One way to gauge how much employees contribute to business performance is to track how quickly they are given roles with more responsibility. New Korn Ferry research proves that highly learning agile people are highly promotable.

One study looked at 83 district managers at a global pharmaceutical company. After grouping individuals by low, moderate, and high learning agility scores, our analysis found that those high in learning agility received twice as many promotions over the 10-year period as those low in learning agility. A second analysis found that learning agility accounted for up to 18% of why a person was promoted more frequently than others, even after controlling for gender or education level.