Metaphors can be very powerful, and they are useful (even necessary) in helping us understand and think through new issues. But when a metaphor takes us down the wrong track, we can sometimes be pretty far down that road before we realize the mistakes we’re making.

Corporate trainers often refer to their audience as “learners,” and, as a single term, this isn’t a metaphor: they are, in fact, learning (we hope). The problem with this designation, however, is that it leads us into a broader school metaphor in which we see employees as students waiting to receive instruction from those who can give it to them. (As a former educator, I feel compelled to point out that this is not a terribly effective idea of school, either, but that’s a subject for another article.) In theory, the courses are presented, and our main task is to get people in the room (physical or virtual), with the idea that if they’re there, learning happens.

We see the results of this in compliance training with mandatory seat times and LMSs that present completion rates as quantitative evidence of success. But we know better. I suspect everyone reading this article has taken mandatory training with their eyes glazed over, hearing little and learning less. We can do better. Our learners need to see why learning matters to them, why it will make their lives better. They need to believe the course will improve something they value. In short, they need to be sold.

SHIFTING MINDSETS

A change in how we think of our learners can lead to a change in how we present our learning and development offerings. Specifically, we should treat our audience as customers rather than learners. If we truly believe we are dealing with consumers, we will be confronted with (at least) three differences in how we view our audience:

• Learners are students who have to sit in class; customers are free agents who have choices about where to spend their time and money
• Learners are subordinate to those with knowledge; customers are equal to those with a product
• Learners may or may not be interested/engaged; customers make an investment and are interested in maximizing that investment

Simply put, education is not compulsory. We can require attendance, and we can require completion, but we must inspire learning. If we treat our learners as potential customers who have to be sold on the value of a product, we are more likely to produce training that actually gets through and changes behavior.

A view of learners as customers will change both the way we produce (and market) training and the way our learners receive it. First, we will produce training that does more than simply check a box or fulfill a compliance requirement. We will build training that respects our learners’ time, piques their interest, and inspires them to action. And our learners will strive to improve their job performance, know where to find new information, and create momentum for training throughout the organization.

It’s not just that we should see our learners as customers; we want them to be customers. We want them to know enough about the training to understand its value. To paraphrase the old Cheap Trick song, we want them to want the training. It will make them not just engaged but excited. They will participate more fully, they will complete it more enthusiastically, and they will apply it more thoroughly. Let’s get to know our learners so we understand their values, and let’s build training that connects the company’s needs with our employees’ values. Then we will be able to sell the idea of the training to them, and they’ll want to buy it.

Let’s consider an example. A large manufacturing company is concerned with the way its employees treat and use the brand. Up-front analysis demonstrated that there was a need for brand training, but, even more importantly, their employees didn’t understand the effect each of them could have on the brand. The company employs more than 50,000 people around the world; many of those individuals believed there was no impact a single person could have on the brand. Building a typical brand training for this audience would not have been effective; they already valued the company, and a course that gave tips on how to present the brand could have been dismissed by those who believed such positioning was only important to people on the sales and marketing teams. Instead, training was developed that helped the team members understand that when they post parodies of the company logo on their Facebook pages, it has a real effect on the future of the company. They were able to see that through their interactions in the workplace, at home, and on social media, each employee influences the way tens of thousands of people see the brand.

ENGAGEMENT MATTERS

One of the ways this new approach will manifest itself is in the way we think about engagement. This has been one of our industry’s most popular buzzwords lately and for good reason: it’s obvious that our training will be more effective if the learners are actually paying attention, and we know quite a bit about how to increase engagement in the training.

We know we need interactivity, and recent research suggests multi-sensory interactivity is most effective; the presence of voiceovers in particular significantly enhanced engagement. We know engagement is increased when we tie learning to real-life problems, and the more a learner can identify with the details of the problems, the more engaged they’ll be. And we know social ties are a central component of engagement; recent research on brand engagement indicates that “interaction, participation, dialogue, co-creation, and sharing of brand-related values” with a social group dramatically increases feelings of engagement with the brand.

But if we are thinking of our learners as customers, we know the relationship can begin long before the event starts, and one of the most important aspects of this relationship is generating interest before the training starts. Marketers understand the importance of this because there is a natural barrier to entry for any consumer experience.

Take movies, for example. Movies are expensive and loud and all the way across town and it’s not socially acceptable to wear my pajamas to the theater; in short, there are a lot of reasons for me to not go see a movie. Movie trailers come to me, and the best of them are so compelling that I can’t wait for the chance to put on real pants, drive across town, and pay my $12. Trailers get us engaged weeks or months before a movie opens, so, by the time the theater darkens, we are paying full attention.

We deal with similar barriers to entry for learning and development. We can eliminate many of them with pre-training engagement, but this approach is not as common as it should be. A recent survey shows that L&D teams do a very good job at what we might call “reactive engagement”: using data about the training to improve it and increase learner response. Training consumption trends and scores on learning assessments are used by almost half of those surveyed to increase engagement. Much more rare are tactics that serve to increase engagement before the training starts: promotional videos are used by one-third of respondents and training incentives are used by less than one-fourth.

There are risks and expenses to working to build engagement before training, but the upside is enormous. The first advantage is helping our learners understand how the training will benefit them. First impressions are key, and finding out about a new compliance training through a one-line company email can be disheartening to say the least. A promotional campaign in which we explain that better adherence to policies will increase efficiency and save jobs could make the 30-minute course seem like a reasonable investment in the company. A small gift card for participation can show your team that you value their time and are not simply forcing them to click through an e-learning course. These simple measures can significantly improve employee attitudes to training, and research has shown the importance of positive employee attitudes toward change management initiatives.

For example, let’s consider the development of a large-scale systems training for a multi-billion dollar financial institution. Learning a new system can be challenging for employees who have been with an organization for some time and grown used to previous work methods, and resistance to this type of training can be high. To promote engagement, motion graphics and infographics were produced and rolled out prior to the systems training. These pre-training engagement pieces directly address how the new system will help the employees be more successful and gives them an overview of the training to come, reducing the psychological barriers to entry for the full training.

MOVING FORWARD

There are many advantages to treating our learners as customers. Understanding that they need to be sold on the value of training will help us connect the goals of the training to their interests, and that re-examination can help us craft more effective approaches. Showing our team members the value of the training before it begins will reduce barriers to entry and increase engagement from the outset. Training is valuable, for the company and the individual. If we do a better job selling our learners on that value, our training goals will be much easier to achieve.