Recognizing Employee Motivation and Drawing on Their Needs

This was first published on td.org in July 2018.

No two employees share the same drive. While there are similarities, our workforce is inherently diverse in their motivations; it is not reasonable to believe that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to motivating a staff.

Corporate training is essential for job growth and development, but it relies on the staff’s willingness to complete the training. An employee’s eagerness to complete a training course is filtered through several layers of internal motivation, each resonating with the different stages of their needs. Custom corporate training can meet the needs of both your company and your staff by motivating them to see training as an opportunity to continuing to grow.

Corporate Training Motivation

The Need to Start

New employees are motivated to complete training because they know it will help them do their job. The goal of training a new hire is to give them relevant content with the intent to get them using the training as soon as possible.

You can customize your training with your staff’s motivation in mind. Custom training shows your staff that their development is important to your business because you are taking the time to start them off right. Mandatory training can be transformed into specific training that relates to the learner’s environment, not just their general needs. Custom corporate training becomes job satisfaction by having the learner apply what they have learned as soon as possible. By reinforcing what your workforce needs to know with actual practical experience, they can shape their abilities toward future success.

The Need to Keep

Employees who have been with your company longer are familiar with the needs of their job and are more focused on doing their work. Corporate training is easier for them to avoid because it interferes with their ability to meet their deadlines, or their motivation to develop themselves is not as strong as when they first started. Corporate training runs the risk of meeting only the company’s compliance needs, but not the personal needs of the employees. By making the training more interactive, learning content not only shows how much the staff knows, but it also retains their interest during the training.

Customized corporate training can be augmented to be as interactive as you need it to be and still allow the learners several opportunities to prove their skills. Instead of treating the training like a box they need to check off to avoid disciplinary actions, it now becomes a metric for proving job growth and personal success.

The Need to Grow

Your staff’s overall motivation in professional development can stagnate if they fail to see the relationship to their personal growth. Employees tend to view periodic training as less of a developmental tool, and more as additional busywork. The goal is to make training more a part of the employee’s life and to help them see the ways they can continue to improve.

Learners who do not feel like they are gaining any new skills will not be invested in training. Provide your staff with the opportunity to weigh in on future training by having them select topics relevant to their job growth. Challenge your staff to think about ways to further their development within the company. Including them in the conceptual process is a good way to satisfy their desire to continue growing.

The Need to Succeed

Customizing corporate training is the most effective strategy when making an impression on your workforce. When companies strive to meet the internal needs of their staff, they’re more likely to motivate them to complete their training. By focusing on the professional development of their staff, companies can shape their employees into the workers they need and the workers the employees want to be.