Let’s explore leadership development, how it fits with other HR strategies, and the impact it can have on your organization.

Key takeaways

1. Leadership development cultivates leadership skills at various levels of the organization.
2. Building skills beyond leadership is essential for developing effective leaders.
3. Strategic HR plays a key role in upskilling employees and training new leaders.
4. A successful leadership development strategy keeps organizations competitive.
5. Building a leadership development program can be done by identifying opportunities for development, setting metrics to track improvement, and guiding employees in their development.

What is leadership development?

In its Handbook of Leadership Development, the Center for Creative Leadership defines leader development as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes.”

Leadership development is the actual strategy an organization uses to build this capacity at scale, rather than on an ad-hoc, one-on-one basis. This practice isn’t limited to formal leadership or executive roles. It’s about building leadership skills throughout the organization.

Leadership vs. management

At 15Five, we believe effective management is foundational to great leadership. When managers are supported, they drive the very outcomes that define organizational success: high engagement, strong retention, and aligned performance

The biggest difference between leadership and management is in the contrast between day-to-day operations and vision. Leadership is about finding, developing, and sharing the organization’s larger vision. It’s about driving alignment through inspiration. Conversely, management is about ensuring direct reports have what they need to complete their day-to-day tasks and giving them guidance when needed.

Key components of leadership development

Building leadership skills throughout your organization goes beyond just sharing the right business books and setting up self-evaluations. Here are some essential components of every leadership development strategy:

• Training: Employees need dedicated training to build up their leadership skills.
• Mentorship: Pairing potential leaders with proven mentors gives them the confidence they need to grow.
• Feedback: Tools like 15Five enable structured check-ins, goal tracking, and performance conversations to create an ongoing dialogue between managers and their teams, not just periodic reviews.
• Self-awareness: This quality is important in leadership, and it’s especially true when employees are still building up their leadership skills.
• Experiential learning: With integrated feedback and OKRs, platforms like 15Five help connect day-to-day work with strategic objectives, making learning both practical and measurable.

What skills do employees need to be effective leaders?

Leadership is a multi-faceted discipline. Here are the skills your leadership development strategy should focus on:

• Communication: Every employee can benefit from being a better communicator, but this is especially important for leaders. No matter how great their vision for a team, it won’t accomplish much if they can’t communicate it accurately.
• Emotional intelligence (EQ): Awareness of your and other people’s feelings and knowing what to do with them fall within emotional intelligence. Poor leaders fly off the handle without realizing what they’re doing. Great leaders manage both their own emotions and those of others.
• Decision-making: Leaders need the ability to make the right decision at the right time, as well as knowing when a quick, good decision outperforms a great decision made too late.
• Vision and strategic thinking: Great leaders can look at the big picture, find the direction they want to go in, and turn that into a strategy they can articulate with the rest of the organization.
• Adaptability: Employees who aim to become leaders need to learn that all plans go wrong in some way and how to adapt when they do.
• Collaboration and teamwork: Leaders inspire their teams to come together to reach greater heights, and they’re experts at finding the best way for team members to collaborate.

While these are the most common leadership skills, they’re not necessarily relevant for all leaders. A department head or executive will need to demonstrate more strategic thinking than a team lead, while the latter will focus on developing adaptability and communication skills. That said, for leaders who want to eventually rise to the executive level, building all these skills early is crucial.

How strategic HR impacts organizational leadership development

HR has become much more than just an administrative function. HR leaders are becoming important strategic partners, sitting at the table for some of the organization’s most important decisions and helping to guide overall strategy. That’s what strategic HR is in a nutshell; focusing on aligning HR efforts with the organization’s overall goals.

Strategic HR is crucial in leadership development for these reasons:

• Aligning leadership development with organizational strategy: It’s one thing for your organization to make a commitment to developing leadership skills, but you need to ensure these efforts align with your broader vision. HR is an essential partner in this.
• Identifying leadership gaps: Do you know where your organization needs leadership most desperately? HR teams have access to tons of performance and hiring data that can be used to determine exactly where new leaders can most benefit the organization.
• Integrating leadership development into HR practices: HR leads initiatives aimed at improving performance across your workforce, and leadership development fits perfectly with these efforts. Performance management efforts can include discussions of leadership goals and paths to reach them. Employee engagement can be improved by finding employees who are interested in leadership roles and helping them build those skills. And these are just a few examples.
• HR involvement in manager training: HR knows where managers are struggling and what the business needs, but they don’t have to build training programs from scratch. Partnering with a proven manager resource lets HR focus on the big picture while managers get the support they actually need.
• Leading change: Strategic HR is all about finding opportunities for optimizing every aspect of an organization’s workforce in a way that contributes to its broader goals. That means HR leaders are often the first to identify the need for a leadership development plan while being best-placed to prove its effectiveness.

The business impact of leadership development

Leadership development increases leadership skills throughout your organization, which can have major impacts on its performance, its adaptability, and more. Here’s how.

Improves the organization’s performance

Organizations thrive or die based on the decisions leaders make at every level. Not every decision can single-handedly change your organization’s trajectory, but its growth depends on consistently making better decisions. By developing strategic skills for every leader, you ensure the organization’s strategy is better reflected in the day-to-day of each department and each team.

Increases employee engagement and retention

For many employees, having an opportunity to work towards an eventual leadership position can make them feel more engaged with your mission and keep them with your organization longer. Few people are satisfied by staying in the same role for years at a time, and increases in pay alone won’t guarantee they’ll stay with you. You’ll keep people aligned and engaged by systematically building up leadership skills throughout the organization.

Attracts better talent

Top talent doesn’t join an organization where they’ll stagnate in the same position. They want to find a place where they can grow and maximize their potential. With a robust leadership development program, you can show your dedication to helping every employee grow with you, especially if you have examples of this growth with current employees.

Facilitates succession planning

A leader’s departure can single-handedly stifle an organization’s growth, especially if you don’t have a clear plan for replacing them. Recruiting for executive roles can take months, making day-to-day operations needlessly challenging as you try and fill leadership gaps. By building up leaders within the organization, you can effectively plan ahead, whether you want to have an employee step up as an interim leader or fully promote them to the new role.

Improves company culture

Leadership development leads to a company culture where every employee feels more involved in strategic decisions, which helps eliminate the divide between leadership and the rest of the workforce. By fostering leadership skills at every level, you’ll also give everyone the tools to better understand strategic decisions and carry them out.

6 steps for building an effective leadership development program

No matter the size of your organization, you can build your own leadership development program in a few simple steps.

Step 1: Identify organizational needs

Where does your organization most need leadership? Are you finding that leadership skills are low across the board or only with specific departments? A needs assessment can help you identify any potential skill gaps among leadership and find teams where more leaders are needed.

Step 2: Define clear objectives and outcomes

What should your leadership development program accomplish once it’s in place? And how does it align with the organization’s overall strategy? Having clear goals before you begin—and ensuring they’re measurable with KPIs or similar metrics—will guide your efforts at every stage.

Step 3: Tailor the program for different leadership levels

Emerging leaders, mid-level managers, and senior executives don’t all have the same needs. As part of your strategy, tailor your program to each of these levels. Senior executives might only need to focus on a few leadership skills, while emerging leaders may need more dedicated training across all aspects of leadership.

Step 4: Incorporate a mix of learning methods

Not everyone learns the same way, and having a more holistic approach to learning can help all employees learn more effectively. Give your program a healthy mix of formal training, mentorship opportunities, regular coaching, peer learning, and on-the-job experiences.

