Businesses across industries consistently struggle to engage their workforce. Can learning and development (L&D) help businesses engage their people? And if so, how can learning leaders begin tackling what has become a pressing business challenge?
We answer these questions more in the latest episode of The Business of Learning, sponsored by Wisetail, where we spoke with Josiah Pledl, CPTM, founder of 45 Degrees Leadership Consulting and Dr. Britt Andreatta, author and CEO of Brain Aware Training.
Tune in for insights on:
- The connection between employee engagement and employee well-being.
- How to create a learning culture in your organization.
- The manager’s role in supporting employee engagement
Listen Now:
Additional Resources:
- E-Book: Empowering the Modern Workforce: Rethinking the Learner Experience in Training
- Article: Expert Insights on How L&D Can Improve the Employee Experience to Drive Business Growth
- Magazine: Engaging Disengaged Learners
Fill out the form below for a complimentary preview of the e-book, “Empowering the Modern Workforce: Rethinking the Learner Experience in Training”.
The transcript for this episode follows:
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Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Hi, and welcome back to the business of learning. I’m Michelle Egleston Schwartz, editor in Chief at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo: And I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor. Today we’re talking about a topic that has long been a challenge for many businesses employee engagement. A recent Gallup report found that employee engagement in the Us. Has dropped to its lowest level in over a decade. So today we’re speaking with two experts to hear their thoughts on how learning and development can help improve engagement across the business. With us, we have Josiah Pledl, a Certified Professional in Training Management, and founder of 45 Degrees Leadership Consulting, and Dr. Brit Andreatta, an author and chief executive officer of Brain Aware Training. Josiah and Dr. Andreatta welcome to the podcast.
Britt Andreatta: Thank you so much. Please call me Brit, and I’m so excited to have this conversation with everyone today.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah and Michelle. As an alumni of the CPTM certification program. I am honored and excited to be a part of this.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yes, awesome to have you here. I’m so excited for the the conversation today because employee engagement is definitely a hot topic. Is a lot of organizations are focusing on employee engagement, and I would just love to hear a little from each of you about the current state of employee engagement.
Britt Andreatta: I can jump in. I also really referenced the research that Gallup does. I think they’re the biggest heavy hitter in the space. And this dip that we’re seeing started in the pandemic which makes sense. But it’s continued to stay depressed. What I think is really interesting is Gallup’s own pivot from only talking about employee engagement. They used to just measure, actively engaged, actively disengaged, and somewhere in the middle, not engaged right? But now they’ve actually started measuring people on this continuum that ranges from suffering at one end, struggling in the middle and thriving at the other end. And so they’ve actually started to turn their focus to this idea of wellbeing. What’s really interesting is, according to their most recent data, 23% of the global workforce is thriving at work, and they call that engaged; 59% is not engaged, and they call that quiet quitting, and 18% is actively disengaged, which they’re labeling loud quitting, but they’ve really aligned it on this continuum from struggling to thriving and suffering.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah. And I’ll just add to that. You know, employee engagement, I think, is that a crisis point when you look at the data from Gallup over time. You know. We were trending positively for five, six years, and the negative downturn started with the pandemic. But we have lost in a matter of like two years, the gains that took 5-7 years to build up. And so the decline is so rapid and the impact on the global economy is 8.8 trillion dollars a year. And so when you start to look at the dollars that are tied to this, it’s significant, but more important is the human significance to me. And when you look at the numbers of disengagement that is also related to the fact that we are in a loneliness epidemic right now. And the United States Attorney General has created a taskforce to combat loneliness. So has the World Health Organization and 25, 1 in every 4 adults in the world right now is experiencing loneliness and loneliness is as damaging to your health as smoking 14 cigarettes a day. And so when you start to look at how people are impacted and people are hurting. The world of work has an ethical moral responsibility to focus on wellbeing and employee engagement will be a natural byproduct of that. But I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that results matter and people matter more, and so get the people side right. And the productivity and all those things the data shows are going to come become right.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely, people matter more — love that. Thank you both for sharing all those statistics, because it really sets us sets the stage for today’s conversation and really illuminates that the need to improve employee engagement in the workplace. Kind of shifting gears a little bit. Can you share a little bit more about how employee engagement is connected to employee well-being.
