7 Ways to Motivate Employees to Participate in Online Training

Here are seven ways to motivate employees to participate in online training:

1. Emphasize the benefits
2. Come up with incentives
3. Include assessments and progress tracking
4. Create a culture of learning
5. Set deadlines or manager check-ins
6. Personalize their learning
7. Make a career advancement plan

Let’s explore these training motivation tips in more detail!

Emphasize the benefits

People are much more open to changing their routines when they understand the benefits they’ll get from it. With an online training system like Pinnacle Series, there are a ton of benefits for employees to enjoy! Having on-demand training and answers makes their workday more streamlined and efficient. It improves their skills and sets them up for career growth. Training also empowers better collaboration and innovation.

Come up with incentives

Starting with gold stars in school and continuing through adulthood — people tend to love rewards! Think of ways to gamify learning and create a system of rewards for using the training system. It could be a coffee gift card for the first five people to complete a “course of the week” or an extra hour of PTO for the month’s top performers.

Include assessments and progress tracking

For a lot of people, knowing they’ll be tested on their knowledge is motivation enough to strive for a good score. It’s also satisfying to be able to look back on what you’ve been learning and see yourself make progress. Pinnacle Series includes quizzes as part of courses and learning paths and ways for users and administrators to monitor progress using KnowledgeSmart assessments.

Create a culture of learning

When you make efforts to build a company culture that encourages learning and hire people who are excited about learning and growing, the motivation will come naturally. Make sure to give the employees enough time in their schedules to include learning and the flexibility to move at a pace they feel comfortable.

Set deadlines or manager check-ins

Scheduling deadlines or check-ins with managers on how training is progressing can be a good idea to keep employees on track. This shouldn’t be intended to put extra pressure or stress on them but rather provide structure and external motivation. When you assign training without a deadline, it’s much easier for the assignee to put it off indefinitely. With a deadline, they’ll be motivated to fit it in sooner.

Personalize their learning

The type of learning program you choose can make a big difference to employees’ motivation to use it. One factor is how well the training can adapt to their needs. For example, does it include content in different formats to fit the way people like to learn (e.g. video, text, interactive elements)? Is the content one-size-fits-all, or can they test out of topics they already know? Pinnacle Series comes with all of these considerations built in.

Make a career advancement plan

Since online training is meant to help employees advance their skills and careers, be ready to put your money where your mouth is and offer promotion opportunities! Let employees know what they can do to train for new roles and move up the ladder. Which skills do they need to improve? Do they need to earn any certifications? Be clear and supportive, and you’ll earn employee loyalty in spades. Having clear goals to work towards will also help inspire consistent motivation.

Supporting employees in their learning goals also brings benefits for the organization! Learn how Pinnacle Series can improve employee retention. Then make sure to Schedule a demo or pilot with our team to see the software for yourself!

If you’re already a Pinnacle Series customer, keep reading our blog for more ideas on how to use our e-learning system to its fullest potential.