Step 5: Leverage technology

How do you plan to track your leadership development program’s progress? And will you be gathering training content from multiple sources? Make promoting leadership throughout your organization easier with a dedicated tool like 15Five.

15Five is a performance management platform that’ll help you identify skill gaps throughout your leadership team, build your leadership development program, and even source training content to upskill employees. Book a demo to see what 15Five can do for your leaders.

Step 6: Evaluate and iterate

Consistent improvement is just as important for your program as it is for the people participating in it. Rigorously evaluate your program’s performance, ask employees for feedback, and make changes as needed.

Pendo, a software experience management provider, grew from 200 to 1,000 employees and had to onboard 163 managers, all while striving to reduce employee turnover. With 15Five, the team at Pendo streamlined the onboarding process for all these managers, which included developing their leadership skills. Read their story.

Lead from the front

Leadership development isn’t just about preparing for the next promotion. It’s about shaping the kind of culture and performance every employee contributes to. Strategic HR teams using 15Five empower leaders at every level to guide with clarity, coach with purpose, and drive results that matter.

Upskilling leaders at your organization? Check out our additional resources on leadership development and strategic HR:

• 15Five HRIS Connector
• Manager Skill Development at 15Five
• Leadership Strengths Blog on 15Five

Investing in leadership development doesn’t just turn managers into leaders, it makes your organization more resilient to change while ensuring everyone makes more strategic decisions. That leads to better performance across the board and more engaged teams.

The post Leadership Development as a Pillar of Strategic HR appeared first on 15Five.

HR leaders deserve a seat at the executive table. Their role extends far beyond administrative tasks and policy enforcement. They’re uniquely positioned to drive organizational success through strategic people initiatives. When HR shifts from paperwork to partnership, it transforms from a support function into a key business driver that executives can’t ignore.

Key Takeaways:

• HR will shift from primarily administrative duties to strategic ones.
• HR will play a key role in organizational leadership.
• HR’s key roles and functions will evolve.
• HR will become a key partner in data-driven decision-making.

What does the future of HR hold?

Let’s break down some of the trends causing this shift towards strategic HR.

Emerging trends

In its HR Trends 2025 Report, McLean & Company identified emerging HR trends that will have the most impact on organizations in the coming years:

• Redefining expectations for manager roles: Managers will be expected to do more to upskill their direct reports rather than purely overseeing their work.
• Skills-based hiring practices: An increasing focus on skills over job descriptions means HR teams will have to rethink hiring, but this may ultimately lead to a better talent pool.
• Breaking jobs down into tasks to better match people with projects: With skill-based hiring being more prevalent, organizations will need to go from assigning work based on job descriptions to doing so based on skills.
• Measuring HR’s ROI: Data is king, and HR will see more pressure to show how each initiative benefits the organization as a whole.
• Increasing pay transparency: Hierarchies are growing flatter and employees expect greater transparency around pay and benefits.
• Implementing AI for workforce upskilling: Strategic HR teams are embracing AI thoughtfully for automation and to surface insights that guide managers and elevate the employee experience, without replacing the human touch.

HR’s evolving role

The reality is that executives need strategic HR insight now more than ever. As companies navigate talent shortages, shifting workplace dynamics, and intense market pressures, HR’s ability to align workforce capabilities with business goals becomes invaluable. 

Strategic HR creates an impact by first diagnosing workforce challenges, then measuring what matters, like engagement, performance, and retention, and finally acting with targeted programs that drive measurable outcomes across the business

When HR leads with data-backed strategies instead of administrative checklists, leadership doesn’t just see human resources as necessary—they recognize it as indispensable to the organization’s success.

According to the McLean report, organizations with a formal HR strategy are more likely to be high performers in recruiting, controlling labor costs, and developing leaders. As this direct link between strategy and performance becomes more apparent, HR will become a more strategic partner.

The impact of technology

As strategy becomes more important in HR, so will using the right technology. While spreadsheets and similar tools might have cut it in the past, a proliferation of dedicated HR platforms means HR experts can expect more from their tool stack. Better data and better connectivity—through HRIS connectors and similar integrations—creates a web of information HR can pull from to better lead strategic efforts throughout their organization.

Why will human resources continue to exist?

As long as organizations are made up of humans, there will be human resources.

Your HR team is your organization’s go-to resource for employees, and they’re the experts in everything that has to do with your people. With fewer than one in two executives and fewer than one in three high-level managers being highly proficient in human-centric competencies, HR will always serve a role as the organization’s face and the vanguard of every people-first initiative. They’ll continue to own and drive efforts to foster employee engagement, reinforce company culture, and align your workforce with broader business objectives.

As employees become more involved in their own career development, more dedicated to building a better work-life balance, and more interested in what happens throughout the organization, they’ll look to HR as their first resource. HR professionals will need to be part coach, part information resource, and part mentor for the organization’s workforce. This will make them a key strategic partner for leaders who want to help their people achieve more.

Where will HR add strategic value?

Because HR has the pulse on everything going on through the organization’s workforce, they bring a valuable perspective on an organization’s capabilities.

One key area of value is manager enablement. Equipping people leaders with the skills they need to drive engagement, performance, and retention at scale has a massive impact on the company’s bottom line.

Driving strategic acquisition, rather than just filling roles as they open up, will be one of HR’s key contributions to the organization’s strategy. Additionally, employee development and retention will save the organization precious budget while aligning individual employee goals with the organization’s overall objectives.

Another element to HR’s strategic value? As champions of company culture, they can tailor it to find the perfect balance between employee priorities and the organization’s goals, building a culture that’s both performance-driven and inclusive. This aligns the entire workforce around a common goal while maintaining a positive employee experience.

This strategic approach ensures HR efforts are always correlated with the organization’s most valuable outcomes, from increasing productivity to driving growth and profitability.

HR and data-driven decision making

Data drives more decisions throughout your organization’s functions, and nowhere will that be truer than for HR. HR teams have access to a massive amount of data, from performance reviews to retention rates, employee feedback, and salaries. 

Dedicated resources for analyzing and using all this data allow HR to know exactly what an organization needs to improve retention, upskill their workforce, and drive alignment around organizational goals. Additionally, data is essential for HR to demonstrate the effectiveness of its initiatives and be a partner in strategic decisions. HR teams that effectively demonstrate the ROI of their programs are 1.9x more likely to be a strategic partner than those who don’t.

With the right data, HR can identify:

• Skill gaps: What does your workforce need to meet the organization’s goals? How can you best find these skills?
• Talent needs: Filling skill gaps doesn’t cover all your organization’s talent needs. With data, HR teams have a better view of their overall workforce, allowing them to know if their headcount is correct for their needs, if some departments need a few additional contributors, or if more leaders are required.
• Strategic priorities: Data is HR’s single most important resource when deciding what they should focus on. With data, you can link your initiatives to the metrics leaders care about, like employee engagement and retention. You’ll know where your efforts are most needed, where you can have the most impact, and how to demonstrate the value of each initiative.

Collecting and analyzing this data might seem like a daunting task, but more and more HR departments are learning to rely on data analytics tools and platforms like 15Five’s Performance Management Software. With these tools, automated data collection means you’ll never have to crawl through spreadsheets for the information you need. 

Additionally, AI-powered analytics and similar features deliver insights, allowing you to do more with that data. You don’t need a massive tool stack to build data-driven decision making into your HR processes, just a dedicated performance management platform.

What is strategic human resources management?

Strategic human resources management (SHRM) is a dedicated framework for proactively managing HR needs, tasks, and processes at scale rather than just reacting to HR needs as they come up. SHRM goes beyond traditional HR management because it requires that HR teams align their efforts with broader organizational goals and track outcomes across performance, engagement, and retention.

