Lunch and Learn events can be very useful and make a big difference to your organization. The how of these events is critical for employee appreciation and growth. The importance of allowing your entire team to have input cannot be overstated. One of the key factors in employees feeling appreciated and valued is their ability to directly contribute, be heard, and make decisions.
Lunch and Learn events do not serve anyone when they are coerced, planned from the top down, or involve lectures. But, when employees are involved and provide input, help plan or present, and make choices about the content, format, or frequency, they become more engaged, interested, and feel more appreciated.
Employees leave for a variety of reasons. Many employers assume that employees leave because they found a higher paying job, but pay is only one of the many reasons employees leave. And often, it’s not even the top reason stated. According to Gallup surveys pay is only the reason people leave 22% of the time. Many of the reasons employees leave can be addressed through intentionally planned Lunch and Learn events. Other reasons include:
- Employes don’t feel like they have people at work who care about them as an individual
- Employees don’t feel like they have autonomy over their performance. This involves the ability to make choices and have influence over their sphere of responsibility.
- Employees don’t feel like they (or their organization) makes a difference.
- Employees don’t feel appreciated
- Engagement is low
- Employees feel stuck in a rut. Creativity is low.
- They don’t see chances to grow or advance.
- They need more flexible schedules
- Pay or benefits are insufficient
Not all of these issues can be fixed through a Lunch and Learn event. But, they can be an important part of a comprehensive employee recognition program and events to show appreciation. Lunch and Learn events can tackle communication issues and facilitate better communication, planning, opportunities for growth, advancement, team building, extra learning opportunities, and leadership development.
Benefits of a Lunch And Learn
There are many reasons that you may want to host lunch and learn events for your employees. One of the greatest benefits of a lunch and learn is the additional growth and training that it gives to employees. Lunch and learns can be tools for cross-training and growth advancement tools.
But here are many more reasons a Lunch and Learn is a great investment into your employees.
1. Promotes Employee Growth
At its core, Lunch and lLearn events promote employee growth. Employees have an opportunity to hone in on specific skills, improve their knowledge base, or learn about other niches. Find out what aspects of growth your employees are the most interested in through Polls or Surveys on Thanks. Lunch and Learns are a great time to hone in on skills training, cross training or leadership mentoring.
Even when the Lunch and Learn involves classes not directly related to work responsibilities, employees still grow and develop talents.
2. Cross Training Opportunities
Pull in presenters from other departments, and specialists to teach your team. Allow employees the chance to learn what other departments do and to learn skills gained through cross-training. You may have employees who want to learn how to code, learn more about marketing, or hone in on their sales skills. Cross-training provides a means for employees to grow and can help them with future opportunities for advancement. It’s beneficial for managers, as well, because departmental growth can come from within the company and employees can continue to advance in their careers without leaving the company. Use Lunch and Learns to cross-train interested team members for possible positions that may open up in the future.
3. Team Building
Use Lunch and Learns as a way to build and promote team unity. Ice breaker games can be used to help employees get to know others from different departments or offices. Incorporate fun activities into your Lunch and Learns. Have employees vote on their favorite team activities through Polls.
Lunch and Learn events can be used for work clubs and to build community. Consider the 2 pizza rule. Keep events small enough that 2 pizzas can feed the group. Smaller groups make communication easier because every employee has greater chances to speak their opinions and ideas in the group. It also facilitates friendships and mentoring.
Mentoring and friendship most naturally occurs in smaller groups where employees can get to know eachother better. By hosting small lunch and learn events, or breaking a larger group into smaller clubs, you help to facilitate a closer knit group.
4. Clubs and Groups
Consider promoting team unity through club Lunch and Learn events that encourage employees to meet and participate in whatever the club activities are, whether that’s learning a new cooking skill, a discussion, or an activity. You could have a club that practices a foreign language, meets to practice speaking and presenting, or other skills-based clubs.
Start a book club and give the book to employees across every department that wants to meet to discuss it. Employees from various departments meeting to discuss a book can enhance and build relationships across the company. The same benefits can be reaped from walking clubs, hiking clubs, and bowling clubs. Employees can participate and recommend topics through Ideas.
It may seem overwhelming, but remember that you don’t have to offer every type of club to have success in them. Simply starting a single club can build cohesion among many of your team. Encouraging an employee sports team can build friendships and bridge communication across departments.
5. Mentoring Opportunities
As a twist on Lunch and Learn events, you could incorporate mentoring groups. A mentoring group would meet together regularly (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to discuss challenges and mentor each other. Mentoring groups should be no larger than 4 or 5 people so that the group has a chance to really get to know each other and everyone can participate in the group.
Cover the tab for lunch to encourage regular meetings, but allow the team to decide how often, when and where to meet. Topics should be chosen by the group. Provide a list of possible topics incase your mentoring groups feel stuck, but allow them to determine the focus of the group. Many organizations arrange for a mentoring group to meet for a predetermined amount of time, such as 6 months. If your group is really clicking, they may choose to meet longer than that.
