Finding motivation can be hard. One of the biggest challenges customers are faced with is motivating their employees to find the time and engage with training. Ultimately what engages someone, motivates them to do it, so how can you engage your audience and vitally improve knowledge retention?
A motivated and satisfied employee will, naturally, have a positive influence on other employees, so it’s vital that you create a strong culture of learning, that will innovate and inspire others both inside and outside your organization.
A lot of customers come to us with low numbers in engagement and even lower numbers in knowledge retention. The two go hand in hand, how can you expect an unengaged staff member to actually take in anything when they aren’t enthralled in what they are learning?
When it comes to developing and implementing your Learning and Development program, you need to:
> Be strategic in the learning process – It’s important to structure your learning program so learners only receive relevant information. In other words, create learning paths or plans that are as concise as possible. Doing so will limit the number of distractions that learners’ brains are exposed to, helping them focus on what is important.
> Use gamification – Repetition is one of the triggers for converting short-term memory into long-term memory, and frequent assessments or practice tests help learners recall new information, thereby helping them commit it to long-term memory.
Made up of online tests and short quizzes, gamification is a fantastic way to ensure that they retain the knowledge they learned in training; this is also a great way to make learning fun and boost engagement.
> Think about self-paced “bite-sized” learning – Allowing learners to absorb information at their own pace could be critical for long-term learning and memory retention. It involves presenting information in small, digestible doses for learners to consume at their convenience — otherwise known as microlearning. Learners can easily revisit content making this method both flexible and scalable.
Explore our R3-microlearning app and how you can implement gamification into your learning and development strategy.
> Make learning interactive – Interactive training gives learners the ability to put knowledge into action and explore a learning environment rather than reading static text or watching videos.
VR-learn is a fantastic tool to make learning interactive, by creating high-quality virtual reality scenarios making training come to life, in an active and personalised way.
> Reward your learners – Recognition can vastly improve the training experience and incentivise your team to do better in the workplace, encouraging effort and performance. Employees will attend training if there is some sort of incentive involved, be that something as basic as food or a bit more substantial, such as a monetary or vacation bonus at the end of the year.
However it doesn’t always have to be a physical reward at the end of your training efforts. Ultimately you want to boost their self-esteem so praising them throughout their training and offering positive feedback will motivate them further. By including certifications your learners will feel a sense of achievement and feel empowered and confident in what they do.
Motivating your employees isn’t always the easiest task, but it can be done. Follow our 5 tips above to significantly improve knowledge retention in your workplace.
If you need support strategising your learning, please get in touch. We would love to help.