New Year, new start, new priority for staff training
According to a new survey by the Institute of Leadership & Management more than one in three (37%) employees plan to change their job this year, making investment in people a priority for many businesses in 2015 if they are to retain their best staff.
The poll of 1,000 UK workers revealed that there is more appetite from people to move jobs compared to recent years. Some of their main motivations were more opportunity for progression (59%), better pay (56%) and more interesting job (50%).
Brands that don’t focus on their people can result in high staff turnover, interestingly a quarter of those surveyed said they were looking elsewhere simply because they felt unappreciated – a 10% rise year-on-year.
Learning and development is one solution to help ensure this group isn’t part of your workforce. As reflected in the survey - 27% of respondents said that they were looking for ‘more opportunity for training/development’.
Investing in your people in this way can lead to happier and more content employees and also, customers. As indicated by leading customer experience researcher Temkin Group - ‘2015 is the Year of the Employee’. By creating happier employees through effective training businesses can benefit from higher retention rates which drive a better customer experience, resulting in increased sales. After all, how can we expect our employees to deliver an appropriate customer experience if their own experience hasn’t prepared them appropriately?
A customer experience will only be successful if staff are trained, informed and motivated to act as ambassadors for your product or service. While remote learning and development has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, nothing can beat a hands-on approach. Real results and improvements are delivered face to face.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
The period of austerity continues, so maximum return-on-investment is second to none. While there’s no getting away from the fact that learning and development of staff requires investment, it needs to be effective and efficient from both a cost and time point of view. Rather than booking multiple venues or giving remotely dispersed staff timeout to travel to a central location, we are seeing more businesses come to us to transform roadshow trucks into branded employee engagement experiences.
As well as creating an engaging environment and experience that’s bespoke to business needs and cuts through the clutter in a dynamic and creative format, roadshows ensure a consistent message in a controlled environment – one which can be repeated nationally and internationally without losing downtime from unnecessary travel. Roadshow trucks are also relatively inexpensive due to the bulk of spend required in one cost for the creative development and fit-out.
Here are some brands that opted to take their internal communications campaign mobile:
Royal Mail 24-hour Training Truck
Royal Mail improved health and safety performance, reducing the number of annual accidents, by creating a 24-hour Training Truck. This conveniently reached all front line depot staff without compromising on service, delivering high impact interactive 30 minute sessions across the UK.
SKY 'Believe in Better' Roadshow
Sky gave its people an excuse to be excited about the new Sky+HD and 3D concepts through a roadshow truck campaign. It showed them first hand just how good the product was by bringing it to life through a truly immersive experience, supported by a video message from the CEO.
DHL 'First Choice' Roadshow
DHL improved its customer service and reinforced the 'First Choice' values through a truck. By visiting its sites across Europe and the Middle East with an immersive experience, supported with a personalised message, it reinforced its customer service vision of the future.
We heard at the recent PR Week Internal Communications conference that return to shareholders has been 47% higher from companies that communicate well with their employees and in turn outperform their competition 1.7 times. Quite a compelling thought.
If you would like to take an internal communications campaign out to your people, but aren’t sure where to start, get in touch today.