10 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement Through Better Training

Training is a vital part of any growing organization, and key to good employee engagement.

Employers with higher levels of employee engagement have found that investing in training and development is smart business.

Well-trained, engaged employees translate into higher productivity, increased efficiency and more innovation.

But many times, due to budget constraints, the role of the trainer often falls to a manager or a talented staffer. Some may have no experience training, while others may see themselves as veterans.

One of the biggest mistakes trainers make is giving a presentation instead of a training session. Lecturing in front of a room doesn’t make for a good training session. It makes for a boring lecture, which the audience is going to check out on and not retain.

In fact, most trainers spend two-thirds of their training session lecturing. But if you truly want learning to take place, it’s best to give your trainees time to discuss things, move around, act on their ideas and teach and learn from each other.

Better training promotes employee engagement

Here are 10 great ways you can boost employee engagement through better training by taking your training to the next level.

1. Provide the big picture

Make sure you let trainees know right from the start why they’re learning whatever you’re teaching. Giving the big picture reinforces to trainees what needs to be accomplished by the end of the session. Then a trainer should break it down into smaller pieces, all the while referring back to the big picture so people see how it all fits together.

2. Repeat names

When training a small group, try to start the session off with a smile and a personal greeting. Then attempt to use the attendees’ names at least three times during the training session. It helps them feel like part of the process and will motivate them to do better and pay attention. If you tend to forget people’s names, try associating them with someone famous or someone you know. Another technique for retaining someone’s name is to repeat the person’s name back to him or her when you first meet or when the person enters the training session, if you already know them. You could say, “Hi, Jeff, it’s nice to meet you.” Or “Hi, Mark, so glad you could make it.”

3. What’s in it for me

If you want adults to retain training material, you must show what’s in it for them. Reason: Adults best retain information they consider useful. It’s the way we’re hard-wired. If you fail to show adults how they’re invested in the material, the cerebellum won’t let the info travel to the cerebrum to be stored. It’s vital trainers tie the material to their audience.

4. Apply what was learned

Give people an immediate opportunity to practice what they just learned. The adage – use it or lose it – applies very much to adult learners. Whether it’s in the form of a training exercise or a game, or letting the trainees demonstrate something, they will retain it better the sooner they get to use their new skill or knowledge.

5. Tie it to an experience

Most adults walk around with a lifetime of untapped knowledge in their heads. So help them tap into it. Adult learners have a lot of experience and knowledge they bring to a training session. Whether it’s right or wrong, it will have an impact because it’s in their brains and influences how they perceive things. A great way to get adult learners to retain training material is to tie it to something they already know. By doing that, the brain doesn’t have to learn something new. It just applies what it already knows to a new situation, which strengthens retention and the learning pathways in the brain.

6. Repeat key concepts

If you want your audience to remember the key concepts, repeat them. Put them on a slide, a dry erase board, a handout, etc., and repeat them several times. Then at the end of every session, review the key concepts again. Just like children learn through repetition, so do adults.

7. Be brief

Keep your instruction/lecturing time brief. Teach in 10- to 20-minute time chunks, then change to an activity or group discussion. And every time you break from the short lecture chunks, do a new activity. Even a fun  activity becomes repetitive when done in the same way every time.

8. Keep it simple

Don’t overwhelm your audience with everything you know about the topic being covered. Just give them the absolute-need-to-know information. One of the harder things to do as a trainer is break the information down into the need-to-know information and the nice-to-know-but-not-essential information. If you try to cover too much at one time, your audience won’t retain the information. Trainers need to ask themselves “What do my trainees need to know in order to do their jobs efficiently and effectively, and keep their jobs?” The answer is what the actual training session should be built around. You can supplement the training with the nice-to-know stuff as handouts the trainees can take with them and read on their own time. Another way to think about it: If your training time were cut in half, which concepts would you include and which would you make a handout?

9. Attract more bees with honey

It’s not only children that learn better with encouragement. Adults do, too. That’s why the best trainers create a positive learning environment and celebrate small successes, new learned skills and concepts, and deliver feedback in a positive way.

