Are you responsible for executing frontline training - and wondering how to improve course completion rates?
Start by putting yourself in your workers’ shoes.
Imagine you work in a warehouse, and have some mandatory training to complete - but the only way to do it is on a computer you share with 50 other people, located in an office 5 minutes away from the work floor.
Or perhaps you’re a delivery driver and have a quick break while you wait for a takeaway to be ready. You open your phone and take a look at some training you need to do on a new customer delivery option - and find it’s a 20-minute video with no subtitles. Who has the time to watch that?
In both of these situations, there’s a significant barrier to training completion - barriers we can’t afford to have. 93% of frontline leaders say training significantly impacts the experience their customers have, as well as worker retention (89%) and productivity (91%). Training not being completed has a ripple effect across an entire business.
Low average completion rates for online courses are a common problem as well as a significant one. In fact, completion rates are the second biggest issue reported by frontline leaders responsible for training. This statistic needs to improve if we want our workers to be safe, productive, and engaged, and if we want to prove the ROI of training too.
In this blog post, we’re going to dig into why frontline workers aren’t completing their training, and what tactics L&D leaders can use to improve their course completion rates.
In a rush? Skip ahead:
Ready? Let’s get started.
9 times out of 10, course completion rates are low because of a lack of ease. So what exactly is making things so difficult for workers?
Difficulty can usually be attributed to either a process issue or a content issue. Let’s take a look:
If you think back to our warehouse worker at the start of this article, they face obvious barriers to completion. For a start, they have to travel elsewhere to undertake their training - and even then might face a wait for the tech they need to become available. Situations like this are all too common: 60% of workers are currently dissatisfied with the technology they’re given to do their work with.
While adopting a BYOD policy is a good place to start, each worker having a personal device doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. If accessing training involves remembering a password to log into an account or completing a multi-step journey, it’s far less likely to be accessed. A digital hurdle to cross like password entry inhibits employee productivity by up to 40%. 92% won’t bother to retrieve a forgotten password and will give up entirely instead.
The crux of these process issues is they take up a lot of time. Whether they access the training or give up, a worker takes over 20 minutes to get back into the flow of their task after an interruption. And when your pay is based on how quickly you can complete a task, or how many tasks you can complete over a set period, that’s a problem.
But what about our delivery driver - who accessed the required training content in seconds, but abandoned it? What could be the problem there?
For our driver the content was clearly too long, as is the case for many; 63% of frontline workers want shorter content.
Length isn’t the only potential issue here. Content might also be too generic. While there are some topics every employee has to study, like compliance for example, 41% of information provided to employees is irrelevant to their specific role. It may not also be exciting - 70% of frontline employees want learning experiences that are ‘more fun’ and interactive, rather than a passive learning experience that requires them to absorb information without input.
The result? Frontline workers aren’t paying attention: 67% of frontline workers don’t fully concentrate on training videos: they might skip parts, speed it up, watch without sound, or multi-task while watching. Only 28% say they ‘always’ pay attention.
And if you don’t pay attention, you’re unlikely to be able to complete a training course; whether that’s because you fail subsequent tests or just give up on it entirely.
If your courses aren't completed, your workers aren’t learning. We already know a lack of learning impacts the customer experience, worker retention and productivity, and, ultimately, the bottom line.
Take pet store retailer Pet Supermarket, which was experiencing excessive inventory loss from expiring perishable products.
Following the introduction of a digital complement to their in-person training - that put snappy, always-on 'TikTok-style' training within employees' reach - the company managed to turn the tide on their perishable stock problem. Thanks to its employees’ improved knowledge about how to manage such stock, the business saved $1 million.
Upon introducing TikTok-style training guides delivered via in-store QR codes, retail chain Pet Supermarket saw a 79% average completion rate. As a result, less in-store stock perishes as more employees know how to manage it - resulting in cost savings for the business.
A lack of learning is bad for the worker: 48% say receiving better quality training is the number one factor that would set them up for success at work, and 83% say it’s key to forming a positive perception of their employer.
Safety is another facet. Frontline workers often work with complex machinery or equipment or have to drive for their work. High course completion rates are the first step in understanding how your training helps to keep your workforce safe - as traffic control services company Flagger Force recently found. Flagger Force supplemented longer in-person sessions with flexible learning that could be accessed on mobile.
Training was embedded and made accessible through the homescreen of their employee communications tool, Beekeeper. By embedding training in a platform that already had an over 90% engagement rate, Beekeeper brought its training completion rate up to 94%. As well as driving engagement with their communications tool even higher, having safety training completed by their frontline in these volumes ultimately reduced insurance claims for the company by 15%.
Low course completion rates also pose a problem for the person responsible for training. Course completion rate is an immediate metric you can track and tie back to the success or failure of a program. It tells you what to do next - do more of what you’re doing, or try a different strategy - and helps you measure downstream impact like ROI.
