Like any good salesperson—or any good millennial—I stay involved in social media. I follow industry leaders on Twitter, peruse influential groups on LinkedIn and like pictures of my friends’ kids on Facebook. My goal is to keep a pulse on what my colleagues, friends, family and customers care about. When I find particularly interesting content, I bookmark it with the hopes of referencing or sharing later. An example of one of my bookmark folders is “Engagement/Culture,” a product of being both the leader of Paradigm Learning’s Engagement Team and selling in the world of Learning and Development. Last week, I took a closer look at the name for that folder and wondered, are culture and engagement actually synonymous? Do they belong in the same folder?
When asked about culture, Kris Duggan, CEO of Betterworks, said “employees with passion and drive for our mission will ultimately be a better long-term fit.” Lenny DeFranco, a writer for Grovo, boils down the 11 definitions of engage to “actively connecting to achieve a particular outcome.” This defines Betterworks’ (and all organizations’) engaged employees. According to Gallup, employee engagement in 2015 was 32% (stagnant from 2014). These employees are driving the culture in their organizations.
L&D should focus not only on their ROI for training initiatives but also on the ROE (return on engagement). The bottom line is, engaged employees, drive the culture of their company. I’m leaving the name of my folder as-is.