Some of the key components of strategic human resources management include:

• Performance management: Strategic HR teams have a direct hand in analyzing the performance of an organization’s workforce and building plans to improve performance globally. Data is essential here, and regular performance reviews are a common way to gather it.
• Employee engagement: How dedicated are your employees when they come into work? Do they believe in your mission? Do they feel like your company culture has a place for them? Strategic HR teams drive employee engagement efforts to increase alignment between a workforce and its leaders.
• Workforce planning: Just like organizations have to deal with supply and demand in sales, HR teams have to match their labor supply with the needs of the organization. SHRM involves continuously collecting and reviewing data that gives HR teams a view of their organization’s workforce needs to allow for initiatives that ensure those needs are met.
• Employee development: Where talent development refers to a broader, organization-wide strategy, employee development refers to efforts made to help individual employees reach important career goals. By matching individual goals with broader objectives, HR teams are a key partner in helping every employee reach their full potential in ways that align with the organization’s goals.

SHRM intertwines all HR efforts with the organization’s priorities, solidifying the HR team’s position as a strategic partner. With a seat at the leadership table, HR executives can ensure the organization’s workforce grows in ways that match up with the organization’s other priorities, helping save costs on labor, unlock new opportunities without recruiting, and guide recruitment efforts as the organization grows.

As organizations look to hire for skills rather than specific job descriptions, they’ll need the data and vision that SHRM brings. Additionally, as upskilling becomes essential for the redefinition of the “manager” role, strategic HR management will be essential to identifying and developing talent throughout the organization.

HR: Be the strategic partner your organization needs

Key takeaways

• The future of HR is about matching skills to projects as well as being a champion of AI and similar technology within their organization.
• HR teams are evolving from an administrative function to a strategic one, helping drive business success.
• Data will be king across all HR functions, allowing for both more effective HR initiatives and better demonstration of ROI to other business leaders.
• HR teams deploying strategic human resources management (SHRM) will keep organizations competitive on the broader marketplace.
• HR technology will allow HR teams to do more with less, from automatically gathering and centralizing essential data to delivering AI-powered insights to leadership.

The strategic future of HR

As skills and technology become crucial for an organization’s success, HR teams will become key strategic partners in helping organizations stay ahead of the curve.

Being strategic means asking, “How does this initiative fit into broader business goals?” It means using data to identify problems, find solutions, and demonstrate the effectiveness of your efforts. Using the right technology is essential to this.
Performance management software like 15Five gives you everything you need to begin your transition from an administrative department to a strategic partner.

Want to see what 15Five can do for you? Book a demo here.

The post The Future of HR: Shifting from Administrative to Strategic Roles appeared first on 15Five.

Jennifer Sobocinski, Senior Director of People & Culture at ReUp, shares how 15Five transformed their approach to engagement and performance. This enabled them to use data to inform their decisions and lead to a positive impact on both their people and business outcomes.  

From Overwhelming Data to Actionable Insights  

Jennifer’s experience highlights a common challenge for HR teams: how to turn raw data into meaningful action.

“We don’t have a big HR team,” Jennifer explains, “so being able to specifically say, ‘this is what we need to focus on’ just makes our data far more actionable.”  

15Five’s heatmap has been a game-changer to help break down employee engagement feedback to the individual question level.

This granular view empowers Jennifer and her team to pinpoint specific areas for improvement. “I can go to a manager and say, ‘this is the one thing you can work on’,” she adds.

The ability to slice and dice data without getting overwhelmed has also made it easier to diagnose issues, celebrate wins, and create the right plans of action. “The heatmap shows where the house is on fire. It makes it clear where we need to focus to create impact,” Jennifer notes.

Simplicity that Drives Adoption  

For Jennifer, simplicity is key. “I love the platform. The fact that everything is so simple to use for my team, employees, and my managers is what is important to me,” she says.  

From OKRs and pulse surveys to 1-on-1 meetings and performance reviews, ReUp uses 15Five to centralize their strategic HR processes. When it comes to things like implementing performance reviews or navigating engagement data, this integrated approach has saved her lean team time and reduced friction.

“What would have taken me an hour and a half took me 30 minutes,” Jennifer shares.

Outcomes that Matter  

ReUp’s partnership with 15Five is delivering measurable results:  

• Engagement and Performance: ReUp regularly measures these metrics with high participation which provides a clear diagnosis of their team’s health.  
• Manager Effectiveness: Their Manager Effectiveness Indicator (MEI) is in the 86th percentile, reflecting a culture of strong leadership.  
• Reduced Turnover: ReUp has seen turnover decrease over time by identifying and addressing areas of concern.
• Manager Actions: More and more managers are developing and practicing key skills and behaviors like conducting regular 1-on-1s with their teams and fostering deeper connections. 

Building a Culture of Growth  

Beyond the numbers, Jennifer emphasizes how 15Five aligns with ReUp’s values. “The strategic focus of 15Five aligns with our company’s focus on strengths and how to improve performance within those strengths,” she says.

This strengths-based approach supports a culture of continuous improvement. “It’s less about what went wrong and more about how we can move forward,” Jennifer explains. This mindset is essential for a high-growth organization like ReUp, where agility and adaptability are critical.  

Why 15Five Stands Out  

For Jennifer, 15Five is irreplaceable. “I have no desire to leave 15Five,” she says emphatically. “It’s distinct from our HRIS/payroll system and is essential to how we practice HR on the employee engagement and development side. “

“15Five keeps everything in one place and helps us build stronger relationships across the company,” says Jennifer.

With 15Five, ReUp Education has turned engagement and performance management into a strategic advantage. By focusing on diagnosing areas for improvements, creating plans based on insights, and fostering a culture of growth through their managers, they’re setting up their teams and customers for success. 

Ready to see what 15Five can do for you? Book a demo to get started.

The post How Improving Manager Effectiveness and Engagement with 15Five is Driving Down Turnover for ReUp Education appeared first on 15Five.

Sarah Page, an HR leader at DHJJ, could sense that her business needed a structured way to not only measure employee performance and engagement but also take action to improve these critical outcomes. 

Employees, managers, and the HR department were all feeling frustrated by a review system that relied on a cumbersome spreadsheet process. This led to inconsistent feedback and missed performance discussions. Many employees, especially newer hires, felt unclear on expectations and disconnected from leadership decisions.

Employees were left wondering how their performance was being evaluated and how compensation decisions were made. This uncertainty contributed to concern about how to retain the firm’s top talent in a post-COVID employee landscape where the accounting industry was seeing high turnover rates across the board.

Choosing 15Five for an Action-oriented Approach

“I’m not here to just do engagement surveys and performance reviews with no purpose. That would be incredibly frustrating and deliver no value to the business” Sarah said. “I want to make a difference and I want my work to make a difference.”

Sarah knew something had to change. DHJJ considered adding BambooHR’s performance management tool, but it wasn’t flexible enough to fit their needs. The system relied on a traditional org chart hierarchy which didn’t align with DHJJ’s workflow where employees often worked under multiple leaders.

They also reviewed other tools, including PerformYard and Lattice, but found they lacked the ability to assign clear ratings and analyze performance data effectively. What drew Sarah to 15Five was its ability to go beyond just performance reviews and offer actionable engagement surveys, out-of-the-box people analytics, and strategic action planning all in one platform.

Most importantly, 15Five provided a way to act on employee data rather than just collecting it.

“When we saw the HR Outcomes Dashboard and Action Plans, we knew 15Five was a strategic software,” Sarah said. “This isn’t about just doing a survey and getting information. This is about taking action, and 15Five gives you the tools you need to take action that makes a difference.”

