Emotional Intelligence Training: Key to Retaining Knowledge Workers
A recent study by GfK Custom Research North America found that the highly educated “knowledge workers,” the people companies typically depend on the most, are the most concerned about their jobs and are under a huge amount of stress. Thomas Hartley, VP of GfK Customer Loyalty and Employee Engagement said, “It is really important that companies are aware that a third of their employees could be feeling like that.” Addressing the pressures “knowledge workers” face is crucial to keep them form leaving for greener pastures when the economy starts to turn around.
One way to increase employee engagement and reduce the pressures of stress is to improve the Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills of the workers. Since stress (the bad kind) is the result of negative emotions and beliefs that occur when people feel unable to cope with the demands of their environment, one of the best strategies a company can implement is to teach valued employees how to manage their emotions more effectively. Emotional Intelligence skill-building training should provide simple, proven techniques that improve mastery in each of the four Emotional Intelligence competencies:
- Emotional Self-Awareness
- Emotional Self-Management
- Empathy (Social Awareness)
- Nurturing Relationships
When EI skill-building training is combined with personal goal setting before the training and confidential coaching after the training not only can employee engagement scores improve dramatically, but other important outcomes improve. As a “recovering Engineer,” one of the unique aspects of the programs I’ve facilitated over the past 16 years is that I encourage measuring and collecting information regarding the benefits of the program. These measurements go beyond level one measurement (i.e., everybody liked the program); I work toward gaining level 3 and 4 measurements (i.e., participants are using the techniques learned on the job and, even more powerful, identifying a return on the training dollars invested). On one occasion I had the opportunity to identify improvements in employee engagement over the span of one year.
In January of 2005 I provided our “Building Resilience and Agility by Enhancing Emotional Intelligence Skills” program to a Director and one of his two teams of IT professionals who worked in a global fast food company. The program included personal goal setting and a goal setting interview before the training, a two day workshop focused on learning and practicing EI enhancing techniques, and two confidential coaching sessions following the training.
Two months after the program, impact interviews were conducted with each participant. As a part of the impact interview, participants were asked to indicate any improvement they were experiencing in the seventeen personal goals. Personal goals include such issues as manage emotional reactiveness, reduce stress and worry, increase personal productivity, resolve conflict constructively, etc. Participants were asked to provide examples and stories of technique use that supported their estimated improvements. The team reported improvements averaging over 35% (ranging from 17% to 55%) across the seventeen goal areas. These results are typical of the improvements participants identify two to three months following my programs.
In early 2006 the IT Director asked me back to train his other team. Before the program began the Director chose to convene a brown bag lunch were he could talk about the program and why this second team was scheduled to receive it. He gave both personal and work examples of how applying the techniques had benefited his relationships and his performance.
He then shared with the untrained team their results from the company’s annual Employee Commitment survey. He told them that the untrained group’s average score was 77.6, a good score and up about 2 points from 2005. The team trained in 2005 had an average score of almost 90, up 13 points from the previous year. You can view the specific data in the results section of my site Employee Commitment Benefits of Emotional Intelligence Training.
The fact that Emotional Intelligence Training can so positively impact employee commitment scores indicates that this kind of training represents a potential huge ROI for any organization. Those valued workers who are more committed and engaged have an increased likelihood of staying with the organization when the economy picks up.
For example, the typically accepted range for replacing a nurse or clinician is $50,000 – $75,000. Providing training in EI techniques has been shown in Health Care providers to reduce turnover from 25% to 5% per year. Assuming turnover is reduced, conservatively, by 20 people per year, this represents 1 to 1.5 million dollar savings every year.
In the mean time, stress is down, personal productivity increases and relationships improve. I look forward to hearing you thoughts on this topic.
