If you haven’t seen it yet, this month’s Success Story allowed us a great opportunity to speak with the team at Pennsylvania-based manufacturer Restek Corporation and uncover some very cool tales concerning the award-winning company’s take on employee engagement activities centered on workplace team building.

We framed the article as a case study on Founder and former Head Coach Paul Silvis' journey to find a successor.  This turned out to be employee Don McCandless, who took over as Head Coach in 2005, 20 years after Paul founded the company.  And while we did speak to and quote Don, there's more to his story at Restek that was left out of the piece due to length.

Don’s new role in the company has been marked by some innovative actions that underscore the importance of learning at Restek.  Although employee development clearly sprang from the company's founding values, Don has made it a point to bring this cultural element to the forefront.  He told us he wants to make leveraging the abilities of their people as concrete an aspiration as the company's regular sales goals.  Just as Restek aspires to be a $50 million company by 2010, so Don stressed that each employee should attain their own “50 by 2010” collection of new things learned. 

And they're certainly on their way.  In our article, we quoted former employee Brad Rightnour, who was with Restek in its early years, but we didn't explain why he left or what he's doing now.  After more than 16 years of being immersed in their culture, he left to buy his father's business.  "I have the full support of Restekians," Rightnour told us.

This is the business version of the "teach a man to fish" fable, and it has applications for metrics that matter to business leaders.  For instance:

• Contrary to popular belief, we've often seen that if you put it out there that employees can use the training they receive at your company to go elsewhere if they choose, they often won't, realizing that this combined with other progressive employee engagement activities makes staying put their best option.
• On this point of retention, a hightenend focus on learning and development for full-time equivalents (FTEs) can further improve this when people in a temp role, such as interns or seasonal staff, see how well FTEs are treated on this front, and subsequently look for permanent work with your company.
• Improved learning and development for employees that do leave can have perhaps its greatest impact on the bottom line when those former employees work at a firm that is or can become a partner or vendor to yours, which can lower those related line-item costs.

What are your thoughts on how organizations should approach learning?