Diagnosing the Key Challenges with HR Outcomes Dashboard

Before implementing new performance reviews, DHJJ wanted to diagnose any issues and launched an engagement survey using 15Five Engage. Previously, participation with in-house surveys had been around 30%, possibly due to concerns over anonymity. With 15Five, participation jumped to 75%, giving the company a far clearer picture of employee engagement challenges and areas for improvement. This greater participation increased leadership’s confidence in the survey data and buy-in for strategic operational changes.

Through the HR Outcomes Dashboard, Sarah and her team uncovered that role clarity and communication were two major pain points affecting engagement. Employees needed a clearer understanding of how performance was measured and what career growth looked like at DHJJ.

“With the HR Outcomes Dashboard we weren’t just guessing anymore. We could pinpoint exactly where to focus our efforts,” Sarah explained.

Planning for Action

With the engagement data in hand, Sarah and her team redesigned their performance review process. They transitioned to skill-based reviews to ensure employees had clear expectations for their roles. They also implemented goal tracking within 15Five, enabling employees to document achievements and professional growth.

DHJJ began sharing engagement survey results in company newsletters and firm-wide announcements to enhance transparency and demonstrate to employees that their feedback was being heard and acted upon. This not only increased trust but also encouraged more participation in future surveys.

“We used to struggle with low survey participation because employees didn’t know if their input mattered. Now, they clearly see leadership making changes based on their feedback,” Sarah noted.

Acting on the Data: Implementing Lasting Change

Beyond structured performance reviews, Sarah got her people managers to go even further and take targeted actions like 15Five’s High Fives and use feedback tools to encourage ongoing recognition and communication. Employees were reminded to document key projects after their busy tax season deadlines, ensuring performance insights weren’t lost in the shuffle. DHJJ also began piloting 1-on-1 and Check-Ins through 15Five for its mentor program which standardized mentorship discussions across the firm.

Looking ahead, DHJJ is rolling out Strategic Action Plans for people managers through the executive committee. This ensures leadership is not only aware of engagement challenges but actively working toward solutions.

“The biggest value-add has been visible accountability, which is one of our operational pillars at DHJJ. 15Five doesn’t just help us collect data—it helps us communicate to our staff that we will take real action based on their feedback,” Sarah emphasized.

The Results

• Engagement survey participation skyrocketed from 30% to 75%, increasing trust in leadership and internal processes.
• Turnover decreased significantly from 15% to under 5% with the right people staying and disengaged employees naturally exiting.
• Role clarity improved as employees now have clear job responsibilities embedded in their performance reviews.
• Leadership now actively uses data from the HR Outcomes Dashboard to drive decision-making and retention strategies.

Sarah’s biggest takeaway?

Employees now feel empowered to own their performance and career growth.

By combining performance management, engagement insights, and real-time feedback, DHJJ transformed from a company struggling to communicate its initiatives to employees to one where people feel seen, heard, and valued. 

“At DHJJ, we want to be the place where everyone wants to work,” Sarah said. “That doesn’t happen by accident. 15Five isn’t just about surveys, it’s about taking action. And that’s exactly what we needed.”

Ready to see what 15Five can do for you? Book a demo to get started.

The post How DHJJ Cut Turnover by 67% with 15Five appeared first on 15Five.

Whether you joined us live or missed the summit, we’ve captured the most valuable takeaways from our incredible speakers. Here’s what resonated most with your fellow HR Superstars.

Empowering managers is the key to preventing HR burnout

Burnout continues to be a major issue in HR, with 81% of HR leaders reporting symptoms of burnout. While many HR leaders focus on helping support their companies manage burnout, they often don’t give themselves the same attention.  

In this session, Karina Young, VP of People at 15Five and our host for the day talked with Brittany Fowler, HRBP and Talent Business Partner, and Stephanie Smith, Chief People Officer, about their experiences with burnout as HR leaders. They dived into personal stories, research-based insights, and strategies for keeping their HR teams healthy in fast-moving organizations.

Watch the on-demand replay of the HR Superstars Summit

The key to preventing burnout is shifting from HR being the fixer to empowering managers to lead effectively. When managers are set up for success, HR professionals get to focus on strategic initiatives, not just putting out fires.

Big Takeaways: 

• Distinguish Stress, Languishing, and Burnout
  Understanding the spectrum, from everyday stress to deeper feelings of disengagement and, ultimately full-blown burnout, helps HR leaders intervene early and more effectively.
• Empower Managers to Share the Load
  When managers are equipped with the right tools and training, they become the first line of support for employees, reducing the burden on HR teams and helping prevent burnout across HR.
• Create Sustainable Systems and Supports:
  Automating recurring tasks enables HR to focus on strategic work rather than getting overwhelmed by administrative duties.

Best Quotes:

• “We didn’t have a cohesive management philosophy that everyone was brought onto. This created a lot of challenges, so we created a shared philosophy of management and really invested in them” – Brittany Fowler, Kickstarter
• “Responsiveness does not define your define your value. And I think for a lot of us, that too causes us to feel go from whelmed to overwhelmed of having to constantly keep up.” – Stephanie Smith, Tagboard

Employee engagement insights must drive action

Engagement surveys need to drive meaningful change, but data without action is just noise.

Mike Pilarz, Senior Director of Corporate and Product Marketing, and Laura Cristobal, Senior Product Manager, led a deep dive into managing the employee lifecycle and how HR leaders can use continuous measurement and feedback to maintain engagement at every stage. Kate DeAngeli, Associate Director of People, joined to discuss common pain points (like inconsistent onboarding experiences) and to introduce 15Five’s new Lifecycle Surveys.

Big Takeaways: 

• Holistic View of the Employee Lifecycle

Going beyond talent acquisition means addressing onboarding, development, and retention as an interconnected journey. Small gaps in these stages can grow into bigger organizational issues.

• Early and Ongoing Touchpoints

Frequent check-ins (e.g., at 30, 60, and 90 days) provide “early warning” signals about engagement, role clarity, or support gaps. Catching these issues early can significantly reduce the likelihood of turnover.

• Data-Driven Intervention

Combining quantitative data (survey results, engagement scores) with qualitative insights (open-text feedback) offers a comprehensive view. This helps HR pinpoint exactly where employees are struggling and take action.

Best Quotes:

• “When we get employee lifecycle strategy right, there are huge benefits not only to the employee, but to the business.” – Mike Pilarz, 15Five
• “Our annual engagement survey is such a critical piece of us understanding how much progress we’ve made toward our goals.” – Kate DeAngeli​, Embark Vet

When finance and HR work together, magic happens

One of the standout conversations at the summit was about the relationship between HR and finance. Too often, these teams operate in silos and operate more like negotiators than teammates. 

But the best HR-finance partnerships aren’t transactional. They are built on shared goals and trust. In this session, we got to know Jamy Conrad, VP of People & HR, and Bill Tole, CFO,  whose partnership is like two wheels on a tandem bike, each pedaling in perfect sync so the entire organization moves forward. Their conversation went beyond surface-level cost-versus-people debates and revealed a genuine partnership built on trust and shared goals.

A strong partnership between HR and finance can drive better business outcomes. But if HR wants a seat at the table, it has to bring numbers, not just narratives. 

Big Takeaways: 

• Data-Driven Alignment
  HR metrics can be just as influential as financial KPIs. Bringing clear, compelling data to finance helps shape strategic decisions and shows HR’s tangible impact on the bottom line.
• Trust Through Communication
  Frequent, open dialogue builds a foundation of trust. Honest communication, especially around financial constraints and people needs, prevents surprises and fosters collaborative problem-solving.
• People-Centered Results
  While Finance focuses on cost management, HR can highlight the human element that underpins productivity, innovation, and long-term growth.

