From Mattel to General Mills, Google to Twitter, there are companies that regularly top “Best Companies to Work For” lists for publications the world over. But it’s not just the free cereal bar and the nap pods that skyrockets an organization’s employee satisfaction rates. Successful leadership training plays a huge role in employee quality of life, therefore improving a company’s opportunity for profits.
Training leaders means investing in an employee’s future, and eLearning is up to the task. By taking a cue from some of the most successful organizations, implementing eLearning for leadership training is a no-brainer. Hey, fulfilled employees means better productivity; you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 companies to recognize that.
- Succession Planning. Metro Bank receives around 25,000 applications every year, but the main focus of the financial giant is talent management. Most employees start in entry level jobs, but are quick to move up the ranks; some as quickly as teller to manager in a mere 18 months. What’s the secret? Succession planning. Metro Bank has an extensive library of eLearning courses and modules, available to any employee who is interested. That means that if a teller is hoping to someday become bank manager, he or she can begin taking leadership courses that match that succession trajectory. At the same time, managers can choose employees they think match with certain roles and can suggest eLearning courses to help make employees more marketable for management positions.
- Personalized Learning. Not every leader has the same priorities, talents, and strengths—so why train them on an assembly line? Using eLearning allows leadership training to become highly personal. In a survey of the companies included in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for, organizations had, on average, about 60 hours of training annually. The focus of most of that training? Career roadmapping and leadership development, with 35 hours being dedicated to employee growth. That means successful companies are committed to catering to the individual employee. And, since it’s nearly impossible to do so in a typical training session, custom eLearning is deployed to allow employees to personalize their leadership training experience.
- Creating a Leadership Culture. To get employees onboard with leadership training, the best organizations know that it starts with the culture. Creating an atmosphere where every level of employee gets the same face time with managers, where ideas are shared, and where employees feel like they have the leadership opportunities they crave is paramount to promoting leadership training. An employee who feels unheard and unimportant is unlikely to voluntarily participate in leadership training. A leadership culture can be fostered in conjunction with other eLearning efforts: Tools like Slack which allow team collaboration, leadership simulations, and a knowledge library all give employees the power to test their leadership skills from day one.
Leadership training is often misunderstood and rarely executed as well as it should. By following in the footsteps of some of the greats, organizations can utilize eLearning to prove that their employees’ success is just as important–if not more–than that of the organization itself.
