How to motivate employees to learn new skills

In any working environment, it can benefit both the business and its employees to encourage all members of staff to learn new skills. With this focus, common duties in the company could potentially be carried out in a quicker and more effective way, and the business as a whole will be aware of the latest standards in the process.

If you’re a business owner, manager or someone in charge of human resources, training, development and education of employees is something that could be worth considering, but how exactly would you go about implementing this approach?

In this blog, we look at encouraging your employees to learn new skills and what you can do to make it a commonplace opportunity for development in your business.

How to motivate employees to learn

An important part of running a successful business is the ability to adapt and grow with the times, developing your processes to remain relevant and effective in the service you provide. Without this emphasis, you could fall behind competitor companies that offer a similar service and end up hindering your own development.

The same could be said for employees, who need stimulation and a clear career path. If they don’t see their employer or manager looking to invest in them and their development, they may not develop past their current level, or they may even become upset or frustrated by this sense of neglect and move elsewhere.

Many companies actively offer opportunities for members of staff to learn using formulated processes. For instance, common methods are through:

• Creating personal development plans and reviewing performance every six months
• Rewarding employees for learning new skills and showing evidence of development
• Monitoring performance and suggesting areas for improvement
• Arranging learning activities for employees to take part in.

These processes are proven ways of motivating a workforce to better themselves, benefitting the business and their own professional and personal development. However, if your company doesn’t currently have an emphasis on employee training and development, you may need to think outside the box to encourage your workforce to learn new skills.

How to encourage employees to learn

It may appear to be difficult to start presenting opportunities for educating and developing employees in your company if you didn’t previously provide these options, but there are a few methods that could help to make it an integral part of your business.

You can start to encourage your employees to learn new skills by:

Outsourcing formal training to an accredited company –

Whenever further education is needed in a business, it’s important that the training being provided is from a knowledgeable, reliable and informed source. Simply Academy, for example, offers extensive training and corporate solutions for the finance and banking sector, and other industries would benefit from this level of guidance from a trusted service provider.

Forming a connection between employee growth and business development –

While personal development plans help employees to work towards goals with the promise of pay rises, bonuses and promotions if they do, the reasoning behind the employee’s plans for progression from a company standpoint could make it even more effective.

For example, if any employee is required to use specific computer programmes, speak directly to clients or understand certain processes but isn’t suitably trained, it would logically help both the employee and the business for this training to be carried out.

Initiate an internal mentorship system –

Often, employees within a business aren’t entirely knowledgeable of how other departments within the company operate.

Not only could it potentially help for members of staff to understand how different processes across the business work, but as a lot of knowledge and understanding of useful programmes could be shared across employees, making the connection between departments could mean that crucial information could be shared cost-free internally.