How Nonprofits Can Use LinkedIn Learning to Mitigate Turnover and Burnout
The nonprofit sector can face unique challenges with burnout, turnover, and limited professional development resources. But this is where LinkedIn Learning can help.
Let’s explore how nonprofit leaders can use LinkedIn Learning to help promote a culture of balance, commitment, and inspiring growth.
The cost of overlooking career development at nonprofits
Lean teams and tight budgets are often the norm in the nonprofit world. It's common for nonprofit professionals to wear many hats, juggle turbulent schedules, and work with limited resources and budgets. While having many responsibilities can be exciting and lead to growth, it can just as easily lead to burnout. Which can lead to turnover. Which can lead to more burnout.
The difference between fostering a culture of burnout or growth can come down to how multiple responsibilities are added to an employee’s existing workload, and the type of support and development opportunities provided alongside these new job functions. Does the employee see the new responsibility as a vital part of their personal growth plan? Or is it just a one-off responsibility that adds more work and stress to their life?
If new work responsibilities don’t feel like they are part of a larger growth plan, or come with opportunities to learn, there’s a chance that, over time, an employee might feel disengaged or burnt out. But it’s never too late to start creating a culture of growth, and with LinkedIn Learning, you can start today.
Learning as a path to wellbeing and growing
Only 23% of nonprofits have a formal employee retention strategy, according to a talent retention survey by Nonprofit HR.
Factors like salary and benefits surely affect retention. However, what appears to matter even more is whether employees are engaged in a culture of learning opportunity and growth. Employees consistently rank “opportunities to learn and grow” as a top driver of positive work culture, with 94% of employees reporting that they’d stay at a company longer if they were offered more learning opportunities.
To put it another way, when organizations invest more into people, people invest more into organizations.
Building the right skills also helps team members become more effective at their work. To start, your nonprofit can institute a test-and-learn environment to help ensure that skill development is relevant and applicable. The only thing you can’t do is wait for an “ideal” time to get started, because that time may never come.
Examples of learning courses that can energize your team
Nonprofit leaders and employees will find a comprehensive catalog of learning resources on LinkedIn Learning.
Whatever topic or skill you or your team needs to learn, you’ll likely find multiple options to choose from (with ratings and reviews to help you choose) and perhaps even a Learning Path that can guide you through multiple courses on the same subject. You can select what appeals to you, learn at your own pace, and discover other resources to further expand your knowledge and skills. To get started, simply visit LinkedIn Learning and search for what you need.
Want a little help getting familiar with the platform? Here are a few LinkedIn Learning courses that can assist your nonprofit with building a culture of wellbeing, growth, and resilience:
Thrive by building resistance with Dr. Emily Anhalt — Psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt helps you build mindsets, skills, and strategies to build your resilience, helping you to turn challenges into opportunities for growth.
Creating a career plan with Dr. Chaz Austin — Nonprofit leaders and employees can be more secure and confident when they feel like their career has a positive trajectory. Here Dr. Chaz Austin guides you through the key steps of career planning, personal branding, and networking.
Support your mental health at work with Melody Wilding, Jay Fields, Scott Shute, and Joan Rosenberg — This Learning Path features four courses, all of which can help you promote and improve mental health in your workplace. Here you’ll find advice on managing emotions at work, dealing with changes, and even some meditations that can help your team stay balanced and mindful.
How LinkedIn Learning helps nonprofits build a learning culture
LinkedIn Learning is accessible, the content is expert-led, and the learning environment is highly flexible — a huge plus for nonprofit teams with many unique roles.
As a learning and development (L&D) specialist, Abigail St. John is responsible for helping ensure that Canadian Blood Services’ employees and leaders grow and flourish. And for that, they rely on LinkedIn Learning.
“With so many different roles in the organization, there are always opportunities to move internally,” Abigail explains, “and employees are encouraged to do so by their leaders. This helps to not only retain our talent, but also to build employees’ skills and knowledge, which can be shared across the organization.”
The results speak for themselves. “We found that 72% of our people say they’ve had the opportunity to learn and grow at work in the last year,” Abigail says. “Almost 66% of the organization has activated their learning licenses, and of that 66%, approximately 38% are frontline workers.”
Abigail also says that the learning data she sees is one of the most encouraging signs of the program’s success. “The number of learning hours and the time people are learning is all over the place,” she says. “People are picking this up whenever it’s convenient for them.”
“A lifelong journey you can participate in”
Ready to drive L&D engagement across your organization? Abigail and Canadian Blood Services have six takeaways to keep in mind as you go about your mission:
Prioritize truly equitable access
Give employees the freedom to learn what they want
Differentiate L&D from on-the-job training
Get the enthusiastic support of leadership
Partner with other teams across the organization
Provide ongoing support
Have you struggled to find time to build your own L&D program? You are absolutely not alone.
Let LinkedIn Learning handle the hard part for you. Nonprofits are able to tap into the full library of these learning and development courses at a special discounted rate.
Visit LinkedIn Learning and discover how easy it is to build structured L&D programs that keep employees engaged, motivated, and moving in the right direction.