Best Quotes:

• “Eighty to ninety percent of the cost for my company is people cost. So I would I would be a fool not to listen to what Jamy is telling me” –Bill Tole, TrustRadius
• “We don’t have the benefit of working in a silo within our company. The whole company is our company.” – Jamy Conrad, TrustRadius 

Performance data fuels meaningful change

We finished off the day with a very special bonus session for our customers.

This session focused on taking performance review data beyond basic collection and using it to create actionable plans. 15Five Product Manager, Sam Harris, showed how 15Five’s features like performance ratings to action plans can guide managers and HR leaders in retaining top performers and supporting underperformers. 

The live demo showed how to use insights on engagement and manager effectiveness to kickstart meaningful initiatives that boost both individual and organizational success.

Best Takeaways: 

• Move from Data Collection to Strategic Action

Annual reviews shouldn’t end with a stack of feedback. Turn that feedback into specific, measurable action plans, like prioritizing stay interviews or manager coaching, to sustain momentum year-round.

• Use Calibration for Fair, Consistent Ratings

Calibrating performance feedback across departments ensures that “top performer” and “low performer” designations are accurate, transparent, and free from individual bias.

• Harness Manager Enablement

Empowering managers with ongoing training ensures they can effectively lead check-ins, develop career roadmaps, and maintain accountability for their teams’ success.

Final thoughts

The 2025 HR Superstars Summit tackled the real issues HR teams face today like HR burnout and employee lifecycles. HR and finance leaders shared honest stories about what’s working (and what isn’t) as they build healthy company cultures, use data to keep their best people, and give managers the tools they need to help their teams succeed. 

We also shared 15Five’s latest capabilities that help HR teams turn employee feedback into concrete action plans. The conversations proved just how much HR has grown into a true strategic partner, working hand-in-hand with executives to create great employee experiences while driving business results.

If you missed this year’s Summit, catch the on-demand replay now. 

Ready to show the real impact of your people programs? See how 15Five gives HR leaders the data and insights they need to make strategic decisions and prove ROI. Book a demo today.

The post Here Are The Best 4 Moments From 15Five’s 2025 HR Superstars Summit  appeared first on 15Five.

I’m thrilled to share that 15Five has acquired Kona, the AI-powered assistant and coach for remote managers. 

Virtual work continues to accelerate, with virtual meetings up 60% since 2020, according to Harvard Business Review, making it even harder for HR teams to diagnose and resolve the manager skill gaps in their organizations that matter most.

Founded in 2019, Kona joins virtual meetings in platforms like Zoom or Google Meet, providing tailored, privacy-conscious coaching and enablement to remote managers in the flow of work. 

Trusted by companies like Amplitude and Cribl, AI-powered Kona uses the context it builds over time to help people managers continuously level up across a wide range of critical skillsets – from leading more effective meetings to navigating difficult performance conversations.

This acquisition will soon allow our customers to deploy manager enablement at scale and drive high-impact behaviors effortlessly, within the existing flow of work. It expands our impact beyond our existing platform––helping solve costly performance, engagement, and retention issues in partnership with people managers.

People managers are the critical lynchpin for maximum employee performance, engagement and retention. The team at Kona has built a leading-edge product that allows organizations to tap into the power of their managers at scale, with surgical precision, in virtual communications channels where leaders are increasingly honing their craft. 

We’re thrilled to join forces with Kona and help HR teams further enhance manager effectiveness.

Learn more about our vision for how HR can enlist people managers as a critical catalyst for higher engagement, retention, and performance.

The post 15Five Acquires Kona, the AI-Powered Manager Effectiveness Coach for Remote Managers appeared first on 15Five.

We need robust data systems that can process, analyze, and surface insights from millions of employee interactions to deliver these capabilities at scale. Our engineering team built a sophisticated data platform that powers these features and enables strategic decision-making for HR leaders. Here’s how we did it.

15Five’s Data Platform Goals

The primary goal in building our data platform was to improve 15Five’s reporting and analytics capabilities, empowering HR admins with actionable insights into employee performance and engagement. The platform uses historical data to enable trend analysis, giving HR professionals a clearer understanding of workforce dynamics over time.  

Beyond daily reporting, the platform allows us to perform advanced business intelligence and predictive analytics using machine learning and deep learning models. These models help HR teams predict employee turnover and identify the key drivers of engagement, allowing organizations to take proactive actions to enhance their work environment.

Before implementing this data platform, our data was scattered across multiple systems, making it difficult to consolidate and analyze. The new platform provides a unified solution that powers our Outcomes Flywheel and supports future application development.

The Data

Most of our data originates from 15Five’s application databases, primarily powered by Amazon RDS Postgres and RDS Aurora (Postgres engine). At the core sits a large Postgres instance supporting our monolithic application and a shared database used by several other microservices. 

These databases store key operational data essential for driving insights across the platform. Our centralized data processing enables cohesive reporting and analysis using data from all areas of the application ecosystem.

The Technology Stack

Since 15Five operates largely in the AWS ecosystem, it was natural to use AWS technologies when building the data platform. This approach ensures scalability, security, and consistency across our infrastructure. 

For our data warehouse solution, we chose AWS Redshift Serverless because it:

• Automatically scales compute resources based on demand
• Eliminates manual infrastructure management 
• Efficiently handles fluctuating workloads
• Ensures continuous data availability for analytics
• Prevents resource over-provisioning

Data Platform Architecture – High-Level Overview

We chose a Data Lake architecture to provide both flexibility and scalability. Amazon S3 serves as our single source of truth, ensuring data is centralized and readily available for analytics, reporting, and machine learning workloads that support strategic HR decisions.

The Data Lake architecture also gives us complete control over the data ingestion cadence for agile decision-making. This means we can optimize when and how data is processed, reducing costs, particularly with our serverless Redshift data warehouse. We align data ingestion with business requirements to maintain efficiency without overprovisioning. 

In the diagram above, you can see the full architecture, starting with data ingestion via AWS DMS into the S3-based Data Lake. From there, AWS Glue Catalog manages metadata, while Redshift Spectrum processes the data. The entire workflow is orchestrated using Apache Airflow and dbt, ensuring smooth data operations and transformations.

Data Ingestion

Our data pipeline ingests data from over 100 transactional database tables. We wanted an easy-to-maintain, scalable solution for this process, and AWS Data Migration Service (DMS) fit the bill. DMS facilitates seamless data replication from our transactional databases into the Data Lake.

We partition the data with hourly granularity, which makes it easier to query and manage specific time periods. The Parquet file format helps us optimize storage and retrieval, ensuring efficient queries for analytics downstream.  

This architecture allows us to handle large data volumes while maintaining flexibility as we scale.

Data Catalog with AWS Glue

To allow Redshift to query data stored in S3, we use AWS Glue to create external schemas that map to S3 prefixes representing our various data tables. Once the Glue database and tables are set up, we have two options: 

1. Use Glue Crawlers to automatically infer the schema and partitions.
2. Use an AWS DMS feature that automatically updates the Glue Catalog as new data arrives.

However, we encountered reliability issues with the DMS feature—it caused frequent crashes, leading to replication slots in the source databases being dropped. This caused data loss, which contradicted the ease-of-maintenance goal we initially sought.

