Motivating Employees To Complete Their Training
It’s a common mistake to assume you don’t have to market internal courses to your employees. In reality, motivating employees to complete training is crucial. It is actually more important than marketing the external courses that you are trying to sell. After all, a person looking to buy a course most likely already has a burning pain they are trying to relieve. But your employees may not understand why they have to complete employee training. The following five secrets will help you to motivate your employees to start learning on the job.
Secrets To Motivating Enployees To Start Learning
1. Have Internal Champions
You can start your internal marketing campaign by identifying internal champions for your course. These should be frontline workers who will complete the training, not managers or supervisors. The best way to do this is to get these people involved right from the start. Identify employees who would benefit the most from the training. Have them involved in creating and testing the course. Ideally, you want them to buy in on the value and benefits of the course, so that they can easily convince their colleagues to take the course as well. This strategy utilizes word-of-mouth marketing.
2. Get Employee Testimonials
Testimonials are another way to use word-of-mouth marketing to motivate employees to complete your training courses. Use testimonials as you would for external marketing, though your focus is on getting an internal perspective from your employees. We suggest using videos to gather testimonials. It is as simple as recording a video asking viewers how they would rate the course.
3. Set Up An Email Sequence (Don’t Survey)
Don’t use surveys to market your course or gather feedback. Instead, use an email sequence. It’s best not to use surveys because they simply don’t work. People won’t want to fill them out, and the answers are frequently biased. Instead, use three separate email sequences:
- Sales sequence
The sales sequence is for selling the course to your employees. Use this sequence before the course comes out. Address the major pain points that you will solve through the course. - Onboarding sequence
The onboarding sequence is used once the training has already been launched. These are emails related to the course, which you can use to highlight the biggest challenges and point out specific modules that address them. - Nurture sequence
The nurture sequence is used after employees have completed the course. It helps to keep your team engaged, reminding them that the course is accessible if they ever need a refresher. You can also use this sequence to remind them about solutions for major challenges.
4. Use QR Codes For Simplicity
Another way of motivating employees to complete training is to make it easy for them. QR codes are a perfect means of executing this. Print out QR codes that take employees to specific training modules and post them in relevant areas of the building. If an employee has an ongoing issue, the courses that can address those issues are easily accessible. All they have to do is scan the QR code, and they are led straight to the portions of the course that will help them.
5. Provide Incentives
Of course, you can provide incentives to individuals who complete the training. The idea is to compensate employees for carving out time to complete onboarding or mandatory training. Your incentives can come in the form of rewards, bonuses, paid time off (PTO), money, concert tickets, etc. Ideally, provide higher-value and useful incentives that your employees look forward to. A single gift card worth $5 is not enough to motivate anyone to complete your course.
Conclusion
Employees aren’t inherently interested in learning new skills to advance at their jobs. So, it’s important to “sell” the training to them to get them engaged in your company’s program. Using these secrets will help you get better at motivating employees to complete training. At the end of the day, you want your employees to be successful and you are investing money in developing training for them, so why not go the extra mile to make sure your employees actually get the best out of the program?