Some topics for mentoring groups to discuss can include:
- Introductions: Career background, what interested them in their current jobs, what their goals are in the mentoring group, how to best communicate with each other.
- Career planning: What employees hope to achieve in 5-10 years. What skills each person wants or needs to achieve those goals.
- Work/Life Balance: How achieve it, challenges in balancing, how to achieve success without sacrificing family life.
- Upcoming professional challenges: Issues faced in the last year, lessons learned, challenges currently faced.
- Risk Taking: what are the benefits, when is risk bad, how to overcome fear
- Skills based questions: What skills are critical to desired positions, how employees can improve public speaking skills, What leadership skills are the hardest to achieve, etc
- Networking: best ways to build a network, how to stay in communication with influencers who don’t live close by, who are key people to know within an industry, field, or company.
- Evaluation: what was successful about the mentoring group, what should be changed next time, what challenges did the group face.
6. Build Presentation Skills
Allow knowledge and skilled employees to present and teach what they know to their colleagues. Schedule only 1-2 employees to present for about 10 minutes so that they have time to answer questions and not run over 30 minutes.
Employees can speak about recent challenges and how they overcame them, tell stories of previous successes, or teach about a skill they have learned. Even employees who have only recently learned a new skill can teach what they have learned. Allow peers to nominate star employees to teach, or to volunteer themselves through the Nominate feature.
Teaching and presenting reaps helps presenters to know and solidify their understanding of the material they are teaching. Employees can hone in on their presenting skills, decrease their skills of public speaking, and increase leadership skills. The rest of the team gets to know the presenter better as well so it can even help to bridge gaps a little more.
7. Improve Collaboration
Lunch and Learn events can be a great way to employees from different departments to get to know each other under a shared interest. This increases collaboration as employees know and develop greater friendships.
If one of your main goals is to increase collaboration among departments or divisions, then plan lunch and learn events that allow for open discussions, team building activities, or shared group interests. Presenter-type lunch and learn events don’t build collaboration as much as lunches where everyone participates and has a voice.
8. Boost Retention
When used correctly, Lunch and Learn events can increase retention. As employees feel valued and have opportunities to grow and advance, employee retention increases. Many of the top reasons for employee turnovers can be partially combatted with the right Lunch and Learn events. If employees don’t feel like they have a voice in the company or decisions being made, then open discussions during Lunch and Learn events can provide an outlet for them to voice opinions and ideas.
Lunch and Learn events can be used to provide an opportunity for advanced training, to learn new skills, or participate in a mentoring group. In this way, employees who feel stuck in their positions can have a path to improve their skill set or become better qualified for upcoming positions.
Employee engagement increases as employees build greater friendships with colleagues and across the company, can grow, and have a chance to mentor others.
9. Enhanced Creativity
Getting stuck in a rut can happen even in the best and most loved careers. Fortunately, getting back the spark of creativity can be as simple as a vacation, mental break, or learning something new. If your team feels that they are stuck in a rut with a current project, consider offering them a Lunch and Learn event designed to spark their imagination.
Lunch and Learns can be used for seemingly unrelated events such as an art class, writing class, or yoga class. These breaks from the normal work week can help to inspire and foster greater creativity. Often during a mental break, creativity comes and can inspire answers to work challenges. Escape room adventures, or an inspiring mentor or speaker can also bring the spark back into the work arena.
10. Build Diversity
Use a Lunch and Learn event to build diversity and tolerance within your team. Often people think that diversity is only allowing other people from different backgrounds to work as a team. But then, they feel annoyed, and irritated when working moms want their schedules adjusted, or employees have religious or cultural restrictions. Diversity means the willingness and acceptance of other ways of doing things, approaching problems, and prioritizing different values.
Use a Lunch and Learn to have diversity conversations. Discuss how employees who need various religious holidays, must work around kid schedules, or work from home are valuable players in the organization. Introduce and educate employees about various cultures within your organization. Invite employees to share their cultures, traditions, and food.
Lean into discomfort and embrace honest opinions, even if they challenge your beliefs. Avoid feeling attacked when opinions differ from your. Set the stage as a leader and allow for long-held traditions about “how things are done” to be challenged.
In order for diversity conversations to be effective, allow for changes within teams and processes as the team discusses alternative ways to improve and change the workplace. This will demonstrate that the organization is committed to diversity and willing to break with tradition when it makes sense.
Conclusion
Lunch and Learn events become useful tools for employee growth. For more information on ways to improve employee retention and reduce turnover, check out these related articles.
Employee Engagement Improves Employee Retention
Why Offering Workspace Choices Empower Employee Engagement
Best Ways To Reward Teams for Optimal Performance
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.