As a solution, we developed a custom process using AWS SNS and AWS Lambda to automatically update the Glue Catalog and partitions when new files land in S3. This in-house solution has ensured real-time Glue metadata and partition updates, providing a more reliable alternative to DMS features. 

Data Transformation with dbt

For data transformation, we rely on dbt (data build tool). Using dbt, we transform raw data into progressively cleaner, deduped, more refined layers, following the medallion architecture. This approach ensures that each layer of data is better structured and more suitable for downstream analytics.

The modular approach of dbt maintains consistent, reliable data transformations.  Our staged transformation process ensures data is always structured and optimized for reporting. 

Data Quality & Testing

To maintain the integrity of our data, we implement thorough testing using dbt and Great Expectations. For dbt, we define tests in model properties YAML files, validating key data quality metrics like uniqueness, non-null values, and relationships between tables. These tests run during the transformation process, catching any issues early on.

We also perform unit tests on dbt models before deployment, ensuring no structural or logical issues impact the accuracy of the model output and the downstream data. For data consumed by external systems (such as in reverse ETL), we follow a Write, Audit, Publish pattern to validate the data.

If any test fails, the entire pipeline (DAG) is halted, and our team is notified via OpsGenie. This prevents bad data from being ingested into the application databases or reaching customers.

Reverse ETL for Processed Data

To serve the transformed data back to the customer-facing application, we reverse ETL the data into our application databases. We unload data from Redshift into an S3 bucket using Redshift’s UNLOAD query. From there, we use PostgreSQL’s s3_import feature to import the data back into the Postgres database that powers the application UI. 

This reverse ETL process ensures that the transformed data is efficiently returned to the application, using upserts with Postgres’ INSERT with ON CONFLICT to maintain data consistency without duplication.

Additional Tooling

Our entire infrastructure is provisioned using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) through Terraform. This allows us to automate the deployment and management of our environments, making the process repeatable and reducing manual effort.

We use Apache Airflow to orchestrate the entire data pipeline, from data transformation with dbt to reverse ETL. Airflow enables us to manage complex workflows efficiently, ensuring each step of the process is executed correctly with visibility into any potential issues.

Conclusion

Building a robust data platform requires careful consideration of architecture, tools, and workflows. We’ve created a scalable, flexible, and efficient platform that benefits both internal teams and external customers using technologies like AWS DMS, AWS Redshift, dbt, Apache Airflow, and others. 

This platform allows us to handle large volumes of data, ensure its quality, and deliver timely insights that drive business decisions.

We’re Hiring

At 15Five, we’re always looking for talented engineers and data scientists. If you’re interested in helping us build the next generation of HR technology data management, apply for our open roles here.

About the author: Ujwal Trivedi is a Principal Engineer at 15Five and leads the development of the company’s Data Platform, enabling AI-driven Strategic-HR and Performance Management products. He focuses on building scalable, data-driven infrastructure that powers 15Five’s AI and analytics for HR leaders.

The post How We Built 15Five’s Data Platform appeared first on 15Five.

“Larry is a tremendous addition to our Board of Directors,” said Jim Morrisroe, CEO of 15Five. “His decades of experience and knowledge of the HR tech space will bring value to 15Five as we evolve in a fast-changing, highly competitive market. He’s not afraid to push boundaries and challenge the status quo. We’re already inspired by his passion.” 

Dunivan has an impressive track record of delivering results as a board chairman and c-level leader. As Chief Revenue Officer at Ceridian (now Dayforce), he played a significant role in the transformation of the business through the immensely successful launch of the Dayforce product, turning a legacy provider into a renowned HR tech disruptor. Dunivan oversaw a 2,500-person team spanning all customer-facing operations and played a key role in leading the business to its 2018 IPO.

Additionally, as CEO of ThinkHR, a leading provider of SaaS-based HR knowledge, compliance and training solutions, Dunivan oversaw the company’s successful merger with Mammoth HR. 

The combined entity is now known as Mineral. He served as board Chair and interim CEO of Mineral before taking his talents to Namely, an integrated HR platform for small-and-midsize businesses, as CEO in 2019. There, he led the business through unprecedented territory during COVID and a massive restructuring to prepare for its eventual sale to Vensure Employer Services.

“15Five uniquely empowers HR leaders to connect their work to key business outcomes while also improving the employee experience, something I’ve long seen leaders struggle with,” said Dunivan. “I’m looking forward to helping shape 15Five’s next chapter as we look to meet customers where they are while also helping them envision–and realize–the potential for how 15Five’s technology can help them accelerate business impact.”

The post 15Five Welcomes Veteran HR Tech Executive Larry Dunivan to its Board of Directors appeared first on 15Five.

When employee disengagement sets in, it can have a detrimental impact on your business and its goals. But how do you recognize the signs of a disengaged employee? And more importantly, what can you do about it?

In this article, we’ll examine the core reasons why employees become disengaged in the workplace, share several examples of employee disengagement, and provide tried-and-tested strategies to improve employee engagement.

What is Employee Disengagement?

Employee disengagement is a lack of interest and commitment to a workplace. It shows up as minimal output, unproductive and inefficient results, prolonged distraction and time-wasting, and a lack of excitement and enthusiasm for the job and its requirements.

Disengaged employees often feel disconnected from their work, the business, and its goals. This results in minimal effort and a challenge to exceed in their role.

Employee disengagement can happen for lots of reasons, including poor leadership, lack of professional development and growth opportunities, excessive workload, poor work/life balance, and unclear expectations.

The Negative Impact of Employee Disengagement

When an employee becomes actively disengaged, this significantly impacts their ability to perform at the required level and fulfill the expectations and responsibilities of their role. 

This damages a business’s return on investment (ROI) because, ultimately, employees are there to drive results. 

Here are a few other ways employee disengagement can impact a workplace:

• Decrease in productivity: Employee disengagement can result in reduced efficiency and effectiveness, which impacts individual, team, and company performance.
• Increase in employee turnover: According to Gallup, disengaged employees are more likely to look for a new job, which impacts employee turnover.
• Increase in hiring costs: A knock-on effect of turnover from disengaged employees is hiring needs and recruitment costs will increase.
• Negative customer experience: Actively disengaged employees might provide a less-than-expected service, impacting customer satisfaction and company reputation.
• Decrease in employee morale: An employee who badmouths a business or actively shows dissatisfaction will negatively impact other employees’ engagement, impacting morale and teamwork.

7 Causes of Employee Disengagement

Employee disengagement stems from factors that reduce motivation, job satisfaction, and commitment.

Here are some of the primary causes of employee disengagement and dissatisfaction in the workplace:

1. Poor management and leadership

Ineffective leadership, including lack of clear direction, support, and unspecific or unclear feedback, will almost certainly lead to employee disengagement. 

Managers who lack effective communication skills, provide inconsistent or unfair treatment, display signs of favoritism, or fail to recognize and reward contributions can erode employee morale and cause deep levels of disengagement within a company.

2. Limited career development and growth opportunities

Employees who feel they don’t have a clear path to career advancement or opportunities to develop new skills may become disengaged. For example, a lack of professional development, performance reviews, or mentoring can make employees feel directionless, stuck, and undervalued.

3. Lack of recognition and appreciation

Employees need to feel that their work is valued and recognized. A lack of acknowledgment for achievements or contributions can lead to disengagement. Regular, meaningful recognition and appreciation through positive feedback, 1-on-1s, and open communication channels are essential for maintaining motivation and employee engagement.

Get 15Five’s 1-on-1 Template here and make your meetings more productive

4. Unclear expectations and roles

When employees aren’t clear about their roles and expectations, they lose direction and purpose. They need to understand how their work drives results and contributes to the organization’s success.