Britt Andreatta: Absolutely. Again, Gallup has brought this focus, but they discovered that only 21% of employees feel that their organization cares about their wellbeing, and, I think, start. Some of this started during the pandemic right like how organizations took care of their workforces, how transparent they were, how flexible they were but I also think it really highlighted, or it broke kind of the trust that many employees feel with their places of work, and they started to really feel like, oh, I’m just a number here, and they want me to put my everything into this work which a lot of employees did during the pandemic. Some companies had their best years ever, but then the rewards weren’t there for the employees. Their care wasn’t there? We do know a couple things that when employees strongly agree that their employer cares about their well-being, they’re 69% less likely to actively search for a new job. So it’s really going to impact your turnover numbers; 71% less likely to report experiencing burnout 36% more likely to be thriving 5 times more likely to trust their leadership and also advocate for their place. Their organization is a great place to work. I think it’s really interesting that we’ve talked about the loneliness part because also the Us. Surgeon General has kind of called out this mental health and wellbeing in workplaces as a top issue. And so they have a whole report dedicated to what creates well-being at work. And it’s five factors protection from harm. So that’s physical and psychological safety, connection and community really building relationships and trust with your co-workers and leaders work-like life harmony, right? That you can find a balance. And you’re not feeling so overworked. Mattering at work, being able to bring your strengths, having someone care about you, a sense of belonging, and then opportunity for growth, which is that whole feeling like you have opportunities to learn and grow. And people are helping to develop you so definitely a big focus. And when I see multiple researchers coming to the same point. It really means we have a significant thing going on.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah, that’s really interesting that you brought up those points because there is a lot of overlap to just Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in in what contributes to well-being in the workplace. When you look at at the you know the safety belonging the steam, the self actualization, like I heard all of those in those like pillars of what wellbeing looks like. And I just want to give employers some credit here. I mean there. There are more attempts and efforts today, I feel, than ever before to support well-being. And I think there’s opportunity to make that more significant with things that actually matter in relationship to those pillars, and you hear the joke all the time, like, well, beans, not about pizza parties and health club memberships, and it’s not. And I think most employers get that and are doing a better job. And it really, really levels up when you start to look at identifying ways to give people what they need the most, and value the most. And the thing that always comes top of the order is time. And so, understanding that PTO and time to volunteer and time to work in the community. And if you can give people time and incorporate meaning to that effort that goes with that as far as giving back. You really, really start to hit on those ideas of what we need. According to Maslow as people. And then what the Health Organization says people need from the world, the from the workplace, as far as well-being as well.
Britt Andreatta: Absolutely. I agree, a hundred percent.
Sarah Gallo: It’s great to hear that more companies really are viewing this as a business priority and a people priority for their organizations. And I think we also know that it’s easier said than done right? So I’d love if you could all touch on maybe some of those key factors that can really lead to low employee engagement. What do those look like?
Britt Andreatta: Yeah, I mean, really, there’s a kind of a list of the top 10, and poor managers is number one. And if you think about it. Managers control 90% of their employees. Experience of an organization. It’s their daily words and actions that save shape, shape their sense of safety how they get messages that the company cares for them, even the information or the tools they need to do to their job successfully. So number one is, is and always will be, the quality of your managers. Tied to that is, lack of recognition is number 2, poor communication number 3, number 4 is lack of career growth. Number 5 is lack of training and development opportunities. Number 6 is lack of tools and resources. Down at number 7 is low pay. These other things matter more. Number 8, not getting to use your strengths or having challenging work. Number 9, excessive workload and number 10, lack of collaboration. And I just want to highlight excessive workload a little bit when we think about, you know, well-being, well-being is not like throwing a lot of money at wellness programs while those can be wonderful. It’s … I love this quote that comes out of Oxford. They have a center for well-being research, and it says if the workload is heavy and the work culture is toxic. The organization is understaffed. What can a training program on mindfulness really do for employees? And I think it’s really important that we’ve got to make sure that we’re not creating toxic workplaces that we’re creating in, you know, thriving environments where people really felt like they matter. And that really falls to your managers. So you’ve got to make sure your managers have the training and the skills to do that well.