The low course completion rates many businesses see have a knock-on effect - 30% of frontline leaders aren’t confident presenting the ROI of training to their manager or senior stakeholders. This is a difficult situation to be in when 63% of teams report budget constraints, and decision-makers constantly want proof of ROI to justify their investment. If there’s not a digital paper trail of completion rates (at the very least), it’s going to be difficult to link any other results back to training.
Before we can start considering ROI and mapping the downstream impact of training, workers actually need to be finishing it. Let’s take a look at 5 ways to improve course completion rates for your workers.
Above all else, you should prioritize making training easy to complete. Frontline workers are unable - more so than any other member of the workforce - to carve out a lot of time to complete training, especially when it’s not mandatory.
Earning based on productive hours means training simply cannot take minutes to get to and involve multiple passwords or apps. If this is the case, it’s always going to be an uphill battle rather than an efficient operation.
Let’s dive a little deeper into how to improve learning completion rates for frontline workers, by prioritizing ease of use.
Here’s the thing: a lot of frontline work is behind the times. Matt Fairhurst, CEO of scheduling app Skedulo, explains many in the industry are “still working with spreadsheets, paper, they’re being scheduled on whiteboards [...] there is still an underlying lack of device technology strategy”.
There’s an obvious gap here when you consider 95% of frontline workers assess employers on the quality of the technology they provide. Dated hardware - or a total lack of it - is not going to make the impression you need on your employees.
So, what does work?
Devices that come with employees on the job are optimal. This could be a personal mobile device used under a BYOD policy, or a company-issued device. These also go down well with frontline workers, with 60% preferring to use mobile devices for work-related tasks. If a mobile device isn’t possible, a shared tablet is at least a portable option that minimizes the physical barrier to training.
We’ve all experienced the tedious process of retrieving a lost password, or figuring out a confusing app just to complete a simple task at work.
Make sure your frontline workers don’t have these experiences by enabling them to log in using a one-time password or single sign-on. Setting up an account is another unnecessary barrier.
A best-in-class solution won’t involve any kind of log-in process at all, with authentication being handled on the backend. This usually looks like embedding training within your business’s pre-existing apps or comms channels. The more invisible you can make the learning experience, the less likely you are to interrupt your peoples’ flow of work.
Most frontline workforces aren’t made up of just one type of worker. For example, you might have employees in a warehouse packing up items, and drivers delivering them to consumers.
If you only have one place for your workers to find out what they need to know, some inevitably aren’t going to access their training. You need to have multiple points of access that make sense for your organization and are easy for your workforce to get to.
Potential points of access include:
Think of the above stages as step one of improving course completion rates. Getting these factors right should make a significant impact, but if you want to push your rates even higher, you should start looking at non-technological ways to lift adoption and incentivize completion.
Training may not be mandatory at your place of work, but that doesn't mean your workers should feel less of an urge to complete it. Ideally, you want to make the training experience feel like the opposite of an inconvenience or time drain. We do this by unlocking extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
First, a quick definition of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation involves doing a task or behaving in a certain way because you want a reward, or to avoid punishment. Going to work because you need to support your family is an example of extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation involves doing a task or behaving in a certain way because it gives you personal fulfilment. For example, working because you enjoy it, not because you need to, would be an example of intrinsic motivation.
Both are powerful - and an effective training program will use both. Here’s how:
Leveraging extrinsic motivation: this could look like offering prizes or running competitions as an easy way to incentivize people - just make sure to promote them using your communication channels of choice.
Leveraging intrinsic motivation: this could look like getting your workers to contribute to the training courses themselves (more on this in a moment). If they have skin in the game, or the content features a peer, they’re much more likely to complete it.
What would be more interesting to you: a generic training video made 20 years ago and featuring actors, or content featuring roles, tasks, or even colleagues that you recognize?
Make user-generated content part of your training strategy, and you’re making content unique to your business as well as building a connection with those watching it (who, without a place in an office, might struggle to feel one otherwise).
Home goods delivery and installation solutions provider Temco Logistics uses user-generated content to build a community for its dispersed workforce, as well as making its learning experience relatable and engaging.
Dan Drenk, Temco’s Director of Learning and Development, explains:
“we’re trying to show as much of the workforce as we can to as much of the workforce as we can…it just gives folks a perspective on how big and broad the organization is.”
Personalizing each learner’s experience will also boredom-proof your material. Frontline workers name ‘training that is relevant to me’ as one of the most important success factors to them.
A good frontline training solution will support segmentation by learner population; what their role is, their branch of operation, and what they last completed, for example. Balance these learning paths with access to a content catalog for self-directed learning, and you’ll give your workers the opportunity to build a learning path unique to their own tastes and learning styles.
There are a myriad of reasons why your training completion rates might be low, but fixing the problem doesn’t need to be complicated.
Roll out your solution in two stages; start by removing barriers to training, and then move on to making the experience as engaging and relevant as possible. Before long, you’ll have built a culture of learning that feels intrinsic to your workers’ day-to-day - and has a clear ROI, too.
Looking to improve course completion rates for your workforce? We’re eduMe, a frontline training provider focussing on the creation and distribution of training content they’ll actually want to complete. Learn more about removing barriers to training with seamless-access content.