5. Unhealthy workplace culture

A negative or toxic work environment, characterized by poor communication, lack of trust, favoritism, or conflicts, can result in disengagement. And a workplace culture that doesn’t promote diversity, equity, and inclusion or lacks mutual respect and collaboration can quickly alienate well-intentioned employees.

6. No autonomy or empowerment

Employees who don’t feel empowered to make decisions or who are micromanaged may become disengaged. A lack of autonomy can stifle creativity and innovation, leading to frustration and disengagement.

Repetitive or unchallenging work can also lead to boredom, which creates a lack of engagement. Employees are more likely to be engaged when their work is stimulating, use their skills effectively, and are offered opportunities for problem-solving and creativity.

7. Work-Life imbalance

Excessive workloads, lack of flexibility, and poor work-life balance can lead to burnout and disengagement. Employees who are overwhelmed and unable to balance their work and personal lives may feel stressed and undervalued.

How to Recognize Employee Disengagement

According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, only 23% of employees are actively engaged in their workplace. This means that 77% of employees in your workplace are potentially not engaged or actively disengaged, which seriously impacts your company’s ability to achieve results.

Here’s how to recognize the signs of a disengaged employee:

• Decrease in productivity: A noticeable drop in the quality or quantity of work can be a sign of employee disengagement. For example, an employee might finish tasks efficiently or need help to meet deadlines.
• Decrease in quality: Disengaged employees often produce work that lacks attention to detail or creativity. They might meet only the bare minimum requirements or deliver incomplete or substandard work.
• Lack of initiative: Disengaged employees often show a lack of enthusiasm for their work. They avoid taking on new projects, resist change, or show little interest in improving processes or contributing ideas.
• Negative outlook: Disengaged employees may be openly critical of company decisions and show little interest in business outcomes. They may also disagree with policies, complain, and express dissatisfaction with management or other team members.
• Increase in absenteeism: Higher rates of absenteeism and frequent lateness can indicate a lack of employee engagement. However, absenteeism can also indicate employee burnout, illness, or increased caregiving responsibilities.
• Minimal participation: Actively disengaged employees often don’t participate in meetings or team discussions. They avoid conversation, don’t share opinions or ideas, or lack the enthusiasm to volunteer for additional responsibilities or tasks.
• Withdrawal from coworkers: A decrease in interaction with coworkers can be a sign of disengagement. For example, the employee might isolate themselves, collaborate less frequently, or detach themselves from their team.
• Lack of professional development: Employees who are actively disengaged may show little interest in professional growth. For example, they might avoid training opportunities, fail to seek feedback, or show no interest in career advancement.

How to Keep Employees Engaged in the Workplace

Focus on manager enablement

Manager enablement gives managers the right skills, tools, and resources they need to do their jobs and build a positive, healthy work environment. Enablement can provide leaders with training to improve communication, feedback, and conflict-resolution skills.

For example, use 15Five’s Transform tool to eliminate skill gaps, build tailored training, and drive high performance.

Enable your leadership team to succeed by creating clear company goals that can easily be shared and communicated effectively across the organization. Empower managers throughout the decision-making process and involve them where appropriate.

Download our Manager Enablement Playbook for HR Leaders

Conduct employee engagement surveys

Gather regular feedback from employees to identify improvement areas and measure engagement strategies’ effectiveness. 

Use an anonymous employee survey to encourage open, honest feedback. Include questions on job satisfaction, management, work environment, and professional development opportunities. Then, the results will be analyzed to uncover trends and areas that need attention and implement changes. 

Don’t forget to keep employees informed about progress with transparent updates that include the steps you’re taking to make change happen based on their feedback.

Schedule regular employee check-ins

Frequent one-on-one check-ins between managers and employees can help address concerns and provide support, which helps keep employees engaged. Use these meetings to discuss career goals, provide feedback, and address any issues or challenges the employee faces in the workplace. 

One-on-ones are the ideal setting to collaborate with your employees. Use the allotted time to set achievable goals, review their progress, and unblock any barriers to succeeding in their goal.

Show employee recognition

Recognize and appreciate employee efforts and achievements to help drive engagement. For example, implement formal recognition programs that reward employees for outstanding performance, innovation, and teamwork.

Acknowledge achievements publicly in meetings, company newsletters, or internal communication channels like email or Slack. 

Remember that not all employees want public recognition, so check in to ensure that it’s okay to acknowledge the achievement with the broader team or the public.

Invest in professional development

Provide opportunities for learning and growth. For example, hold regular training sessions or workshops that help employees develop new skills, upskill, or expand their knowledge related to their jobs and performance. 

Create personalized career development plans that outline potential career paths and how an employee can achieve that goal. Pair less experienced employees with seasoned professionals who can provide guidance, education, and additional support.

Start increasing engagement levels today

A disengaged employee is often a result of poor leadership, underdeveloped company goals, limited opportunities for professional development, and lack of autonomy. Equip your managers and teams with the right tools to create prepared leadership and engaged employees. Book a demo today.

The post How to Recognize Employee Disengagement in The Workplace (And What To Do About It) appeared first on 15Five.

An organization-wide upskilling strategy that makes learning available to employees to teach them new skills or improve existing ones can create a culture of ongoing learning that keeps you ready to face anything.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything there is to know about upskilling, including how to deploy your own upskilling strategy using tools like 15Five Transform.

Key takeaways

• Through upskilling, companies help employees build up their skills and learn new complementary ones.
• Providing upskilling opportunities helps with employee engagement and retention.
• Deploying an upskilling strategy means making learning resources available, supporting employees through their learning journey, and constantly improving your process.
• While leaders often cite budget and change as reasons to resist upskilling initiatives, the benefits vastly outweigh the risks.

Understanding upskilling

Upskilling is exactly what it says on the tin: upgrading your skills. From an employee perspective, it means improving existing skills and learning new ones to either get better at a current role or move up the career track. From the perspective of the organization, upskilling means training your existing workforce to meet skill gaps instead of hiring new talent.

While learning a new skill can be as simple as reading a book or taking a course, an organization-wide upskilling strategy goes a little further than that. It needs to proactively identify opportunities for upskilling and help employees rise to new challenges while seeing a return on investment (ROI) on the resources spent to train these skills.

It’s partly about having a more skilled workforce and partly about fostering career development for employees to make them feel more fulfilled at work.

Upskilling vs. reskilling

Upskilling is about building up your skill set to be better at your current job or take on more responsibility. Compare this to reskilling, which is about learning completely new skills to take on a new role.

A software developer learning a new programming language is upskilling. If that same developer learns how to manage software projects to aim for a role as a product or project manager, then they’re reskilling.

Upskilling is typically less resource-intensive and more valuable to your organization than reskilling. It takes a lot less time and effort to upgrade existing skills or learn similar ones than it does to learn a completely new role.

Next, let’s see why organizations should put significant resources into upskilling their employees.

The Benefits of Upskilling Employees

Employees might get a ton of benefits from your upskilling strategy, from career opportunities to a greater sense of belonging at work, but this strategy benefits your organization, too. Here’s how:

• Enhanced employee performance: Seems obvious, right? By putting resources into helping employees build up their skills, they’ll be better at their jobs. You won’t just see this in hard numbers either. More skilled employees can help you unlock new opportunities you’d never have found otherwise.
• Increased employee engagement: Data from Axonify shows that a vast majority of workers (92%) say that the right kind of training makes them feel more engaged with their work. If boosting engagement is a big priority for your organization, then upskilling should be, too.
• Talent retention: According to a survey of 1,600 professionals from edX, 77% of employees said they were more likely to stay with their employer longer with a better learning and development program. Considering how hard (and expensive) replacing an employee can be, your upskilling strategy can be a huge cost-saving initiative.
• Talent attraction: Having a robust upskilling strategy means you can offer new hires learning and development opportunities that help them stay current in their field. For many candidates, that’s a huge bonus.
• Business growth and adaptability: Having a more skilled workforce means you’ll be crushing more goals, finding new growth opportunities, and getting prepared for anything your industry might throw at you.

