How often have you announced a new training session for your team just to hear them groan “Not another training! It’s boring!!”

Sadly despite technology being an ever-changing field few people realize the advantages of consistent learning and continue to muck through work on a day to day basis. In my mind that really is foolish… Continued learning means:

1. You’re always up to date with the latest in your field

2. You remain learning-active, and thus learning remains relatively easy even with sudden changes in your field

3. Those around you remain continually encouraged to learn something new

4. The value of brand “you” does not fade over time – it grows.

But of course when you want your team to continue learning vs to continue wanting to learn, that’s two different things. Often companies sponsor expensive training for their employees and find the training is put to little or no use – sometimes the training itself becomes key to that person’s next job, instead of solidifying their role in their current organization.

Why does that happen? Simple: people want to grow as they learn, so if you’re being trained on ‘project X’ and you’re never going to use ‘project X’ in your current role, you will naturally want to move out of the organization into a place where you CAN use it. If you’re given a ‘free’ course on basics – and you like it and understand it and use it on a daily basis – and then not allowed to take the intermediate course (and thus not allowed to grow into the next possible position) you’ll of course want to leave.

The solution is clear, provide growth along with the opportunity to learn, and you will have people sticking around longer, work better, feel happier and generally not want to really shift jobs too early.

When you do some “internal marketing” – and get buy-in from your team before you have a course – and then increase their responsibilities proportionally, you will see a much better, more positive response from them.