Employees appreciate when training is made available for them to learn new skills and grow. However, they often lack the motivation to invest quality time and use everything that training programs have to offer. As a result, funds allocated for improving employees’ skill sets tend to have a low return on investment.
One big reason for this outcome is that the training programs are usually badly organized. Another very common reason is a company-wide lack of motivation.
Employees need initiatives that are exciting for them. These initiatives should center around the benefits workers will experience when completing their training. In this article, we’ll talk about how to implement new tactics to help motivate your employees to learn new skills.
Encourage Active Learning
Whether it’s an elementary student or a seasoned employee, active learning always brings the best results. When the learner is engaged and placed in a leading role while they study something, their performance increases exponentially.
By being active learners, employees experience their new skills through a transparent process that provides feedback, thus helping them realize how their training improves them. In addition, this allows you to spot their strengths and weaknesses, opening an opportunity to create a customized learning path for each employee.
Offer Digital Courses
The post-pandemic working culture leaves little to no room for anything other than digital. People are used to working from home and constantly turn to their devices for their work assignments. So, naturally, employees can be more motivated to learn new skills digitally if they know it will take them only a small portion of their day.
Conveniently, digital courses allow learners more flexibility around their study time. Mobile devices allow employees to revisit their lessons even when they’re on the go.
A great way to leverage digital courses is to use the power of videos throughout the lessons. Many online learning hubs implement videos as their main lesson format, so businesses can follow in their footsteps or even utilize their services to create great company training programs.
Leverage Automation
Using an LMS (Learning Management System) is a great way to keep track of all of your employee’s training progress. This type of software tool is powerful enough to help you with several aspects of your training programs:
- Making courses available digitally 24/7 with easy access and on every type of device
- Adding options for interactivity and team collaboration
- Collecting data on all of your employees’ training progress, engagement, development, and growth
- Analyzing that data to discover opportunities for improving the training programs and help each employee according to their individual development
Focus on Present Needs
Every business is built differently, so it requires unique sets of skills and abilities to run smoothly. Naturally, your employees can be more effective in their performance if they focus on improving the skills that your business specifically needs.
Assessing what your end goals are and the current capacity of your workforce can teach you a lot about how you should organize your training programs. You can target specific employees with customized training sessions. In turn, employees will be motivated knowing that you’re taking a particular interest in developing their career paths and investing in their upskilling.
For example, having multilingual teams is one thing that the majority of companies can definitely benefit from. So designing a training program on how to learn a new language quickly can be a win-win situation for both you and your employees.
Use Gamified Training Sessions
One simple tactic to get your employees to be more excited to learn new stuff is to power up your courses with gamified lessons. People are naturally more engaged when fun is involved, and they are more motivated to complete a task if it’s done through competition and winning.
A big reason why people give up on studying is boredom, so gamification is a great combatant to this issue. Implementing story modes and quizzes can boost engagement, and having achievements and badges for successfully completed course units simulates the game-like experience for employees.
Recognize and Reward
Rewarding employees whenever they go above and beyond with their training performance is a huge motivational tactic. When employees’ efforts are recognized, they tend to maximize their productivity not only when they learn new skills but in their regular work as well.
There are many ways you can reward outstanding employees for their achievements. One way is to offer financial bonuses or travel packages for industry events or business conferences.
However, relying solely on extrinsic rewards shows more promise in getting employees to show initial interest only. Intrinsic rewards that focus on giving employees more value for their time and effort are always better in the long run.
Take Advantage of Employee Feedback
Encouraging employees to provide input in their daily work activities can be eye-opening for your company’s ecosystem. When it comes to training, listening to what employees have to say about their experiences can teach you how to adjust your approach to the entire issue.
For example, if your employees eagerly engage with a course and give positive feedback on it, it means you’re going in the right direction. On the contrary, if they’re not sure how a course is relevant to their growth, it might be better to reevaluate your training strategy.
Final Thoughts
Every company needs a tailored approach to motivating its employees. The tactics we’ve talked about in this post will certainly help both you and your employees reach those upskilling goals, and now it’s up to you, as a team, to adjust them and utilize them in a way that suits your company best.
Keeping up with the trends is crucial for making the most out of your team’s capacity. Finally, actively listening to your employees’ concerns, adapting to their needs, and rewarding their efforts all lead to creating a positive culture of empowerment and team spirit.