Upskilling is a win-win for organizations and employees that pays dividends for years. But many organizations still don’t have a robust strategy for implementing this, likely because at first glance the investment seems to outweigh the benefits.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

So let’s cover how it’s done, both at an employee and organizational level.

How to Upskill Employees

When you get into the nitty-gritty of upskilling employees, it boils down to just a few steps:

• Find learning opportunities.
• Provide the resources employees need to learn.
• Offer continuous feedback and support.
• Monitor their progress.
• Celebrate their achievements.
• Rinse and repeat.

Seems simple, right?

Find learning opportunities

The first step to helping employees level up their skills? Finding out which skills need the help. Prioritize opportunities that mesh with the organization’s goals, but leave room to listen to employees and learn what they’re interested in learning.

Provide the resources employees need to learn

Core to your upskilling efforts is making the whole process easier for your employees. For some organizations, that might just mean subsidizing learning by making industry-specific books and training available to them for free. For others, it’ll mean having a dedicated learning platform with pre-approved courses and content matching specific roles. The latter involves a more significant investment but offers more standardization across departments.

Offer continuous feedback and support

Managers have a big role to play in upskilling. By closely following an employee’s learning and giving them opportunities to put what they learn to the test, managers can make or break an upskilling journey. Feedback will keep employees headed in the right direction, while support will encourage them to push their limits.

Monitor progress

While a manager can support and guide someone on their team as they learn a new skill, you should have another method of tracking an employee’s progress toward their upskilling goals, too. Dedicated learning tools can usually allow you to track specific metrics to gauge how employees are doing. If you’re not using these, regular check-ins on a specific course or book can be enough.

Celebrate achievements

Don’t skip this step. It might seem like an afterthought, but celebrating employees when they hit their learning goals motivates them to keep learning while encouraging others to start their own learning journey. This can be as simple as having a dedicated Slack channel celebrating upskilling wins as they happen. You might even want to highlight these achievements in an all-hands meeting.

Rinse and repeat

Your upskilling process probably won’t be an all-star winner the first go-around. The first employees who take advantage of this new benefit can—and should—have a hand in helping you shape it. Ask them for their feedback as they learn. Is the content you’re providing clear? Is it actually helping them achieve their goals? What would they like to see the next time they need to learn something?

Implementing an Upskilling Strategy

Working with employees to level up their skills is one thing; rolling out an upskilling strategy across your entire organization is another. Here are some things to keep in mind as you’re working on your own strategy.

Set clear goals

Just like your employees, your strategy needs to have its own goals. Are you aiming to improve performance across the board? Do you have serious skill gaps in a specific department that need to be addressed?

Some upskilling strategies might only have short-term goals aimed at fixing a few glaring problems. Others are long-term investments meant to keep improving the entire workforce’s skills over time. Either way, it’s best to set these goals in stone before you build out the rest of your strategy.

Seek buy-in (and feedback) from stakeholders

Just like you need to set goals early, you need to get buy-in from relevant stakeholders early. If the HR team is already on board, you’ll next need to get the C-suite involved. They usually control the purse strings and can give the green light on these initiatives. To get the buy-in you need, you have to show how upskilling ties directly into business goals. Here are a few ideas:

• “Putting more effort into helping existing employees grow means less budget spent hiring replacements because they’re less likely to leave.”
• “Promoting internally for management means having managers with a deep understanding of our culture. Upskilling is essential for that.”
• “We currently have a few skill gaps keeping us from hitting our next goals. That’s why we need an upskilling strategy.”

Once you have buy-in, you can also rely on stakeholders to give you feedback as you work on your strategy. Executives, managers, and even individual employees are all great sources for this feedback.

Download The Executive Buy-in Playbook: Getting C-Suite Support For Your Strategic HR Initiatives

Try to tie learning goals with the organization’s goals

Baked into your strategy should be a framework for determining which learning goals deserve the most investment. Ideally, upskilling employees should serve both the employee and the organization equally by developing skills essential to its growth. This isn’t always possible, however, and in some cases you’ll have to allow employees to pursue less important learning goals to improve their overall engagement and help them make progress in their own careers.

Use the right tools

Simpler upskilling strategies might not need dedicated tools; it might be enough to allow employees to order relevant business books through your accounting department. But if you want an in-depth upskilling strategy with an impact that’s inherently measurable and provable, you need a tool like 15Five.

15Five is a performance management platform that also supports your upskilling initiatives with content, coaching, and metrics for measuring progress. Curious to see how it works? Book a demo with our team.

Find ways to encourage participation

Some employees will make the most of an upskilling opportunity without much encouragement. Others, not so much. For this latter group, you’ll have to work on ways to incentivize them. That could be by tying promotion opportunities with upskilling, giving small bonuses to people who complete more learning goals, or even just giving away gift cards when employees take on a new learning opportunity.

Keep track of progress

If you’re using a dedicated performance management platform like 15Five, you’ll have a range of metrics you can use to track progress as employees learn. If you’re not, you’ll still want to use KPIs (key performance indicators) to monitor how upskilling is improving things at your organization.

Make ongoing learning part of your culture

This requires more of a long-term investment, but making ongoing learning part of your company’s culture comes with some serious benefits:

• Reducing resistance to upskilling initiatives.
• Turning more employees into self-directed learners.
• Attracting top talent.
• Getting more buy-in for future upskilling initiatives.

So, how do you make ongoing learning part of your culture? Reward employees who seek out learning opportunities and encourage your C-suite to share their own learning journeys with the company. Reinforce the importance of learning as a solution to every potential problem, and people will start to catch on.

How to Overcome Common Challenges with Upskilling

Having a robust upskilling strategy comes with a ton of benefits, but it isn’t always the easiest thing to get off the ground. You’ll have to deal with challenges common with any new HR initiative.

Budget constraints

Even the simplest upskilling strategies require a significant investment, which can have budget-minded leaders hitting the kill switch early.

As an HR pro, you need to clearly outline the benefits of upskilling in ways your leadership team can understand. Statistics can show how other organizations like yours are seeing results from upskilling while showing the projected ROI of your strategy can help ease any budget concerns.

Resistance to change

Our brains love to stick with what they know even when a different strategy would serve them better. The best way to counter this? Lower the stakes. A pilot project lets you take your first steps in rolling out your upskilling strategy with a smaller team, meaning a smaller investment and a smaller change. Even the most change-resistant leader will have a hard time saying no.

Balancing work and learning

If you expect employees to do all of their upskilling work outside their 9-5, you’re probably not going to get a lot of takers. Provide a way for employees to contribute to their learning during work hours—even if just for a few minutes each day.

Making it a Priority

When you find skill gaps in your organization, it’s tempting to just throw a job posting out there and hope that fixes the problem. But with the costs involved in finding, training, and retaining new talent, you’ll often get better results when you look inward.

Not only will you plug the skill gaps, but you’ll also improve employee engagement and help with retention. Better yet, upskilling also allows existing employees to get more out of their jobs and feel like they’re making progress in their careers.

The post What is Upskilling? A Guide to Growing Your Employees Skillset appeared first on 15Five.