Taking Care of Your People Takes Care of Your Business
~Kathy Albarado
 In an economy where every dollar is cautiously and carefully spent, the most important investments become apparent. Most companies readily admit that the secret to their success is their employees. So even in a down economy, investments in employee programs are on the rise.
Organizations with strong employee development initiatives achieve a critical competitive advantage. In fact, according to a Towers Perrin survey, companies with the largest percentage of engaged employees experienced a nearly 20% increase in operating income. By engaging employees through professional development and training programs, employees believe the company values their efforts and feel a part of the organization's overall success.
Offering Multiple Channels of Learning
A clear trend emerging among these innovative companies is to offer a diverse array of learning channels. The benefits of offering different learning approaches can include increased retention, a positive effect on company culture and productivity, improved ability to effectively recruit, enhanced quality of work, and increased organizational expertise. Reduced opportunity cost also occurs when employees are assimilated into an organization more rapidly. Two forward-thinking organizations, Dewberry and Métier, offer customized programs, with a variety of delivery methods to cater to individual learning styles and preferences.
Dewberry's Blended Learning
Dewberry, a professional services firm, recognizes that people learn different ways so they utilize a blended learning approach. This approach offers employees a variety of learning channels as part of The Dewberry Learning Center including: classroom, software, mentoring, coaching, one-on-one, seminars and brown bag lunches, among others.
One key to Dewberry's blended learning success stems from involving internal resources such as corporate leadership to host or participate in the programs. The active involvement of top executives impresses upon employees the seriousness of the training and demonstrates that their efforts are valued.
Métier's Development on Day One
Métier, a project portfolio management solutions provider, doesn't have an assembly line. Tweaking and fine-tuning the organization is all about polishing their greatest asset — the employees. Métier considers each employee's learning abilities and needs with customized development beginning on the employee's first day. Every new employee attends a two-week orientation known as Boot Camp, where each individual's strengths and weaknesses are assessed to provide a benchmark for their career-long professional development activities. The Boot Camp also provides instructive and interactive orientation in a variety of learning methods such as instructor-led, computer-based, seminars, webinars and on-the-job-training.
Métier's approach paid off: the company witnessed greater employee camaraderie and improved knowledge retention. In fact, when Métier shifted Boot Camp from one week to two weeks, the percentage of employees with tenure of one year increased 25 percent and tenure of two years increased by 12 percent.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Dewberry and Métier are just two companies finding value in offering their employees multiple development opportunities. It's no surprise that both organizations are service providers that understand their success is tied to the performance of their employees. Both provide innovative employee development initiatives.
Companies that don't explore developing their greatest resources — their employees — will lose a competitive advantage that can be a costly loss. Organizations are quickly finding that there is no "one size fits all" approach to learning.
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who quoted, "The mind, once stretched, never regains its original dimension." Innovative employee development practices offered through multiple learning channels provide an organization the opportunity to stretch beyond "its original dimensions."
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