Josiah Pledl: I agree completely. And when you go through that list of what you just mentioned, Britt is, they all tie back to leadership. And so you talk about collaboration, communication, recognition managers, like all of those things, come back to leadership. And so understanding that there has been a breakdown in the way that we have elevated people into leadership positions for a long time that has been unfair to the leader and the employee in the regard that when I talked to organizations. This comes up all the time. They were a great individual contributor, and now they’re struggling as a leader. Oh, okay, well, those tasks and things that they did efficiently did any of those relate to managing people. And it’s never a yes, right? And so if you’re asking people to do something without proper support, training, development, mentoring guidance. It is going to lead to what you mentioned bread as a toxic work environment. And when you put people in that, and I am here to say I would. I don’t have the specific research, but I would wager that a manager has more impact on somebody’s mental and physical health than their spouse than their primary care physician than their therapist, because the challenges that come from work, you are bringing your whole self with you everywhere you go. And when you come home that toxic environment is coming with you, and I applaud you if you say it’s not, and I’m also going to push back and challenge that you’re looking at things fairly and objectively, because it matters everywhere that you go, and the expectation needs to come on support and clarity and alignment for what is needed from frontline managers all the way up to the C-suite. And when you have that understanding and clarity alignment with support sprinkled on top. You’re in a position to start building a culture that actually values and takes care of employee well-being.
Britt Andreatta: Yeah, I want to underscore what you just said. Toxic workplaces really do a lot of damage. And you’re absolutely right. Managers really impact us more than other support systems in our family, you know, including our family, some interesting data. 87% of employees say they’ve been under a toxic manager and really interesting data. 74% of employees feel anxiety over the weekend when they think about having to go back to work. 53% are having nightmares about their bosses like literal nightmares, and nearly a 3rd of American workers say they go to therapy to cover, to cope with their toxic boss. And it’s leading to a lot of things like increased anxiety, depression definitely decline and engagement decline and performance. All of that stuff. There’s real. There’s real damage that’s done.
Sarah Gallo: Great points. I’d love to kind of touch on the how. Here we know that that manager support really is so important. So how can managers really better support professional development and increase engagement as a result for their team members, in addition to their wellness and well-being?
Britt Andreatta: I think, when we think about what do managers need? Their 1st focus should be on creating an environment of psychological safety that the research shows. That’s really the biggest differentiator between teams that are thriving versus those that are not. This requires managers to have emotional intelligence skills to understand the drivers of engagement and well-being. If people have those, they tend to not act in toxic ways, right? So we really need to pick the right people to be managers and then give them the training so that they can up level these skills. And then their role is to really get to know their individual people right, understand their strengths and their sense of purpose, and what wellbeing means to them, and then feel empowered to make those adjustments to their tasks or to their role to really maximize that person’s satisfaction in that role and the strengths that they can bring to the workplace. So it’s really, you know, invest in your managers. It’s the best. It’s the best investment you can make, because it’s going to have this ripple effect across the whole organization. Josiah, what would you add? Because I know you see this front-line a lot in your work, too.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. Is that the hard part of leadership is that you own everything right? You own the wins the losses. You own the environment; you own the culture. And so when you’re looking at, you know, learning and professional development happening, people have to be in a position to learn and grow. And if you are worried about toxicity and having nightmares and all of those pieces, you are not going to be in a position, no matter how rah, rah, like, you know, big time. The production is of this learning and development experience, like people are worried about their core on that, on that basic needs of safety and those things, and not a spot to learn. So your idea of managers creating a culture that is healthy as far as workplace culture is the foundation, and managers can really begin to look. You touched on emotional intelligence and the value of that. And it really is not just about learning, but executing and understanding, empathy, self-regulation, self-awareness, all of those pieces that managers need to understand how to implement and execute. And then you can start to get into what you talked about is, you know, we create like these, we do needs assessments in the L&D world. And we identify gaps. And we build programs around that. And it’s really, really important to get the voice of the customer and to get understanding of what the people want as a whole, but then also on the individual level, and offer kind of personal tailored experiences to people, and that could be internally, externally. There are so many resources to learn and provide learning and development opportunities, but when it becomes tailored to a person’s interests, objectives, goals. Then they are more bought in, I mean, I had to sit through so many bloodborne pathogen trainings, and I had 0 interest of being there. I was in no position to learn like I understand I had to. For the you know, the basic blocking and tackling needs. And at the same time we provide learning and development experiences that are not that, but similar to that where it’s a prescribed, you know, one size fits all learning opportunity, and you are not gonna get engagement, no matter how many great icebreakers you do, how many interactive activities you do like if people aren’t bought in and see like what’s in it for me. They’re not going to seek value in it. So first is the culture and the leadership that is provided to build the sense of safety belonging psychological safety to open people’s minds to learning and then identifying what they want to learn and need to learn. That’s going to add value to them, and the organization at the same time.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Thank you both for sharing. I feel like we could fill an entire episode on this topic alone on the managers role in improving employee engagement. I would like to kind of circle back to a point that you made earlier, Britt when you talked about a lack of training opportunities as a key factor in low employee engagement. And so I’d like to talk a little bit more about how developing a learning culture in that environment. How that can really improve employee engagement and kind of to also touch on. How can our listeners begin to cultivate a learning culture for their own organizations?
