There are majorly two types of employees in every organization – one, who are interested in their personal growth and expect the company to invest in providing them L&D opportunities. The others are those who find training boring, especially when it’s compulsory.
But this does not make any of them good or bad. A good employee may find training programs a waste of their time because they feel it leaves them with very little knowledge. They may also feel that compulsory training is not adding value to their everyday work routine.
Regardless of the reason, it is important for the company to ensure employees take benefit of the training programs. Training helps them learn ways to better perform their job and acquire a new skill set.
Here are 6 ways to motivate employees to participate in a compulsory training and successfully complete it:
Explain the purpose:
When employees don’t know why they’re forced to learn something new, it’s quite obvious for them to think of it as just another task. They will never take it seriously and keep skipping the topics to just reach the end.
Help them understand the aim of the training and how exactly it will benefit their growth. Giving them examples of a successful existing employee who worked their way up in the company by acquiring new skills through training is a great way of getting their attention.
- Alter their inherent perception:
Believe it or not, most employees feel participating in training as tedious. You need to change this perception by helping them understand the merits of participation.
Their beliefs that training is something that is being conducted just for the sake of it must be changed. Make them see that where they are right now, is not where they belong and training is solely for their development.
Pay attention to their needs:
One of the biggest mistakes made by L&D professionals is not asking employees what they need to learn. Imagine developing a whole training program that doesn’t even serve the employees!
It is crucial to evaluate employee learning needs and take feedback from them about what skills would help them grow. This makes them feel involved and motivates them to participate in the training program.
Use the right platform to deliver training:
A complicated platform that is difficult to navigate eats up a lot of employee time. It is important to make use of a Learning management system that is easy to use.
Additionally it should provide mobile learning through all kinds of devices to enable learning on-the-go. It’s easy to motivate employees when they have access to a training course on their mobile phone.
Make it fun:
The easiest way to motivate employees to embrace compulsory training is by making it entertaining. The gamification features of a learning management platform can be leveraged to make training content fun and interactive.
For instance, 360Learning, a popular collaborative learning platform comes loaded with multiple gamification elements like badges, reward points, leaderboards, etc to engage the employees. It not only breeds healthy competition, but also ensures a high rate of course completion.
Personalize the training content:
Often, employees are subjected to generic off the rack training courses that cover a wide variety of topics. Why would an employee busy juggling multiple responsibilities take out time to participate in a training that doesn’t even teach them something new?
It doesn’t make sense to push your employees to attend hours and hours of training about something that they already know or those skills that are not related to their profile. L&D pros need to personalize the training content so employee time doesn’t get wasted on unnecessary topics.
Conclusion:
A mandatory training may not always have engaging content. But employees can be motivated to engage with the training content and successfully complete the training with the help of the above mentioned strategies.
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