Best Ways to Get Care Staff Engaged with Learning and Training

1.      Don’t Leave Things Until the Last Minute

Most people don’t like things being sprung on them out of nowhere, especially if they’re already tight for time caring for others. For current employees, from the moment you know you’re implementing a new training structure or learning method, or you know a deadline for mandatory training is approaching, you should make sure your team is aware and prepared for everything waiting ahead.

For new recruits, you should make sure they fully understand the values and core policies of your care service and the core and mandatory training they will participate in during their time with you. Creating a specific digital learning resource to get them on board is highly recommended. You may want to assign them a mentor to help them get their head around your methods of training, learning and development.

2.      Explain Why They Need the Training

One of the best ways to get your care team engaged with training is to let them know why it’s needed. Is it mandatory? Or is it just for professional development? When they know why they’re completing these tasks, they are likely to be more motivated to pay proper attention and participate. If the training is optional, it gives them the option to not partake and focus on something more important to them.

Care staff need to understand why they must comply with these rules and regulations, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs of the laws or acts. In most cases, training isn’t just for career development or themselves, but for their service users and the reputation, safety and functionality of the care service. You need to make it clear that the learning and development they’re taking part in will improve care quality and safety, and mitigate risks to them and the people they work with.

In some cases, it’s worth aligning your training to events in the news. This will help your care team feel like they’re working towards a greater goal. This doesn’t have to be limited to news surrounding care, it could be awareness days related to fire safety, cyber security or gender equality. Or it could be something to do with new technology, the environment or fundraising for charities.

3.      Give Everyone an Incentive

For many members of the team, training, learning and development will come across as a chore. Whether they struggle with learning new things, they’ve been in the job a while and are stuck in their ways, or they’re anxious about using methods in the form of technology, one of the best ways to motivate everyone is to give them an incentive.

The top three incentives for most employees include cash, gifts and experiences. We are aware that most care services have a tight budget or a shortage of carers, which can make it difficult to offer these kinds of incentives. But there will be rewards that can excite your team without stretching the budget and the rewards don’t have to be given to everyone, you can just stick to the best performer or the top three.

For example, the top performer can get a £20 gift voucher, second place gets a £10 voucher, and last place gets a box of chocolates.

Remember, if you make out that everything is important, eventually, nothing will be. You should keep this in mind when developing a rewards system for learning and development. If something is mandatory, then their incentive will go without saying. If they don’t complete it, they will no longer be compliant and will lose their employment. For optional learning, measure the impact of this training and make sure the courses that can improve their performance stand out the most.

4.      Create Healthy Competition

Introducing incentives is a great way to create healthy competition within the workplace. Appealing to people’s competitive side is a highly effective method when it comes to increasing engagement during training, learning and development.

In small services, encouraging competition amongst staff tends to be more docile, as you don’t want to create a toxic or stressful environment for your smaller team. However, in multi-services, competition is a great idea that has proven to be highly successful. Instead of getting people to try and beat the team they should be working closely with every day, you can get entire services to compete against each other instead. Site leaders tend to get really competitive and will do what they can to ensure their service wins and compliance continues to go up.

5.      Build a Positive Learning Culture

Making learning a part of a natural day at work will make it so much easier to motivate your care staff while mitigating the intensity of training. A positive learning culture can help your employees learn in the workflow, increasing engagement and results. Instead of making learning a separate activity that can be seen as a chore, getting them to learn in the workflow is defined as providing the correct tools and resources that allow your team to learn as they work.

Obviously, the learn-in-workflow method won’t work for everyone or every aspect of training. Another way to build a positive learning culture is to transform a standard classroom or course-only learning into a combination of practical and theoretical training. This will make it flexible, interesting and appealing and will allow people to gather the information they need and apply it correctly to real-life situations. This has been proven to improve the level of knowledge retention while increasing engagement.

6.      Encourage Self-Directed Learning

In the past, people have sat in a room and been fed the information they need through a teacher or trainer. This tradition of learning that we’re all used to tends to be dull and tedious. Fortunately, this is changing rapidly, mainly due to something known as the democratisation of knowledge.

Self-directed learning gives employees a choice in how and what they need to learn. This helps to increase both motivation and engagement and also encourages deeper learning and understanding. Employees who have control over their learning journey are much more likely to know how they want to develop their careers and will feel like they know their purpose in work.

