How to Motivate Your Employees to Participate in Training and Development Programmes?

 

Training and development is an essential activity in a work environment specially in a dynamic and rapidly changing business environment (Recruiting and Hiring Resources, 2022). Training and development is the process in an organization created to develop and enhance the skills and knowledge of employees working in the company by providing information and instruction on how to better perform specific tasks. The employers have to make employees willing to participate to this training and development programs.

The employees need to be educated and communicated about the long-term benefits of training and development and the real purpose of the training. Training programs provide career advancements and not limiting to that employees need to be motivated by offering rewards as well. Incentives for training can be cash prizes, recognition which will make employees willingly participate to training programs.

Moreover, employees expect the training programs to be flexible within their work and training schedules. Employees need to have a comfortable place and a comfortable time in attaining their trainings. In the present employees are not ready to attend to rigid and long training programs where employees need to give a choice in selecting self-paced learning style, blended learning style etc (Hageman, 2022). As well by incorporating technology companies can improve the flexibility of the training programs in making employees able to choose their own timing and training needs.

The training programs needs to be designed in a way that it adds value to the work they conduct. As for example employees who are working in marketing and customer service sector, communication training will be a value added although for product development staff (Arun, 2022) this will not be a value adding activity compared to their core activities. Therefore, the management and the HR team needs to identify the training needs of the employees in line with the relevant work they are undertaking and the specific goals each employee and department is going to achieve in the future. This will be helpful in gaining employee attention and their feedback is very important in designing the training process.

Encourage employees to take charge of their own education to reinforce the concept of "this is my choice, and the outcome benefits me." (Shiftelearning.com, 2022). This is a very different and far more productive mentality than traditional conservative training, which always looked like just another task to cross off a list rather than a step toward a bigger objective. Allowing employees to choose when training needs to be finished, how much training is completed in one sitting, the order in which courses are taken, and where the training takes place is a motivator in and of itself.

Understanding failure is part of the process (Hageman, 2022) is another method that can make employees buy into the training process.  Employees may be afraid to try new things out of fear of making a mistake. To make the attendees feel at ease, trainers should utilize constructive criticism and tolerance. Employees might benefit from a training incentive to recognize that honing their talents is a sign of success.

References

Arun, T. (2021). 5 ways to motivate employees to participate in training. Available: https://www.zoho.com/people/hrknowledgehive/5-ways-to-motivate-employees-to-participate-in-training.html. Last accessed 14 June 2022.

Hageman, K. (2019). How to Motivate Employees to Attend Training. Available: https://www.getkisi.com/blog/how-to-motivate-employees-to-attend-training. Last accessed 14 June 2022.

shiftelearning.com. (2021). Motivate Employees to Participate in Training: 8 Ideas. Available: https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/motivate-employees-to-participate-in-training-8-ideas. Last accessed 14 June 2022.

talentlyft.com. (2022). What is Training and Development?. Available: https://www.talentlyft.com/en/resources/what-is-training-and-development#:~:text=Training%20and%20development%20refers%20to,to%20better%20perform%20specific%20tasks. Last accessed 12 June 2022.