Motivating workers to increase their product knowledge or job skills by offering incentives to complete training is a proven approach that has been used for decades. What’s new, says Peder Jacobsen, vice president of learning for BI Learning Group in Minneapolis (biworldwide.com), is the technology that comes into play.
Jacobsen is armed with real-life anecdotes about Fortune 500 companies that employ the modern-day twists of the tried-and-true “learn and earn” concept.
Participants in BI programs often earn points toward non-cash incentives. Jacobsen says companies take different approaches for how to earn them. Participants can earn points for completing learning and becoming certified, or the training and certification can be a “gate” or accelerator to earning additional points. In the latter, certified sales reps or technicians who are participating in a BI program may earn double the points for achieving certain goals.
Managers participate in the incentive programs as well. Often, managers’ point-earning potential will increase with every team member who is certified. They’re after their own rewards and will push their people to complete training.
The results make it clear why companies are intent on getting their people properly trained. At the front end of the economic collapse in the fall of 2008, one Fortune 500 client ran an incentive program for its salespeople to complete product training and get certified. The certified reps produced a 42 percent increase in sales year over year for the period while the non-certified reps saw sales decline 19 percent.
Fun and games
Gamification — applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging — is alive and well in the training space.
Jacobsen recalls a different client that was nervous about its national sales force coming to an annual three-day offsite meeting without completing the proper online preparation. They created a program in which participants could earn points for completing the on-demand prep work and attached a scoring system so that everyone could see how each district was performing.
Within 10 days of releasing the gamified program, 95 percent of the sales force had completed the certification, Jacobsen says.
Aspects of the incentive program were carried over to the offsite itself and the company’s CFO was astonished to see sales team members quizzing each other in the hotel coffee shop when he went out for a 5 a.m. run.
A regional manager who neglected to monitor his team’s performance leading up to the meeting discovered his region was dead last in the standings by the time the meeting arrived. “He was the hardest working manager at the meeting,” Jacobsen quips. “He was not going to let his district be the trailer.”
Another company that needed technicians to complete online training, but couldn’t afford to take them out of the field, offered double the reward points to anyone who completed the training on their own time. Jacobsen says within 45 days, the number of participants who took the training outside of work hours doubled.
“The intangibles can be very powerful,” he adds. Results are even more impressive when companies do just a little bit of research into their demographics to determine what will drive them.
“When it’s done right, they are surprised at how well it works.”
