, and accessibility can really benefit employees directly, making daily lives at work that much better.
Is there a recent development project, product launch, or another initiative you’d like our community to know about?
We’ve just launched our frontline channel and contributor community. We call it the Front-Line Feed, and it’s really a specific content channel for articles, news, and guides that relate to employee experience and digital workforce management.
The Front-line Feed focuses on content like articles, guest blogs, expert guides, and how-tos that are aimed toward professionals in roles ranging from Learning and Development to employee engagement. We lean on iTacit’s expertise and large network of thought leaders to drive the channel in categories like company culture, workforce automation, leadership editorials, and case studies.
iTacit is known for being the "everything but the kitchen sink" platform for frontline workers. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing frontline workforces today, and how can leaders make a strong business case for a new employee platform?
It’s a tall order for workforce managers to meet the expectations of frontline workforces. With Gen Z entering the workforce and uncertain, yet exciting, changing #futureofWork trends, these challenges aren’t going anywhere.
The next generation of frontline workers will be more digital than ever. They’ll have grown up with smartphones and tablets. Their lives will be more ingrained with tech, with social media, and with social collaboration than ever before. Organizations that adopt digital workplace technology now will be the ones who will connect best with the next generation of workers.
In terms of adopting a new employee platform, business leaders can make the case through improved retention and employee turnover. We all know recruitment costs money. If businesses can improve the employee experience from day one and improve retention through engagement using a platform like iTacit, the ROI is a no-brainer.
Employee retention soars when there is an increase in employee engagement. Business leaders should harness the power of employee experience platforms to connect staff. They should be using personalized experiences with a mobile-first approach to really speak to the next generation, future-proofing their business for years to come.
Wrapping Up
We'd like to express our gratitude to Luke Megarity for participating in our Thought Leader Q&A. Luke was also featured in our eLearning Trailblazers: Presenters list for being the L&D host with the most and sharing his genuine passion with global eLearning audiences.
