29 July 2020
Use your LMS as a communication channel for employee engagement
There’s a disconnect. Companies are spending huge amounts of money on employee engagement, but most staff still report they feel disengaged. What’s going on?
A 2019 study reported that just 15% of employees actually feel engaged with their organisations. And yet, that same survey revealed that this isn’t about lack of investment: globally, companies invest $18 billion (~£14.6 billion) on tools to boost engagement.
So what do companies need to do to achieve better employee engagement? The answer lies in improving internal communication – not just having the tools, but using them well. It’s about making messages relevant and timely. It’s about streamlining the channels, so that employees don’t feel bombarded with messages from different places. And it’s about two-way communication, so that employees feel they have a voice too.
How much of an impact does internal communication really have?
Poor internal communication is costly, and not just because of that eyewatering budget spent on employee engagement tools.
Research by Gartner found that 70% of mistakes made in business are due to poor communication. When senior leaders can’t clearly get across what they want, their employees can often feel lost at sea, and unsure what their role in the company is.
Conversely, good communication benefits everyone, and improves the bottom line too. Staff appreciate good communication: 97% of employees believe that communications impact tasks daily. If they’re not in touch with their managers then they’re not going to be as engaged - especially in times such as now, when working remotely has become a necessity!
“Employee engagement doesn’t produce just happy, engaged employees; it develops happy, engaged employees who produce the right results,” said Denise Lee Yohn, in her article for Harvard Business Review. “The company isn’t recognized just as a great place to work; the work itself becomes great. And the company doesn’t establish itself just as a great employer; it lays the foundation for great customer relationships.”
How do you reduce poor internal communication?
An easy way to clear up the channels between employers and employees is to use your LMS to establish two-way communication. When everyone can keep in touch with their teams, the entire workforce becomes more engaged with what’s going on around them.
The benefits of employee engagement
There’s a definite benefit to making sure your employees feel connected to the company: companies with engaged workers tend to earn 2.5 times more revenue, while productivity improves by up to 25%. The question is, then: how can managers boost engagement in the workforce?
What’s more, the benefits of having an effective system of communication are numerous: for starters, teams work more efficiently and employees work better and faster in general, not to mention the greater levels of transparency will improve workplace morale significantly.
Not only that, 44% of employees want wider adoption of internal communications tools: but a common issue is that there are too many systems to keep track of. It’s easy to become overwhelmed when you have to juggle pages of information from system after system. So why not use your LMS to streamline your internal touchpoints?
Your LMS can be used to send out micro real-time feedback surveys to employees, and develop and track the results, to keep others in the business up-to-date with how staff are faring. Some LMS’s (like ours!) feature close integration with Zoom and other webinar platforms, which make it easy for organisations to run training sessions online, and collect attendance and completion records.
A one-stop platform to improve employee engagement
Having access to a clear communication channel is a must for your staff to be fully engaged with their work. An LMS can provide a simple solution to the problem of poor communication, by being an all-in-one system that keeps the workforce and managers in alignment.
Want to know what else your LMS can do to help L&D managers stand out? Click here to download our latest whitepaper, ‘6 Ways an LMS can help L&D shine’!