Britt Andreatta: Yeah, no, that’s a great comment, Michelle. So you know, obviously, the issues that we’re talking about can absolutely be solved with training. Right? We can give people the skills they need. We should have training for managers. We also need training at the executive level. We need training for employees. And as Josiah was just pointing out, like that. Training has to be well designed. Right? If people go and it’s ineffective, or it’s boring, or it completely disconnects from what they need. You’re not going to see them want more. So when we start talking about like, what is a learning culture, how to cultivate a learning culture. You know, the good news is, humans are wired to learn. We are a species that is always paying attention to our environment and learning by what we’re seeing and doing but we want to be intentional about that right like, if you constantly see your senior executives violating the values and the norms of the organization or not behaving in ways that are inspirational. You learn that this organization has a lot of hypocrisy in it. You learn that challenging your boss is going to get you knocked down. And so you don’t have psychological safety. So learning is happening all the time. What I love about thinking about a culture of learning is where you’re intentionally saying we are going to lean in to continuous improvement, and we see everything that’s unfolding as an opportunity to figure out how we could do it better. It’s not a culture of blame and shame. It’s a culture of. We’re constantly learning. How do we get intentional about that. It includes things like how your executives talk about learning and sharing their own lessons, that they’re learning and not and being more vulnerable about, “Hey, guys, I made a mistake over here. But here’s how I’m fixing it, or I’m learning this, too. Let’s do that together.” It also matters how they invest in the learning function, giving appropriate staffing and resources so that team can do its job. It’s also like leveraging knowledge sharing. There’s a lot of expertise and wisdom among your employees, so do they have opportunities and channels to share that, you know learning and the flow of work, sharing best practices with each other that really matters too. And then, of course, engaging in a process where not only do we have a robust learning catalog available to people, but we believe that it matters so. We encourage people by expecting a certain number of learning hours. We don’t expect them to do learning on their lunch hour on their own time, but we considered an important part of doing their job. Those are all factors that matter, Josiah. What do you? What would you add to that?
Josiah Pledl: I think you’re very, very much spot on, and it starts at the top. And you know when what you touched on Britt about how you know, we can identify a core value of continuous improvement or growth mindset. And then you have to act that way, though, and that. And the problem with culture is that when it’s most difficult to protect, your culture is when it’s also most important. And so as a leader, you could be in a situation where something is wrong, and it’s emotionally jarring and a charged high stress environment. And it is so easy to attack and blame, and that erodes your culture significantly. And then you start to get into this idea of like toxic positivity, where you know, we talk about this and act like it’s all great, but I feel differently, and my feelings and experiences are different that we talk about. And so when you have a senior level executive team that embraces learning and talks openly about learning, and then, more importantly, shows up to learning and development opportunities in the room with people below them on the organizational chart like that is when you start to really build that culture. And then it comes down to internal marketing. And the L&D department has a role in this and how they package market and utilize their messaging. And it becomes, you know, the core thing I learned as a learning development is, everybody wants training until it’s time to do the training. And so getting people to those sessions is a challenge, and that’s on you to grow in content marketing and to position things more than just an announcement of when, where, why, and what right like, you have to tie it into behavior change; that drives results. And so when you start to position your marketing as far as behaviors that will change outcomes, people are going to be more open to it. And then you got to support it. It has to be during the work day. It can’t be on lunchtime. It can’t be a lunch and learn. That’s like that is not acceptable when you’re going to take people’s personal time to try and squeeze in L&D like that’s showing you’re not committed to it. And so I’m not committed to giving you my time, but I will steal from your personal time to do this that is not commitment and learning, and so, when you have the physical pieces in place for coverage, for time, away from the job to handle people stepping away and engaging, and then also support that of okay. You just spent an hour in training. Now, we’re going to work in an hour of like focus work time where you can have coverage again and go catch up on your emails and balance. You know the thing people I say is I, I’m here and I love learning. But I have a job out there that’s still going on, even though I’m not there. And so, understanding that there are, you know, residual costs and impacts more than just the time in the training room that people need support on to truly establish a learning culture. And when you start to get all of those pieces together. Then it’s exactly what said it then? You got to execute right now. Now you’re the learning development team and the lights are on. The seats are full, and it’s showtime. It’s go time and bring value and bring, like, identify how this applies to the behaviors in their role, and how that behavior can change measurable results. And you start to create. You know this, this meaning that is more than just. A yes, I would recommend this training to a colleague right now. Now it adds value to my role, to my career, to my goals, to my team. When can I sign up again? Right like when you start to see that real life value. That is how you increase engagement. And that’s how you drive that culture of continuous learning.
