What’s the secret to a company’s success? If you had to choose the one single thing that could make or break your company, perhaps you’d be among the 71% who attribute their success to employee engagement.

With unemployment rates at record lows across the country, companies are ramping up talent wars faster and more intensely than ever before. They’re not only upping the ante to recruit top players to their team, but also increasing engagement with current employees to keep positions filled.

And for many companies, training is fueling employee engagement.

Why Employee Engagement is Critical to Your Success

Studies reveal roughly 70% of employees are not engaged at work. This is a major problem, not just in terms of productivity, but also in employee retention and overall workplace morale.

More than 87% of employees are less likely to leave a company compared to their disengaged counterparts. In addition, employees who are engaged achieve twice as much income for their company as employees who aren’t. 

At its very core, engagement isn’t about happiness or job satisfaction, but rather how invested they are in a company’s mission and direction. It’s taking a proactive role in the company to do more than just go through the motions.

Knowing this, companies who prioritize employee training are the ones who are more likely to break employees out of passivity and into active participation.

How to Spur Greater Engagement in 2020

Employee engagement isn’t a one-and-done activity, but rather an ongoing objective that will continue driving your success. Here’s how companies can use training to increase employee engagement for long-term success:

Commit to an Engaged Culture

Nothing is left to chance in a business that runs like a well-oiled machine, including how you keep your employees engaged. If company leaders want employees to be proactive in the organization, they must also be proactive in seeking ways to drive productivity and efficiency.

The most successful companies build engagement strategies into the fabric of their culture, ensuring it’s not an objective they have to chase, but rather one that eventually becomes second-nature.

Address Passive Issues

Employee engagement drives productivity, which in turn can help improve retention rates and decrease errors. When employees are intentional in their work and take pride in the results, the company as a whole realizes an increase in work quality and improved health and safety culture.

When areas of passivity are identified, it’s important to address them as soon as possible to mitigate their impact on productivity. These issues can’t be removed until you’re able to understand the root cause, triggers, and results of those actions, and then change the behaviors of what’s causing the issues in the first place.

Invest in Professional Development

Companies are leery of investing too much on-the-job training in their employees, much like a chicken-and-egg cycle: If we invest, they might leave for better positions. If we don’t, we’re stuck with an underdeveloped workforce.

While you can’t keep everyone from leaving, investing in their professional development can be a straightforward way to engage your employees and improve job satisfaction. And happy workers are far less likely to leave than those who think you don’t notice them in the first place.

For more training insights, check out KPA Flex’s training plan 2020 for fast, efficient training to boost employee engagement.