Five tips for motivating adult learners

A highly trained workforce benefits the employer in multiple ways. Research shows that educated workers are more productive on the job. Clearly, employers have a strong stake in providing continuing education for their workers. e-Learning has made it easier and more cost-effective for companies to provide ongoing SAP training to workers. You know that making training available for your team is a good idea. But you also must know how to select the best training for your adult learners.

Motivating your adult learners to take advantage of corporate-mandated training is a challenge. We have found that the number one reason why learners don’t use the training offered to them is the perceived lack of time. To increase your odds of engagement you need to make sure your SAP training motivates and incentivizes your adult learners.

You must also let them know that they do have time to train by encouraging the training, not just by mandate. Adults have life and corporate experience to help them gauge information and if they can use what you have to offer. Here are a few tips to help you select the best SAP training to engage your team and get results.

Bearing Distributors saved 45% compared to SAP's Learning Hub and assigned 89 hrs. of hands-on SAP training to each user.

Find out how: Customer success Story

1. Job Relevance

The training made available to your learners needs to be relevant to their jobs. To persuade your team to take the time for training you need to be able to determine the need and find training fits. Adult learners will take training for a specific purpose, to make their job easier, work toward a promotion, or help them complete tasks correctly. When your learners see the relevance of the materials to their jobs, they are more likely to be engaged and recognize benefits from the course, increasing usage.

Training specific to SAP job roles will get the learner more engaged.  The training sessions need to be short, relevant, and useful. Think about how your team can see immediate results by taking a lesson to solve a problem and then demonstrate the benefit.

With our SAP Training your team can quickly search an SAP Training library of courses and lessons and find the specific lesson they need right now and take that training in under twenty minutes, and some as short as five minutes. By giving your team the option for both longer simulations training and quick video lessons you are setting your team up for success. The most important thing to remember is that the success of your training program comes from the management down to the learners on your team. Make training a part of the job.

Because your learners are busier than a traditional student, an effective e-Learning program will demonstrate value to students from the beginning and that helps convince them that their employer values their time.

2. Give Immediate Feedback

Select training that gives immediate feedback, so your learners know they are retaining what they are learning. This also allows for course corrections.  Training with quizzes and short lessons keep the learner engaged and reward progress frequently. Give positive reinforcement by rewarding the employee with real-world perks. Adult learners like to work toward clearly defined goals.

The on-line simulation courses at Michael Management offer a quiz at the end of each lesson allowing your learners to check the progress and get instant results. In addition, we reward points for completing lessons and badges as your team advances. Our sophisticated gamification gives instant feedback and congratulations as they train.

eLearning is the perfect choice for your team because it is a technology they are already used to. Most people are already online, using video and organic search and spending time on their mobile devices and computers. Because this is technology already familiar to your learners, it is an easy transition. 

3. Set Clear Goals

Decide on the right goals for your team of learners. Adult learners want clearly defined goals. Let your audience know why it’s important to take a course if you are assigning it to your team. Don’t get hung up on completions, rather decide what is most important to meet the needs of your team.  Focus on long term motivation and access to the right answers. The average student wants access to an SAP library and skills they can learn and use right now. Measuring the usage may be smarter than measuring completion rates.

Design in freedom of choice for your team. Setting some mandatory courses can work, especially if everyone needs SAP beginner training. After that give your learner’s freedom to explore career path learning, individual lesson, or courses they find interesting.

You can easily measure the usage rates and hours of training with the Michael Management Learning Management System. Setting and managing goals are easier than ever. Here are a few tips on how to reward and motivate your learners.

4. Provide options

Give your team choices that promote self-direction. When possible, allow learners to choose the SAP Training they will take. You can provide a suggested order, or suggested course, but allow learners to take lessons in the order that works for them. Provide easy access to resources to create an ideal environment for learning. Your team already has the experience, so an open, searchable library provides an opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful for each learner.

Individualization can help your learners build accurate knowledge of your SAP system through learning paths, which improves competence and confidence. Each learner is a unique individual with his or her own goals. Empowering a person to work toward these goals through training is a powerful incentive to learn.

5. Make it doable

Make it available in small pieces. SAP training can be monotonous with hours and days of training in a classroom with thousands of slides to learn. Offer quick lessons that can be completed whenever there is time. Make the learning available in bite-sized chunks of information that can be easily consumed. This is called microlearning, and it will allow your team to learn a quick new skill or understand a new piece of information while eating lunch or driving to work.

Keep in mind that experience doesn’t necessarily translate into an eagerness to learn. Some people on your team may feel that they don’t need (or want) any training. Treat your learners with respect and give them tools that help them be successful in their training.

Online eLearning is the best choice for organizations with multiple teams, departments, and offices, or remote workers. Assign department managers or team leads to be the administrator over their teams for better connection to learners during training.

Only select an SAP training program that can enable your company to deliver the same content, in the same way, to all employees around the world.

Select the RIGHT training program with Michael Management’s SAP Training for corporate users.