Sarah Gallo: That’s great points there. I love all of those. And like you, said Josiah, really does start at the top, and really making learning that business priority and part of the employees workday, not just expecting them to learn on their on their one lunch hour. Like you said. We’ll be right back. After a brief message from our sponsor.
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Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: We know that low engagement often leads to increased turnover, which is another big challenge for companies today. How can training professionals help create career pathways or other growth opportunities that we know today’s employees are looking for.
Britt Andreatta: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I’m going to continue to, you know, harp on this message, that 1st priority create great managers. Right? Cause. If you do that a lot of this other stuff is solved. But employees absolutely also need the ability to craft their own journey and advocate for their own career development. So I would say, you know, programs that help them identify their strengths and further develop their strengths is really useful that, they can identify a couple of areas where maybe they aren’t as strong. And they want to lean in and develop that skill. So a conversation around, you know what strengths are you leveraging? What’s an area you want to grow on this year like everyone should always have a learning goal for something that they want to improve or gain. I also think it’s really important to talk about feedback. Oftentimes, we have training for managers on how to give feedback. Some of that’s good. Some of it’s not good. I would. I would highly recommend everyone. Look at the research from the author of the book. Thanks for the feedback cause. There’s actually emotional triggers that often happen to people when they’re getting feedback, and when you understand what those are, you’re better at delivering feedback. But there’s the whole other side of it, which is, we need workshops for employees on how to receive feedback as the gift it’s intended to be, and also how to separate out. Maybe your relationship to this person, or how they delivered it from what are some useful nuggets in there for you to use, to continue to craft your own journey. I also think we can give them some skills on how to advocate for their hopes and dreams. Some employees are assertive, and will go to their boss and say, Hey, you know, I’d like to change my role in this way, or can I sign up for this opportunity. But a lot of employees are much more quiet and tentative, and so giving them some scripts, some tools, for how they can become their own best advocate, and also how to move through roadblocks like, if you’re not getting anywhere with your boss or your boss just won’t listen. What are other tools and pathways you can use to advocate for yourself or to get movement. Those are all important skills, I think. Also, replacing employees is expensive. So I also like to do a lot of education at the executive level, because sometimes they can be a little cavalier around Turnover, and when I do some calculations about how much it’s really costing us, not only to replace that person, but to get the whole team up and running. They’re often shocked how expensive it really is to have turnover numbers. So I think we want to continue to educate our executives. Why, keeping and developing your talent, particularly your top people is an important priority and worth the investment. And oftentimes they don’t realize that that investment matters until they see the real costs of it. So these are all things that I would highlight as kind of part of a holistic package for thinking about career development and growth opportunities. I think it’s really important for employees to be able to see that the one, the other thing I would add is, let’s really focus on 2 pathways. A big mistake we’ve made is that the only pathway to promotion and raises is to become a manager, and yet not everyone has, as just. I already mentioned, the talent or the desire to be that person that creates the environment for others to thrive. So I like it when organizations kind of have a second path which is kind of become a master crafts person, where you just get really good as an individual contributor, but that also leads to opportunities for promotions and raises as you continue to really develop your expertise. And not just only the manager pathway is the way we end up with too many people in the manager role who don’t really want to be there, and that doesn’t help anyone underneath them.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah. And I would just like to take a second here to look at. You know, when we’re talking about employee retention and engagement. I think it would be a mistake to leave out the challenges of the four generations in the workplace. And when we’re looking at how rapidly Gen. Z. Is coming into the labor market and the data of how fast they are replacing baby boomers in the labor force. I think it’s really essential to understand what’s important to the younger generation, and I will tell you what I’ve witnessed is Gen. Z. Will walk away faster than any other generation I’ve ever seen, and what is important overall and understand, there’s individuals within this. But I’m just talking. Characteristics overall is contribution to something bigger than themselves, and that could be their team. That can be the company that can be society. And after a contribution comes alignment with the mission right? They wanna contribute to the world. They want to make an impact on the world, and they want to be aligned in what they’re giving their energy, talent, and expertise to, as far as impacting and changing the world. And so when