7 ways to get your employees to complete their upskilling training

Did you know that some of the biggest reasons that training initiatives fail are due to a lack of planning and not allocating time for employees to upskill? 

You’ve taken the first step and invested in your workforce, whether through co-developing courses or purchasing the training from us. But in order to get the most out of your training investment, you’ll need to make sure that your employees actually complete the training. Contrary to popular belief, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.

As an organization in the workforce transformation space, we understand the value of empowering our employees to bring their best work forward — and sometimes this means doing our part to support their upskilling journey with courses and training to elevate their skills. 

Here are 7 tips to encourage course uptake within your organization.

1. Get the message out.

The first step to getting your employees on board with new training? Tell them about it. There are so many ways to get your message across within an organization. The key to good communication is keeping it short and actionable. Tell your team the benefits, time commitment, and how to get registered.

A few communication channels that you can use within your organization:

• Intranet

• Internal emails or employee newsletters 

• Slack, Teams, or other internal communication channels  

• Team meetings 

• Bonus points for getting your team members to share their accomplishments and digital badges in the team chats. It’s a great way to stay accountable, celebrate team wins, and keep each other motivated.

2. Understand your audience.

It’s important to understand when your audience (your team) is most likely to check their messages from the workplace. Here are a few simple do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when sending out these emails:

Being aware of the regular working habits and dates of significance within the organization reduces the chance of messages being buried in the clutter. 

3. Craft your message.

At the end of the day, you want your employees to take this course. And with the number of emails everyone receives in a day, you need to make sure people want to click on your email. Some key details you might want to consider including: 

• A short, clear subject line: One that illustrates its purpose in a few words e.g. “Data analytics course: register now”

• An attractive selling point: If the course can be completed in a relatively short amount of time, that could be a selling point that gets your audience’s attention e.g. “Gain new skills in 4 weeks or less!”

When crafting your message, clearly outline the benefits of taking these courses, such as improving certain skills that will benefit their roles, advancing career opportunities, and gaining new knowledge. Let your team know how these courses align with their personal and professional goals. You want to simplify the process for them as best as possible to guide them in the right direction.

Here are a few general tips you could apply to your email copy:

• Include the course registration link in your email

• List information in easy-to-digest bullet points

• Make important details bold, or use colours to highlight them

If you want to broadcast the message more informally (maybe through a group chat) make it fun and engaging! We love an occasional (work-appropriate) joke or meme, and a good mid-day chuckle wouldn’t hurt. Here are a few examples for you: 

4. Develop a promotion cadence.

People are busy, and as humans, it’s easy for information to slip through the cracks — that’s why reminders are important. But if you send too many reminders, that becomes annoying. So, plan a strategy around promoting the courses to your audience. 

Also, we didn’t forget about you. We know you’re busy with other tasks, too, and maybe you need reminders as well. Drop yourself a calendar reminder to send these messages out or schedule the emails in advance. 

5. Incentivize them to complete the training.

When you feel like you’ve exhausted your options and people aren’t responsive to messaging, there are always fun ways to incentivize course uptake — who doesn’t love freebies? 

Here are some ways you can creatively encourage course uptake: 

• “Register for the course and get a free [goody bag/gift card] — while stocks last!”

• “Have a chance to enter a lucky draw for [Apple AirPods] when you finish the course” 

• “Do you have team spirit? Team with the highest completion rate for the course gets [a lunch/dinner] on the company!”

Think about what prizes or incentives might encourage you to do something, and of course, make sure you have the company budget to allow for that! 

6. Set aside dedicated learning time.

If this course is something the company wants its employees to take, show it through action. A way to show that is to let the team know that taking the course won’t eat into their out-of-office personal time. This shows that the company values its workforce’s professional development and will use time and money to invest in their growth. 

7. Listen to feedback.

If you’re still having trouble getting your employees to complete the training, start asking questions and engaging in thoughtful conversations or sending out some surveys. Are they stressed out by high workloads? Are you trying to launch a training program right before the holidays? Every organization will have natural cycles and part of making your program successful is about working with your teams and making sure that the training fits their needs. 

Ready to take the next step? Explore our training catalogue or our business services.