How to Effectively Prepare Employees for Required Training

Getting employees to engage with training – especially mandated training – can be challenging enough. But the right kind of groundwork, well before that first session starts, can go a long way toward overcoming resistance and gaining buy-in.

In a conversation with Michelle Milldyke, SkillPath’s Manager of Instructional Design, she laid out three key principles for preparing the right sort of training, getting employees to understand why it’s needed, and how it will benefit them.

“You have to research the topic well enough to speak the language.”

Employees are more likely to embrace training if it’s assigned to them by someone who’s familiar with their jobs. As Michelle puts it, “You have to understand their world so you can say, ‘I can help you fix your world.’”

Unfortunately, she says, “A lot of times managers won’t do the work before going to Learning & Development and saying, ‘We need training.’”

Her advice:

Talk to supervisors. These are the people who know the work and the workers. They know people’s roles, responsibilities, challenges and capabilities.

Job shadow the affected employees. Talking to supervisors is valuable, but it’s even more important to get a firsthand look at people’s jobs and how they perform them.

Identify needs and objectives. Four questions to ask:

• “What are we wanting them to do?”
• “Why aren’t they?”
• “What can we do to help them?”
• “What’s the benefit to them?”

That last question is key to charting the correct course and getting buy-in – because sometimes training isn’t the best option. This requires answering two more questions.

• “Do you really need training, or is this a cultural issue?”
• “Is it a lack of resources, or is it a lack of skillset?”

If it’s a cultural issue, training won’t fix it without a change in culture. If it’s a resource deficit, people might already know what they need to do, but aren’t sufficiently equipped to do so.

“Selling the benefit is what will entice them.”

For skills-based training, Michelle says, “I think the incentive will be that they’ll be better at their jobs, their bosses won’t be looking over their shoulders as much, and they’re more likely to be considered for advancement.”

But if the training is more relational than operational – for instance, in areas such as overcoming bias and maintaining a psychologically safe work environment – how can you, as a company leader, overcome resistance and encourage a positive attitude?

“You have to build some ‘Trust us’ language into it,” Michelle says. “‘We promise it will be engaging and in some way, fun – taking away some of the doldrums of the day-to-day routine.’ If it’s some sort of a large change, let them know ‘We’re all in this together, and we’re going to face it as a team.’”

“Do pre-work with them; have them do some sort of reflection before they come into the training.”

This is especially helpful in areas involving workplace communications and interactions – bias, harassment issues, incivility – where people might feel they’re somehow being punished for things they haven’t done and wouldn’t do.

“You don’t want them to see it as punitive, like ‘I have to sit through this,’” Michelle says. “People want to feel like collaborators in their learning, rather than receivers of instruction.”

One way to do that is to ask them for ideas on how they would handle a situation they’ve witnessed, even if they weren’t involved in it.

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For more on effective training, check out Train the Trainer: How to Create and Facilitate Employee Training

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“Have them think about a situation where they, or someone else, was uncomfortable in a situation or an outsider in a situation,” she says. “Invite their empathy. Getting people emotionally involved in the learning before the training piques their interest and gets them thinking about the topic before they arrive for the first session. They show up ready to discuss what you’re teaching.”

In compliance-oriented training, she advises, “Send them a case study in an email. Ask them for their input in the training; ‘How would you handle this?’ This will unearth people’s incoming knowledge and experiences and might introduce topics the trainer hadn’t considered.”

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