you really, really start to understand the differences in generations, I think there’s a shift that is going to need to happen to support that in learning and development, to create employee retention and or to improve employee retention. And when you look at the pathways. I really like. What Britt said is the other thing about GenZ. Is, there are plenty people in GenZ that do not want a leadership role. And when you look at their life experience and coming into the world in the great recession of a wait and then into the pandemic, and they’ve seen the challenges of leadership. They’ve seen the, you know, the attacks on TV social media. And so there’s a lot of sentiment of certain people that are like, “I want opportunity. But I don’t want that opportunity.” And so is it an opportunity for the workforce to change how we train and develop our people, how we promote people, how we justify pay,or whatever comes with, as far as the full comprehensive patch of benefits with leadership positions. Because I can tell you this, there are oftentimes where a leader leaves and nobody really knows the impact. Right? Somebody steps up and the machine keeps moving. But when that excellent individual contributor goes with all that tribal knowledge that’s wearing 5 different hats because they know everything. Everybody feels that impact. And it hurts. And so, looking at ways to align professional development with contribution. And so that has some place in mentorship pieces. It has places in structured like stretch opportunities or stretch projects where you’re giving an opportunity to learn and develop along with ramping up contribution to something bigger than the individual. And you are going to turbocharge your ability to engage Gen. Z. And millennials in the labor market and reduce that turnover. And so there’s a need right now for learning and development to change and evolve to be able to adapt to the majority of people in the workforce. And this high poll, you know, training programs, or whatever you want to call it, may have some value to some, but I would be open to looking at if that is like the significant opportunity for individual contributors in a high potential training program that’s grooming them for leadership. Or is there an opportunity to get more creative and meet people where they want to be met to really, really personalize the learning experience and the pathways to reduce turnover by ramping up meaning and contribution.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely. Thank you both for sharing about how to engage employees through these growth opportunities. Do you have any tips on how to maintain engagement within training programs themselves? There are a bunch of different factors to consider here, such as engaging learners in a virtual environment, hybrid or in the classroom. There’s a lot of factors to consider here. But do you do you have any notable tips to call out?
Britt Andreatta: Yeah, I have some thoughts about this. You know, this is very important and sadly, too many workers have sat through poorly designed training, and when you sit through training, that’s a waste of time, or is just painful. Or you know you didn’t get any useful information out of it, you’re going to be resistant to future training. So I think, a couple of things, every training should focus on 2 things. First, you need to make sure that you are going to help them immediately solve a real point, pain point that your participants have so that they leave with something useful they can put into effect that very day that makes their jobs easier. So that means you have to get really clear about. Maybe you were asked to do a training on communication. But whoever signed up for that, what are their needs? Who asks for the training? Right? You’ve got to find out what are the learner’s needs and and what would make their lives better. The second thing is that training and I’m this is kind of the hill that I will die on training should be designed using best practices for how the human brain learns and builds habits. And I wrote a book on this. It’s called “Wired to Grow”. It’s got tips and strategies. So I could go on for hours about this. But if you think about it, like the human attention span is 15 min maximum before we kind of fade away and have to do something else before we can come back and focus. So you should never be talking at your learners for more than 15 min, and then get them into a processing activity, something that allows them to apply that learning to their current projects and teams that pushes that learning into their long-term memory. And then we also need to have hands-on practice.I like to think of myself now as a habit designer, and I want to know what are the words and actions that they need to be doing in the workplace? What would ideal look like? And then what are they coming in the room with? And my job is to connect those dots, to shift those behaviors and develop better habits; the right words and actions, so they can be successful. And so then part of that is practicing if we spend a lot of time talking about it, but they don’t ever do it as soon as they go back to their workplace. They’re going to just go back to the old behaviors, so we do not as an industry, give people enough opportunities to practice. The research is really clear. It’s 40 to 50 repetitions on average of a behavior before it becomes a habit. And so we’ve got to do that at least 10 times in the room or through some post learning activities. Right? So we really need to align with how the body changes behaviors. The good news is, the body is designed to do it. The bad news is, we don’t always leverage how the human, the human brain and body works. So that would be something I would focus on.