Author - Joe Dryden

Today, more and more companies are coming to see employee wellbeing as being essential to their long-term strategy. A happier and healthier workplace makes for a more productive team, and ultimately a more successful organisation.

According to research, companies that prioritise education, development & training, particularly communications skills – are a huge 70% more likely to be market leaders. But those companies that take it even further and tie at-work education to promotion are 22% more likely to have highly engaged employees

So how can your company tap into this huge opportunity? Here are some tips on how to get an education strategy that benefits your employee engagement and wellbeing.

 

Education From The Word Go

A great way to build education into the everyday fabric of your company is to build it into the recruitment process. In fact, 72% of market-leading companies use talent development as a recruitment strategy. 

But what does an education-focused recruitment strategy actually mean? 

Essentially, it means that you use education to attract the best applicants to your vacancies and invite them to educational sessions to see how they interact with the rest of the team prior to any offers being made. 

If your recruiters are aware of these trends and have the skills you can move forward with this strategy, otherwise leveraging your HR team with human resources training is a good way to upskill your HR professionals and be at the forefront of innovation.

By being able to put forward a strong educational policy, you can attract the very best talent to your company. 

Making Education An Engaging Event

Many organisations have not managed to overcome barriers that so many appear to have with training that they feel is ‘unnecessary’.

So another great way to tie education to the health and wellbeing of your employees is to make education an ‘event’. By taking a morning, afternoon or even a whole day out of the company calendar, you can emphasise the importance of education.

It also allows you to make sure that your employees get truly engaged in their learning. 

You can also add to the engagement factor by asking one of your team to lead a session for their colleagues. For example; your team might need to have their people management skills sharpened up. It might be that one of your team has undertaken such training, perhaps as part of some management training, or in previous employment if they have recently trained jobs. You could ask them to lead a session for their colleagues. 

Keep It Fun

Education need not only consist of mandatory training and upskilling and refresher courses. It can also be fun. 

A prime example of this is yoga classes. You could say, once a week, hold a half-hour yoga session at the office. It gives your employees the chance to let off some steam together. 

But you could also make it bigger. You could clock your employees off an hour or two early and have them attend a session geared more towards fun or personal development than professional development. For example; if one of your employees has an additional language, you could ask them to create and then lead a 101 session in said language. 

Learning how to pronounce unusual sounds in Polish, Russian, Hindi or any other language together can be fun for your employees. Having fun whilst learning can help to boost employee engagement and wellbeing.

In Summary

As it can help boost team cohesion and productivity, employee health and wellbeing is becoming ever more of a hot-button issue. The numbers detailed in research conducted by findcourses.co.uk show just how huge the impacts of good employee health and wellbeing are becoming so important. 

One way to achieve this is through education – from the very beginning. This helps attract and keep the very best talent. You can also keep education engaging and fun by making it an event and by making sure that it focuses on personal, as well as professional, development. 

If you do this, then you will find that your employees are healthier, happier and more motivated. Please contact us to learn more.

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