By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

No one wants to work for an organization that doesn’t invest in their employees. We’re seeing proof of this with “The Great Resignation” that’s been happening throughout the US. According to Gartner, a Global corporate research company, lack of career development is a leading cause of employee attrition, with 40 percent of workers stating it as a key factor in their decision to leave.

Richard Branson said, “Train people well enough so that they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Training like this is challenging when your staff is handling multiple priorities and craving innovative, tech-savvy options. However, it’s worth it because organizations that offer better training solutions see improvement in employee innovation, productivity, and retention.

So, if companies know they’ll get better results, why do so many organizations struggle with having quality training programs? The truth is that it can be difficult to convey the wealth of knowledge your senior leadership has obtained over their years of experience. Another harsh reality companies face is how to access the information their employees consume when they’re sent to workshops and seminars. Having an efficient way to disseminate the information they learned may be hard to deliver all at once. And, what about the times employees don’t seem to retain the information or a way to easily reference back to it? 

You’re in good company if you can relate to these issues. Training programs can be costly and time-consuming to deliver company-wide, but they don’t have to be. The fastest-growing segment in Human Resource spending is employee learning systems and the adoption of new tools and technology. Businesses across the globe are learning new ways to improve their employee’s continuous learning, including the use of internal podcasting for onboarding and training.  

Why Internal Podcasting?

Benefits to using internal podcasts to improve your learning management system (LMS) include:  

1. Podcasting democratizes mentorship.
   • Senior leadership can bring their experience and wisdom to the entire organization or individual departments (customized topics) so their time and energy are maximized while reducing the perception of favoritism.
   • According to a CNBC study, workers at practically every level are significantly less likely to quit if they have a mentor, and 90 percent of employees reported being happy in their job when they are being mentored. 
   • Studies also show that when a company uses a mentorship program, they experience a 50 percent higher retention rate and 93 percent of employees believe their mentoring relationship was helpful. 
   • 68 percent of millennials who stay at their organization for 5 or more years have a mentor, compared to just 32 percent of those without a mentor.
   • Using podcasts for senior leaders to mentor “one to many” will eliminate most of the typical challenges mentor programs entail, including any perceptions of favoritism, coordinating and managing the process, identifying and developing qualified mentors, matching mentor to mentee, time constraints, and high costs. 
2.  Podcasting repurposes long workshops into bite-sized evergreen content.

• • Training programs that your company has invested in, such as workshops, can be turned into podcast episodes. This repurposes content into evergreen learning that is bite-sized and highly accessible via their LMS and/or secure podcasting apps.
  • Hiring trainers and consultants is an investment that can be fleeting. There is a lost opportunity to make the most of training that you’ve invested in by having these recorded and then transformed into accessible modules and podcast episodes to help with implementation and understanding of the material.
  • Finding extra time for employees to complete training can be challenging. Listeners stay engaged with short yet entertaining podcasts anywhere, anytime. Bite-sized information is more likely to be retained, so what better way for your employees to learn and develop than through podcasts.
  • Employees can go back and listen to podcasts as many times as they need for the information to sink in. Repetition is key to memorizing or understanding information and modifying or changing behavior. 

     3. Highly accessible

• • Internal podcasts are easy to consume and as accessible as music. Audio is available when team members can’t watch or read content, allowing learning to happen anywhere. 
  • 87% of people who listen to podcasts enjoy them because they can listen while doing other things. The top activities for listeners are exercising, driving/commuting, and doing housework.

     4. Accommodates kinesthetic learning and reduces screen fatigue.

• • The average adult spends 11 hours per day of screen time, whether that is a computer, phone, tablet, TV, or other electronic device. “While this problem is more pervasive in office-based jobs, it does involve those who don’t work on computers as well, since many go home and spend hours on their phones and TVs after work,” says Vivian Tran, MD, internal medicine physician at Scripps Clinic Mission Valley. Excessive screen time causes a variety of negative health impacts, while podcasting gives your eyes a break.
  • Not only employees with an auditory learning style benefit from podcasts. Kinesthetic and visual-kinesthetic learners benefit as well. These types of learners tend to be less accommodated in many companies, given the sedentary nature of office environments and the long-held belief that most people are visual learners. However, more recent studies find that multimodal learning is more common in today’s workforce. Employees can listen on a lunch break workout, walking to another wing of the building, during their commute, or better yet while performing the task they’re listening about so they can learn while doing. 

     5. Provides a more personal approach than eLearning courses. 

• • When employees are given the opportunity to learn more about their leadership team, more relatability and respect can be fostered. These connections help companies retain their employees, making your investment in them so much more rewarding.
  • Internal podcasts provide a more personal approach and increase retention of training materials when delivered with a storytelling style. The content can provide relatable stories, interactions, personal advice, and Q&As to enhance training.

     6. Podcasts are perfect for employee onboarding. 

• • Podcasts for onboarding introduce new employees to the mission, vision, values, and goals of the company. They also help communicate culture and DEI, get to know who’s who on a more personal level, and create a sense of belonging. “Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%” (The True Cost of a Bad Hire, Glassdoor).
  • Podcasts give new employees information that will help them be successful, including what is expected of them in their particular role. New employees and employees switching roles will feel more confident about their performance. It will also be easier for those transferring departments to develop new skills, learn new strategies or understand new SOPs.

• • For example, VMware, a virtualization company, implemented an innovative approach to overcome the challenges of training busy people. They implemented single sign on (SSO) and assigned training credits for each employee as they listened to each training podcast.

The quality of your employee training and ongoing learning opportunities are crucial to the lifeblood of your business in today’s competitive talent market. Your company can utilize internal podcasting to create training and development solutions that will solve its training and development woes and improve employee engagement. To learn more and book a time to explore how internal podcasting can foster more productivity, loyalty, and innovation on your teams, please Contact Us today.

By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios

Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same? 

Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders. 

It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.

Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.

Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.

So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …

1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders

We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.

A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:

• Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.

• Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.

• Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.

• Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise. 

Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.

Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.

2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company

One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?

74% of podcast listeners tune in to learn new things, and 82.4% of podcast fans listen to 7 or more hours of podcasts each week, so you also don’t have to twist yourself into knots distilling a complicated best practice into a 2 minute sound bite — you can use stories and examples to explain and still have confidence that the audience will actually listen.

Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:

• Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.

3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments

Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.

For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.

Reinforcing corporate culture  encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:

• Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
• Invite employees to company events
• Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
• Provide updates on company goals and vision 

4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission

One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.

How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.

You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.

When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.

An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.

Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.