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah, those are really valuable insights. And so I’m going to start this off with what might be a hot take in the L&D world, [which is] is that I do not see value in hybrid training. It is too difficult to facilitate in a way that engages. It’s impossible to run. You know what what Britt talked about, as far as application activities in a meaningful And you can leverage technology and create ways to make it doable, and I don’t think you can at the same time make it engaging for everybody as far as the like, the activity, and then the share out. And so I adopted that I’m going to commit one way or the other. This is either all in person or it’s all virtual, and we’ll give everybody accessibility, from remote employees to on-site employees. But you have to commit to one way to have a chance of providing engagement. And then what Brick talked about, as far as design … That’s so important that you have a soundly designed training, experience and brain based. Research is … the way and what you said bring about 15 minutes is so funny because television has got it figured out right? Like, why does a why does a commercial break come every 15 min? Because they know you’re getting antsy, and they know you’re in danger of leaving their programming right? So they jolt your attention with that little break to bring you back in, you know, for the rest of the show, and the same as with learning and development opportunities. And so what I have found is that whether virtual or in person, you identify learning objectives. You ask the learner what is important for them. You do an activity where they share those out, and then at the end you revisit it by having them come back and give a thumbs up, thumbs down, Emoji, drawing on their sticky note that they hung on the wall. And then you review. Okay, we touched on this, you know, yay, and you reinforce that. They got out of this what they came in looking for from the beginning and in between there you need activities that are going to compound and build on each other. So when you’re talking about brain based instruction, you’re going to chunk things right like you break big things down into pieces. And so you introduce a piece, and then you do an activity with that piece, and then the next piece, and you do an activity that, and then at the end. You have some kind of cumulative activity that you stress. Okay, we’ve gone over this. We’ve gone over this now. It’s your time to put this altogether, and you structure some type of you know, learner led activity where you have preloaded the instructions. There are cards. You send one out of the room, the other, and then they come back and execute this activity together, building and putting together everything that they learned. And then you break that down. After the activity and the facilitation piece is key to engagement as much as the design and engagement comes from high leverage questions and leading into “how” and “what” questions and avoiding “why” questions. When you ask a how and what question you get a much more robust and richer dialog, and you continue to ask how, why, how, and get away from. Why leave the Y to my 5-year-old like, let’s get deeper. Let’s get connected. Let’s engage, and you have to own that as the facilitator. And so when you start to do that and start, ask people, Can you tell me more? I would love to hear about this. How would this impact you in your daily, you know role? How would this impact the results that you could bring? How would this change your team dynamics? And you start to get those discussions going. And you have to be skilled at moderating right? You don’t want to turn into event session, because people will be quick to vent and complain about. You know the challenges, but you have to facilitate in a way that you’re digging deep, keeping it productive, keeping it in the lens of learning rather than complaining and focus on growth. And when you pair all of those things together in person, there’s movement opportunities, online leverage technology. A simple shared Google Doc, or in a breakout room on Zoom, is an effective way to conduct a group activity. And then you come back together and you share out each Google, Doc, and they present to the group. And so leveraging technology, there’s ways to do polls. There’s ways to, you know, have people in a jam board and and create posted notes that they can move around just like they would on the giant posted note on a wall in person training. And so you can structure similar activities in a remote environment as you can in person. If you leverage technology, if you get deliberate and commit to activity rather than sit and get learning. And when you start to build that, you talked before about a culture learning, when people know that they’re going to get that every time they show up, they want to come when it’s tied back to their behaviors in their workplace, their impact on their people. They wanna come. And so it all plays into that culture. We talked about top down. We talked about time allocation. But then L&D as a role in establishing that, too, by making it meaningful, making it results oriented, because we know that behavior action changes results and so provide people coaching and move away from learning objectives to behavior outcomes, and define the behavior change that you’re going to see after this training. And then you start to create this meeting and you start to build this workplace culture of learning, and then things start to take off.
Sarah Gallo: I love those tips. Those facilitation skills really are huge for both in person and virtual programs, for sure. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. But what’s one step that our listeners can take after this conversation, to really begin tackling low engagement in their own organizations.
