Why an Employee's Personal Growth matters to Organizations

Studies show that higher personal growth is critical to encouraging employees to become your ambassador.

Why is Personal Growth important for an organization?

“Your ability to grow a company is dependent upon your ability to help others grow.” [1] — Geoffrey James, Inc.com, Contributing Editor

Personal growth or personal development is a key driver of employee engagement; business cultures that emphasize it show improvement in top-level performance as well as stronger and more sustainable profitability [2]. Personal growth also plays a significant role in an employee’s ambassadorship. When employees feel engaged at work, they are more likely to tell others how much they love their workplace. This advocacy enhances your organization’s reputation, leading to better revenue growth and big improvements in employee retention.

Our studies at the Happily platform show strong employee brand advocacy's impact on an organization.

The Relationship between Personal Growth and Employee Advocacy

“Employees who don’t feel they are experiencing personal growth in the organization do not recommend their organization to others.”

Having collected feedback from over 1,300 participants through our daily pulse surveys in the studies on the relationship between personal growth and advocacy, we considered an employee’s likeliness to recommend their workplace to others based on three different aspects of personal growth:

Self-perceived
Do you feel like you are learning and growing?
Manager-supported personal growth
Does your manager encourage and support your development?
Organizational support
Do you feel like you’re progressing in your professional development at this company?

Employee's Personal Growth is Vital for Your Organization's Future — Figure 1. The percentage of persons who feel they do not have personal growth at all and would recommend the organization, and the percentage of persons who feel they fully have personal growth and would recommend the organization, compared to the persons in the same group based on three variant factors.

Here are our findings:

Individuals who experienced personal growth are 2.6x more likely to recommend their workplace to others than those who do not.
Individuals who had manager-supported personal growth are 1.8x more likely to recommend their workplace to others.
Individuals with organizational support are also 1.8x more likely to recommend their workplace to others (see Figure 1).

As a result, employees who do not feel they have experienced personal growth at all in a self-perceived aspect are more than 3x less likely to recommend their organizations to others.

Regarding manager support and organizational support, employees who do not feel they have experienced personal growth are 2x less likely to recommend their organization as a great place to work.

Clearly, personal growth plays a significant role in employee brand advocacy.

Unlocking your Growth Culture

A growth mindset among your employees is not only very important for their personal growth and resilience but also for your long-term revenue growth and your ability to attract the best talent out there.

Five Steps To Improve personal growth and development

Be sure to align personal growth goals with team and organizational goals
Be clear and transparent when you offer guidance on the career path and development goals
Make sure your managers are accountable for supporting employee growth
Provide coaching to help facilitate personal growth
Provide access to systems that support self-learning

Check out other ideas from this Forbes study, and subscribe to our blog here while you’re at it.

How can Happily help you?

Happily.ai is an all-in-one employee experience platform that helps foster a resilient workplace. Organizations use Happily to run daily check-ins, enable better conversations, and develop people managers. And real-time insights help you better understand your teams and people. Visit us on our website, or sign up for a demo here!