One of the best ways to encourage self-directed learning is to invest in an e-Learning platform. This allows them to learn whenever and wherever they want, making training, learning and development more flexible, engaging and bespoke than ever before.

7.      Invest in Sufficient Mentoring and Coaching

With new learning methods being introduced and used all the time, you must invest in sufficient mentoring and coaching to increase engagement across your care team. Having the right trainers and support will improve the rate at which they develop critical skills, including digital and leadership skills. Having a good mentor can also help your staff with productivity and performance challenges.

Coaching is a popular engagement strategy that’s recommended due to the current change in pace in all working environments. It’s common for modern employees to feel frequently stressed and overwhelmed due to new things being introduced in their workplace. This leads to them needing to learn and do more, so sufficient support is essential.

Coaching will provide your team with a personalised support system, as people who have dealt with similar changes in the past can help teach and assist those who are taking on the challenge for the first time. Having someone by their side who can work with their strengths can be an invaluable asset. As a result, learners have the opportunity to develop knowledge and new skills with confidence.

8.      Personalise and Refresh Your Training Content

Making sure your training content is up-to-date and personalised is crucial. Bespoke content is one of the most obvious ways to make all of your care training relevant to your employees. Some e-Learning platforms can be personalised and refreshed with ease.

Ways to personalise your training materials include using the company name and the names of your policies and adding in the terminology your business uses. As well as having relevant company-specific information, you should tailor your learning content and training to match people’s learning abilities. For example, with certain e-Learning platforms, the content can be made more readable for those with dyslexia or people who speak English as their second language.

As you know, information, rules and procedures within the care industry experience many changes to improve the lives of people working in care or relying on a service. To make all of your training relevant and increase engagement amongst staff, you should make sure your training content is refreshed regularly. You should also make sure that your training methods are up to date, for example, don’t be afraid to integrate technology, as this can make learning more interactive and engaging.

9.      Offer Plenty of Help and Support

Being helpful and supportive of your team during times of training, learning and development will help them feel more comfortable and confident about everything, increasing engagement in return. You must do your best to create an open and supportive culture by encouraging people to be honest about things they don’t fully understand and what they do and don’t know.

As mentioned previously, introducing mentors can be a great way for people to feel supported during their training, as they will have someone to talk to about things they’re struggling with and get advice on how to overcome hurdles. If your employees are using technology to learn for the first time, then assigning e-Learning champions can help them get logged in, set up and used to this new training method. An e-Learning champion is someone within the business who is very tech-savvy and comfortable with using virtual software.

10. Provide Access to Quality Learning Resources

This should go without saying, but providing your care staff with quality learning resources will help them remain engaged during training. For example, if you introduce a new e-Learning platform, you need to make sure that it works well, it’s easy to use and understand and can be personalised to contain all of the up-to-date information that they need to succeed. If the platform is slow, dull and difficult to use, it will make your employees feel unmotivated and dread their learning experience.

Having excellent digital learning resources is the first step. While e-Learning is extremely useful, you shouldn’t skimp on quality when it comes to practical training and assessments. This will teach your care team essential skills that will need to be used in everyday life and emergencies, so they need to be confident and well-trained on how to carry out these tasks and techniques. You should also make sure you have top-shelf learning resources that contain quality answers readily available to everyone. 

Don’t Be Afraid to Use Technology

As you can see, there are many methods you can consider when it comes to increasing staff engagement with learning, training and development. But one of the best things you can do to make everyone’s lives easier is to use technology. This allows you to encourage self-directed learning, personalise and update your training content regularly and create a positive learning culture with a quality learning resource.

If you’re looking to introduce an engaging and informative online platform that has been endorsed by Skills for Care, then you should consider eLearning for Health and Social Care from The Access Group. This cost-effective solution is a flexible and intuitive way to train and develop the skills of your care team. We also have a complete suite of care solutions, so digitising your care business has never been easier and can be accomplished through a single experienced supplier. After digitising a wide range of different businesses across the world for over 30 years, no task is too big or too small for our team.

If you’d like to book a demo for our e-Learning platform and our award-winning care software, contact us today to speak to one of our professionals.