Britt Andreatta: I would say, if you want, like the biggest bang for your buck, go back and analyze your manager training. It should be holistic. It should cover topics that managers need like developing people, coaching emotional intelligence, psychological safety collaboration, driving execution. It really, you know, we spend a lot of time on doing the nuts and bolts like how to have a 1 on one. But really, they need this holistic set of skills and so create a training that’s going to be holistic, build their skills over time. It should also engage knowledge sharing so that people can bring some of their best practices. It should include some relationship building so that they start to build their own peers. You know, network of peers in the organization so they can coach each other and make sure it has lots of practice. Right? You, you know you want. You want lots of time in the room for them to have the psychological safety to try and get better and really build those habits. And then my second thing would be once you’ve got that training built is, get a lot of people through it. Oftentimes organizations gatekeep their manager training. I once worked with an organization that said, “We don’t make manager training available until you’ve been a manager for six years.” And I’m like … that is the absolute wrong way to go about this. You need to give people their manager training from minute one, right? And you should also even have us. So you want to be a manager class where they can check out if that’s really what they want to take on. But you want to make it accessible, frequent, scalable, like, put your money there. Because it will create a ripple effect that will just give you huge Roi across the organization, and all these other things, engagement being one of them, retention being one of them, productivity, performance, customer satisfaction. It’s just going to yield results across the whole organization. So yeah, that’s where I would put my, put my money. And of course, Leverage, I think you know one of the things. I love about training. Industry is like, there’s a lot of great resources for you to get better at your practice, right? So, leverage things, like podcasts like these, going to conferences, getting certifications. So you can build your own skills. You’ve got to be committed in your own skills [development] so that you can create these things for your organization.
Josiah Pledl: Yeah. And so those are great points, Brett. And I, I think you know, one of the things that I find in in talking with companies is that they have the data like everybody’s doing and a culture and survey. Everybody’s doing an employee engagement survey. And you can break it down. And you can identify the challenges and the opportunities for growth. And then the challenge is that people don’t have time, right like we don’t. We can’t get a team together to identify how to fix this. And so letting go of some of that control and saying, “You know, we don’t need to make this a big, extravagant process.” Right? We can look at this together, we can identify the challenges. Let’s talk to our people and get some feedback. You know we got the quantitative. Is there qualitative in the feedback? Or do we need to do focus groups, ask questions like whatever to understand what the experience is. And then you can really quickly identify. You know, if it’s a communication thing. Well, let’s level up on how to give communication, how to receive communication. Right? There are so many times where, “Hey? I got a problem. I can’t find this.” Well…did you look in the slack channel that is called this? It’s posted in there [and you can] pin it to the top. And so people need to understand when [and] where to find information. And then you also have to have people giving it in the way. And so you have to kind of triangulate how you’re going to identify attacking these growth areas because you mentioned thanks for the feedback. That’s a life changing book for me. And when you said it, I started like smiling ear to ear, because it is so powerful. But that book tackles feedback from both areas like the giving and the receiving. And what happens? And so when you start to identify these areas, identify some quick wins and implement execute, get momentum, because momentum then builds confidence which then builds boulder action, and when you have the momentum, the confidence to boulder action. Your training professionals are going to take more risks to drive like meaningful learning opportunities. But so are your learners, because they’ve seen the success they’ve felt that they’ve experienced it, and so just get the low hanging fruit and that may need to be evolved and to grow, and most likely I’ll promise you it will be, but don’t chase perfection, just chase progress, and embrace, and give people grace and space to work at this together, and allow them to honor and elevate each other as they learn together, and you will start to see results in engagement brought to you by your learning development team. If you let the people do what they’re there to do, and what they’re passionate about, rather than getting it bogged down in bureaucracy.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, don’t chase perfection, chase progress. I love. That’s a good inspirational note to end on here. So with that Britt and Josiah, thank you so much for speaking with us today on the podcast how can our listeners get in touch if they’d like to reach out after the episode.
Britt Andreatta: Oh, thank you. And I’ve loved this conversation. It’s been great connecting, and I love. I just love all of us engaging. And how can we do things better? For me? I’m active on LinkedIn, so people can find me there and follow me there and then my two websites. One is my name, brittandreatta.com, and my company is brianawaretraining.com.
Josiah Pledl: I’m also very active on LinkedIn. I post every day at 6 a.m. Central Standard Time around executing emotional intelligence in your leadership. Please give me a follow. You can also check me out for more specific services on my website, which is 45degreesleadership.com. And there’s more from the business side of it. But jump on LinkedIn. I post every morning. There’s content that is actionable on how to connect your head to your heart and join in on the conversation. LinkedIn is as powerful as you choose to make it. There’s tremendous learning opportunities there. So engage, dive in, grow, show up. I’d be honored to give you and offer you a seat at the table.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: For more resources on L&D’s role in employee engagement and on similar topics visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo: And if you enjoyed this episode, let us know! Rate or review us wherever you listen to your podcasts until next time.
