Finding ways to get staff engaged and motivated towards training is something that a lot of employer’s struggle with. Training is a crucial part of developing the skill set of your employees which will benefit and grow your company. Spending time training your employees creates buy-in from them especially if it is going to benefit the employee directly for their current and future work. Although there are many reasons why training is beneficial for an employee there is still a lot of resistance to the idea. Here are some ways to get staff engaged in training!
Ask Your Employees for Input
Employee input has two different approaches, firstly engaging with the employee to make an initial training plan and secondly getting feedback on the training and processes.
Having an initial conversation between employee and employer to make a plan to ensure the best possible training plan is made for the employee is a crucial first step. It will create immediate buy-in from the employee so they can feel their needs are being met. Without any or little involvement from the employee at the start will likely result in the employee not being engaged or interested in the training there are required to do.
Employee feedback can be collected on the initial training plan process and also the training completed. This is one of the best ways to get constructive criticism which will help current and future employees engage in training. Employee feedback helps you find out if the training set out in the plan ended up suiting the employee which may help you to plan future training for this employee or others. The feedback will also help remove any areas of the training that aren’t required and also add items which were missing. It may also give you new ideas which can be incorporated to improve the training program.
By collecting feedback into your training process, you are already encouraging employee engagement in the training and will also create an open line of communication between yourself and your employees.
Personal Development
If your employee sees a clear path in their professional development through training, they’re much more likely to be invested in their training. This can be the outcome of higher wage or even a better position within the company. If you are offering a potential reward, they’ll do the work to try and achieve what they need to achieve in order to get that reward.
Keep Training Fun and Interactive
Some employees can find training with little interactive elements to be quite boring which will result them not being engaged. An example of Interactive training is in person training which is more hands on and online modules which are visually appealing and fun to complete. You’ll find that your employees pay more attention and do a better job retaining the information when they’re engaged in interactive training. The benefit of online modules is making it possible for them to go through the training module over and over again if necessary and a benefit of in person training is you are able to see exactly what the employee is contributing and also get more input from them. You’ll find that engaging employees in training is considerably easier when they’re having a good time, which is why you should look for ways to make the training as fun as possible.
Need help developing your organisations learning and development strategy? Connect with us today.