According to the Harvard Business Review article, “The Neuroscience of Trust” leaders intuitively understand that a lack of employee engagement is detrimental to achieving business objectives. But they’re often stymied for ways to address this problem. The author of the article, neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak offers up a surprising way to bolster lagging employee engagement: develop employees’ professional and personal skills. “Numerous studies show that acquiring new work skills isn’t enough; if you’re not growing as a human being, your performance will suffer,” writes Zak. “Facilitating whole-person growth” is one of eight management behaviors that create trust between employees and their leaders, Zak’s research finds. Trust, then, is the gateway to many things in organizational life, including lower employee stress, increased workplace satisfaction and improved business results. Read on to learn about the benefits of employee development – not only for their jobs, but for their lives outside of work as well.
Employee Development is Not Just a Feel-Good Strategy
Far from being a feel-good idea, companies that understand the importance of developing the whole person will achieve what Zak terms a “high-trust culture.” These types of trusting workplace cultures foster an atmosphere where colleagues, team mates and the leaders they interact with have a high level of trust amongst one another. Not only does this trusting environment lead to better engagement and work satisfaction, Zak’s research also shows that people who work at companies where there is a high level of trust exhibit 74% less stress than those working at low-trust companies.
Given that experts estimate that as much as $180 billion in healthcare expense in the United States is attributed to job-related stress, it makes sense for companies to work on improving trust in their organizations. One way to do that is for organizational leaders to view employee development through the lens of the entire person, not just developing their “9-5” skills. Yes, it’s important to have employees who are skilled in the technical elements of their job such as customer service, sales, operations, or accounting. But when you see your employee base as more than a set of work-related skills and instead open the door to developing emotional intelligence and soft skills, you move into territory that says, “We care about the whole you, not just the ‘you’ that you bring to the office.”
The Benefits of a Developing the Whole Person
Brighton Jones is a wealth management and financial advisory firm committed to developing the “wholeness” of their workforce. Last year they rolled out a program designed to help employees develop interpersonal skills sometimes left out of traditional corporate training programs. As part of Brighton Jones’ Richer Life Skills curriculum, the “MESI Ninja” course is “right in the sweet spot of the overlap between personal and professional development,” says Cory Custer, Brighton Jones’ Director of Compassion. “MESI” is an acronym for “Mindfulness, Emotional and Social Intelligence.” As a wealth management firm, Brighton Jones’ mission is to help clients develop a “richer life”; Custer and his colleague Liv Freeby used the MESI course to spearhead efforts to help employees develop their own version of a richer life. After beta-testing the program, nearly all Brighton Jones employees have attended the program. “All of the skills developed during the [MESI] program translate into better relationships. There is greater positivity, and a higher degree of trust and empathy” after participants complete the course, reports Custer. Adds Freeby, who is the company’s Director of Talent Management, “We are creating a condition for well-being at our company. We want to nurture the whole person, not just the person who executes all of their tasks for a certain number of hours every day.”
Part of Employee Retention Efforts
Although many workforce development experts see employee development as a linchpin to retaining skilled employees, companies often fall down on this important element of business operations. Research from The Hay Group, an organizational development company, points to a significant gap in employee expectations related to career development. “Hay Group data on the predictors of employee retention indicate [career development] is THE most important aspect of a company’s reward program as far as talent retention is concerned,” writes The Hay Group’s Vincent Milich. Yet only about 50% of employees give their companies positive marks on employee development, according to Hay’s research. Clearly, there is a lot of opportunity for organizations to invest in their employees’ development. And, it doesn’t have to be costly to do so. With the help of technology such as group video chats and online learning platforms, many organizations can offer training and development to their entire workforce for as little as $100 per employee per year.
Not Just for Leadership Development
One thing that sets great companies apart from the average ones is their willingness to invest in their entire workforce. Great Place to Work® (“GPTW”) is an organization that researches the best practices in creating a positive workplace culture. In their 30 years of surveying employees to find out what makes a workplace “great” GPTW has uncovered several key factors to creating a high-trust culture. Among them is that training and development is offered to all employees regardless of their role. “Development at the ‘best’ companies are offered to all employees,” says Jessica Rohman, Director of Content at GPTW. “It’s not confined to just ‘high potential’ employees or those with leadership titles. Great places to work are those organizations that understand that all employees should have the opportunity to fully develop their human potential,” states Rohman.
The dual strategies of building a high-trust culture and developing employees’ personal and professional skills will help organizations create workplaces with lower stress, higher employee productivity and lower turnover. Coupled with a more cost-effective delivery methods than in the past, these employee development programs are now within reach of many more companies, so the big question is this: what’s holding back your organization?
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