The past few years have taken a toll on employee motivation. From rising inflation and job insecurity to major organisational change, many employees have become increasingly disengaged from their work. Trends like ‘quiet quitting’ – where individuals do the bare minimum in their job as a way of protecting their time and energy – have flourished in this apathetic context.
One of the most effective ways of reversing this trend and reigniting employee engagement is through meaningful, well-designed training programmes. When you invest back into your employees, you show a clear commitment to their growth and long-term success. And, with highly engaged employees having 32% higher profitability and 70% higher well-being at work, it’s a no-brainer.
Let’s explore how to create effective employee training programmes that keep your workers motivated, improve performance and create a lasting impact for your business.
With employees facing a more challenging job market, having qualifications and a comprehensive set of skills has never been more important. From this changing context comes a higher interest in learning and development opportunities, with 91% of L&D professionals believing that training programmes are essential for career success.
However, just providing access alone isn’t enough to guarantee success in L&D. Without motivation, even the most well-structured programmes will struggle to deliver positive results. While employees may start a course, they could fail to complete it or be unable to apply what they’ve learned to their roles.
Proper motivation can radically change the outcome of company training programmes. Gallup data suggests that an engaged employee can deliver up to 18% higher productivity with significantly lower turnover.
When applied to training, motivated learners are far more likely to complete programmes, retain their knowledge and translate it into real-world performance.
While what motivates an employee may vary from person to person, a few trends typically run through a workforce.
Most of the time, employees look for training programmes that are:
The courses your business offers should tick all these boxes to give your employees a rigorous, satisfying learning experience.
Extrinsic motivators are the most direct way to impact employee motivation. Something like offering a better compensation package or implementing new benefits can go a long way to capture employee attention.
But while these are important, intrinsic factors are also key motivational drivers. Aspects such as personal fulfilment or excitement, like what one might experience when gaining confidence in a new language, for example, can also make a big difference.
Typically, extrinsic factors inspire initial engagement, while intrinsic factors fuel sustained interest.
While training will likely be useful for any employee, they’ll get the most benefit if it directly aligns with their job roles.
For example, language training for a customer experience employee will help them refine their conversational skills and build confidence in their role. Down the line, the language proficiency gained from their corporate language classes may even lead to a promotion or raise, helping to motivate the employee.
Training programmes don’t materialise out of thin air. Your business needs to partner with a high-profile corporate training programme or plan out content that will captivate your workers and motivate them to keep coming back for more.
If you’re building your own programme, here are some strategies you can use to make it more engaging.
Microlearning, where content is presented in smaller, consumable modules, gives employees the flexibility they need to learn on the go. Instead of having to sit down after a tiring day at work and go through hours of content, an employee can learn for five minutes here and there. These small moments make learning more accessible, boosting engagement and consistency.
Another strategy for making learning programmes more motivating is by building in spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is the practice of reviewing learned material at increasing intervals of time. Studies suggest that spaced repetition significantly improves how well learners retain what they’ve learned. For employees, that translates into a greater sense of accomplishment – leading to better, sustained engagement.
Personalised learning, typically delivered through AI-enabled courses, presents each employee content based on how they best learn and where they should focus their attention. It adapts to the individual learner, creating a curated experience that is more enjoyable to work through.
Dr Kathleen Tate, Department Chair of Teaching in the education department of American Public University, suggests that personalisation is extremely positive for improving participation and engagement in learning opportunities.
Giving recognition for hard work, especially from managers, is one of the best ways of boosting engagement and setting up your employees for success. In fact, an employee that feels underappreciated is twice as likely to leave their job within the next year, according to Gallup.
Research by Oxford Economics suggests that the average cost of employee turnover per employee is around £30,614. Across your entire organisation, low motivation and employee turnover are costing you enormously. And, considering 94% of employees would stay longer at a company if it invested in their career, training is one of the best ways to cut back on costs while improving productivity.
Beyond just cutting costs, let’s explore a few other options for proving the ROI of training motivation.
Learning management systems (LMS) offer a centralised view of how employees engage with training. By tracking metrics like course completion rates and time spent learning, you can identify how motivated your employees are and where course drop-off occurs.
Having easy access to these insights lets you track how employee motivation translates to improved productivity and faster time-to-competency. Pair LMS analytics with employee productivity scores to trace how investing in education is a direct investment in improved operational efficiency.
Another way to demonstrate the ROI of learning programmes is to regularly solicit feedback from your employees. You’ll be able to identify whether training is perceived as valuable to your employees or whether you still need to work on improving their motivation.
By combining feedback with employee-based metrics, like turnover rates or satisfaction, you can trace how your efforts in education are having real-world impacts in your company.
While you can’t expect change overnight, these insights will help show the long-term picture of how a motivated learning workforce is contributing to better business performance.
Developing, launching and sustaining an effective training programme doesn’t have to be rocket science. Your business can partner with a course provider and trial a learning and development programme to see how it impacts your workforce. By demonstrating its benefits to stakeholders, you’ll be able to secure funding and achieve full buy-in from higher-ups.
If you are looking for expert language training for your employees, you’re in the right place. Busuu provides corporate language training to over 600 brands across the world, offering expertly crafted programmes in 14 languages. With a mix of self-paced study and teacher-led Live Lessons, your employees can develop their skills in a fun, engaging and award-winning interactive atmosphere.
Put your employees first and get started on corporate language training with Busuu today.