How To Train Managers To Achieve Employee Engagement In Corporate eLearning

How To Train Managers To Achieve Employee Engagement In Corporate eLearning
Summary: Managerial positions are highly influential and can potentially contribute to the increase of employee engagement in corporate eLearning. However, there are certain principles you need to follow if you want your managers to be able to engage employees. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to train managers to achieve employee engagement in corporate eLearning.

Best Practices To Train Managers To Achieve Employee Engagement In Corporate eLearning

Employee engagement in corporate eLearning is an issue that has raised considerable concern over the years. Companies are constantly trying to find the perfect recipe to raise their employees’ engagement. However, it is crucial to actually learn what employees need, best practices managers implement to develop employee engagement, as well as important reasons to invest in manager training. BizLibrary designed the free eBook The Definitive Guide To Understanding And Achieving Employee Engagement to educate on proven strategies that help grow employee engagement in corporate eLearning.

Download The Definitive Guide To Employee Engagement by BizLibrary
This comprehensive guide will help you kick off your employee engagement program.

What Employees Need

There are 8 things you should channel your attention to, if you want your employees to feel fulfilled and engaged in their corporate eLearning program.

1. Appreciation
A job well-done should always be appreciated. Not only is it important for employees to feel that their work matters, but you need to let them know that you personally appreciate their contribution and that you’re proud of it.

2. A Voice
It’s important for employees to feel that they’re being heard and that their opinion not only matters, but is a valuable asset to the organization. When employees are continually shut down they’ll begin using their voice elsewhere, like behind leadership’s back.

3. Contribution
Employees want to know that what they’re doing is part of what makes the organization successful. It’s important to show your employees that their contributions are, indeed, moving the needle and that you appreciate it.

4. Feedback
This goes both ways, employees need your feedback so they know where they stand with you, but as a manager, you should be seeking feedback from employees as well. This give and take relationship draws in otherwise disengaged employees and makes them feel that they have a stake in the direction of the organization. As a result, employee engagement in corporate eLearning is significantly boosted.

5. Updates
No one likes to be out of the loop, especially in the workplace. Not sharing company information not only makes employees feel unimportant, but it also leaves them to come to their own conclusions. It’s important to share the organizations short-term and long-term goals and explain what that means to their jobs. It’s also a good idea to give updates on the financial performance of the organization whenever possible.

6. Encouragement
Have you told your employees that they’re doing a good job lately? Regular encouragement actually inspires better job performance and increases employee engagement in corporate eLearning. When an employee feels that they’re not doing well, they will be less motivated to work hard, but when their work is noticed and their performance is encouraged, they become engaged and more driven.

7. Training And Development
When employees feel that you’ve invested in their personal and professional development and have committed to help them do their job better, they’re likely to be more invested in their work. The importance of training for both hard and soft skills is high. When an employee isn’t trained properly, it will shape their perception of how much the company values them.

8. Connection
When an employee feels like they belong to their organization, they’re more likely to be engaged. Try including everyone on the team in meetings, not just a selected few. Also, plug new hires into the community and find ways to give them an emotional connection to the organization.

How Managers Develop Employee Engagement In Corporate eLearning

Direct managers are extremely important when it comes to driving employee engagement. Because these managers have the most “face-time” with employees, they tend to set the tone of the workplace and that has a huge effect on employee engagement. There are 5 techniques managers use to develop employee engagement in corporate eLearning.

1. Coaching And Performance Appraisal
It’s important to give feedback that’s both high-quality and informal and to be sure that you’re evaluating performance in an accurate way. Do your homework, engagement is sure to drop if you’re evaluating an employee based on assumptions or here-say. Be sure to outline organizational goals and to help your employee to create their own goals based on that. It’s also important for the employee to completely understand their work plan and the time-frame in which they’re to do it. Be transparent so there are no surprises.

2. Developing Others
It can be easy to get wrapped up in the day to day “must-do’s” of management and not think about the professional development of your subordinates. Creating a development plan for your employees and really following through shows that not only have you invested in them, but you really care whether or not they succeed.

3. Managing Change
A hot topic in today’s corporate environment is Change Management. In a time where change happens fast and frequent, managers have to be equally quick at managing this change in a way that keeps employees from getting “scared off.” A great way to start is by asking the following questions:

  • What will this look like to employees and how will it impact them?
  • How will we communicate this change and ensure all individuals impacted receive this communication?
  • How will we make sure everyone has received enough training and the help they need?

4. Communication
We all know in our heads that communication is important, but do our actions reflect that? Employees who feel that they are not part of the team, whether by accident or purposefully will check out. Not only do they begin to feel that their manager doesn’t think it’s important for them to know what’s going on, but they’ll also feel that their feedback is not important. Be open, and ask for feedback about how employees want to receive communication from you.

5. Business Acumen
Organizations need a strategic effort to boost the level of business acumen among employees. Increasing knowledge, financial acumen and market awareness cannot happen in a void or a vacuum. Organizations must be active in this effort by fostering a culture where continuous improvement is the norm, and learning is an everyday part of the culture. When employees feel that you’ve invested in them in this way, employee engagement builds up.

Why You Need To Invest in Manager Training

Although it should be fairly obvious by now, there are certain reasons that prove that investing in manager training will significantly increase employee engagement in corporate eLearning. First, the relationship between employee and manager is the most important single factor in driving employee engagement in corporate eLearning. Employee engagement leads directly to higher productivity and profitability, and disengaged employees are disruptive. Managers don’t become managers and automatically “know” how to manage. They have to learn.

In addition, sound management practices are fairly simple. It’s important to develop the next generation of leaders from within. Investments in front-line manager training yield a better return on investment and are more essential than any other type of leadership development and training. What’s more, good management training can help develop a better level of consistent manager performance throughout your organization. Respected, high-performing managers boost engagement, productivity and retention, all of which improve the bottom-line. Well-trained managers help mitigate risk and avoid litigation, which is expensive and disruptive.

Steps To Take Towards Employee Engagement In Corporate eLearning

However hard it may seem at first there are certain steps you can take to achieve employee engagement in corporate eLearning.

1. Enable
Here’s a great way to engage. Create an employee engagement task force. This might be a small group of people consisting of employees from every level in the company and representing different departments. This group will help brainstorm and implement ideas to foster employee engagement and advocate for them to their teams.

2. Implement
Following-through is vitally important, use the information you’ve collected and the people you’ve assembled to carry out your plan, communicating every step of the way.

3. Be Persistent
Engagement probably won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to be persistent, listen to feedback and take surveys at key intervals to measure your success. It takes time for a workforce to adopt a new program. The longer you work at it, the more trust you build, the more likely it is to start changing the culture of your workplace and engaging your workforce.

Nobody is born knowing how to effectively manage employees. Employee engagement in corporate eLearning can be decisive in the success of a corporate eLearning program. BizLibrary’s free eBook The Definitive Guide To Understanding And Achieving Employee Engagement presents best practices on how to properly train managers to achieve employee engagement in corporate eLearning.

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Originally published on August 6, 2017