10. Create relaxed environment

One factor important to a fun training session is a relaxed, informal environment. If you can avoid the classroom set-up, then do so. When a trainer stands up front and everyone faces him or her lined up at desks or in chairs it creates a formal lecture environment, which is rarely fun. Get creative. Set up small tables that you can walk between and interact with your audience. Or if it’s a small group, having everyone sit around a  big table is better than the classroom set up. You just want trainees to face each other – not just you – so they can interact easily with each other. The goal is to be close enough to engage the audience.

And common mistakes to avoid

Most seasoned HR professionals are experienced in common training and development mistakes. But some mistakes can still slip past.

Here’s a look at five common shortcomings when developing training programs. Get these right, and you can boost engagement and improve retention.

1. Front-end analysis

You probably get a constant stream of requests for new training programs and courses as managers work to keep their teams up to speed on the latest business challenges and procedures.

It can be tempting to dive right in and build new offerings based on those requests without doing some extra work to make sure they are the best place to place your limited investment resources.

It’s important to be sure of the return on those investments if you expect to get approval and funding for other critical training and development programs.

It pays to understand how your people are working now, what’s changing in those jobs, and how urgent new training really is compared to other priorities.

By putting together a survey, and talking with employees, you’ll see and hear what’s truly needed before you invest time and money in developing a new training program.

2. Clear goals

It’s always the basics. Failing to plan is planning to fail

It can be tempting to trust in a trainer’s experience and expertise and let them set the agenda and create the curriculum.

But even experienced subject matter experts can be overconfident. They may think they can be effective trainers without a rock-solid plan and an understanding of how it fits into the bigger picture.

In reality, they’ll need your input to be sure they are on track.

Workforce training and development is a strategic necessity for every organization, and it will determine whether you can attract, hold onto and keep improving top-notch employees.

3. Versatility

You’re never really investing in a T&D “program” ­ you’re investing in each and every individual you’re training.

Everyone learns differently, and at a different pace. Even employees doing the same job often understand what they do, and why, in vastly different ways.

They all come into your training with different experience levels, strengths and training gaps.

It’s unrealistic to think everyone will learn everything evenly.

Be clear about what is most important to you, why it’s important and how success will be measured.

Recognizing the different learning styles and where employees have specific learning strengths and challenges will help you to design flexibility into your program and improve outcomes.

4. Trainer expertise

It seems to make sense: pull someone off the front line and get them passing along their knowledge to new or less experienced employees.

But training is a learned skill, just like anything else. And you definitely don’t want someone at the front of the virtual or real-world meeting room who doesn’t want to be there.

They might resent being pulled off the job, which can impact quotas, commissions, or tips. They might just be a little too cynical. Or, ideally, they are just nervous and need to be eased into the role after some training of their own

Most effective employees can become good or even great trainers if they don’t have a lousy experience up front. So use an“on-boarding” process similar to how you’d bring on any new employee.

Understanding how to apply different training methods and learning styles, getting comfortable with the tech they’ll use training to groups of varying sizes, and shadowing your top trainers to see how it’s done “hands on” are all important to getting comfortable with the role.

And, if at all possible, give them a chance to practice on a “friendly audience” that is clearly rooting for them to succeed.

That way, when they hit the stage for real, they can handle the butterflies, won’t feel like they need to apologize for being new to training and won’t want to lean on a guest subject matter expert to make the audience feel the time they’re investing is worth it.

When your trainers are confident, enthusiastic, well-prepared and clearly happy to be sharing their knowledge, your workforce will learn more quickly, ask smart questions and retain what they’ve learned.

Watch as they get back on the job and share their new knowledge with co-workers.

5. Who pays?

T&D is a major investment for almost every organization. In 2023, U.S. companies spent an average of $954 per employee on training and development, according to the 2023 Training Industry Report.

Research indicates that the return on training investment ranges from marginal to most impactful. In a study cited on the Southern New Hampshire University website, companies reported ROI (net monetary benefits of training/total costs of training * 100) ranging from 40% to well over 300%. Of course, your mileage will vary, but these are the results your leadership will expect.

Even if your organization reliably funds the T&D program, there’s never a guarantee that will continue as new strategic opportunities and challenges arise.

Keep your CFO informed about your current programs, plans and results and you’ll be able to play a role in identifying and supporting those strategic priorities and keep the investment coming.