PEOPLE
Fred Thompson, CEO of the learning platform Thirst, spent two decades building technology for corporate learning teams before founding the company in 2020, and his argument is that the answer lives inside the job itself.“ When learning is embedded, collaborative and applied, it becomes easier to demonstrate tangible value,” Fred tells Business Chief.“ Not through training volumes but by enabling better performance, faster onboarding and a workforce that continuously learns from itself.”
The Big Stay and the Great Detachment Gallup calls the mood the Great Detachment. Global engagement fell to 20 % last year, a slide the firm prices at more than US $ 10tn in lost productivity. American engagement has touched
You can’ t create culture, you can merely encourage and foster it, and that starts from the top
Fred Thompson CEO Thirst a ten-year low, and managers, the people every retention plan leans on, fell furthest.“ Employee engagement peaked in 2020, at 36 %,” says Jim Harter, Gallup’ s Chief Scientist for Workplace Management and Well-Being,“ but it has generally trended downward since then.”
The detachment is a debt waiting to be called.
Only 28 % of American workers think it is a good time to find a quality job; when that number recovers, the exits will follow, at a cost Gallup puts at up to twice the leaver’ s salary. Companies are not so much retaining their people as holding their coats. Gallup’ s US $ 10tn, put into context, is more than the economies of Japan and Germany combined. If workplace apathy were a country, only the US and China would outproduce it.
L & D as a retention strategy The evidence for Fred’ s argument is old and consistent. The Work Institute finds lack of career growth the leading cause of voluntary exits, and 94 % of employees tell LinkedIn’ s Workplace Learning Report they would stay longer at a company that invests in their development. The training budget is the rare line item that doubles as a retention plan. businesschief. com 79