Pract.us provides a way to implement and manage an informal training program that taps into employees’ intrinsic motivation to learn. With our tool, you can incorporate autonomy, mastery, and purpose into everyday training activities, which encourages employees to learn more and use more of what they learn on the job – boosting team skills and performance.
At Pract.us, we know that motivation is key to a good training program, so we’ve designed the tool to appeal to people’s intrinsic motivations, the same ones that drive us to follow hobbies we love, do a little extra work even when we don’t have to, and learn new skills even if they weren’t assigned to us.
Intrinsic motivation comes from autonomy, mastery and purpose.
In the book, Drive, Daniel Pink describes research into intrinsic motivation and how we can tap into our inner drives for a happier, more productive team at work. He suggests that people are motivated to perform well when they have a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose in their work.
Autonomy gives us a sense of control over our lives.
People like to have autonomy because it gives them a sense of control and direction in their own lives. Research has shown that people work harder, are more creative, and are more satisfied with their work when they have some control over it. This fact has led some companies, like Google, to give their engineers 20% of work time to spend on whatever they want. And the ideas they’ve come up with during this time have made Google one of the top technology companies globally.
With Pract.us, you can create a flexible training program in which employees can pursue skills most meaningful or interesting to them. And you can still track their progress without clamping down on their creativity.
Team members can choose the skills they want to learn, creating their own learning paths.
And because Pract.us doesn’t require pre-made videos or courses, employees can draw on other available resources, including their colleagues. Once a new employee develops a training card, it’s there for others to follow. They can also add and embellish the cards and skills with the additional resources or tips.
Giving employees a degree of autonomy in their training will spark their natural desire to learn, and you’ll see the improvement in performance as a result.
Mastery pushes us to get better.
Mastery refers to our drive to know a skill well. We want to get successively better at something. We’re motivated by a challenge that’s just right for us, not too hard and not too easy. When we face this kind of puzzle, it’s exciting, and we fall into a flow, in which we’re totally absorbed in what we do. Video game creators tap into this drive brilliantly by providing in each level a challenge that’s greater than the previous level, but not so hard we give up. When employees are motivated by the drive for mastery, they willingly learn new skills that help them become better at their jobs, boosting performance.
However, tapping into our drive for mastery isn’t easy. We each have different levels of skill, so it takes a different challenge to excite each of us. Even day to day, our appetite for tackling new puzzles changes depending on how we’re feeling, how much energy we have, and how much stress we’re dealing with.
Learners can take on skills according to the level of challenge that motivates them. They work with managers to set goals and deadlines.
Pract.us lets employees work at their own pace and find the level of challenge which most motivates them at any given time. Pract.us cards and skills break learning into bite-sized pieces so employees can take on more or less challenge depending on what they’re up for. Some will want to race and see how fast they can complete a card while others might want to practice one skill until they’ve mastered it and then move on to the next.
Because Pract.us helps you weave training into work time, employees don’t have to wait until a course is offered; they can look at every day as a chance to gain mastery of their work.
Purpose makes our efforts worthwhile.
One of the reasons employees disengage at work is that they see no purpose in what they’re doing. They feel that it’s just busy work. It doesn’t impact anyone or anything in a positive way. This is a cultural issue and a training program isn’t going to fix it at the company level.
However, the best way to achieve purpose in training efforts is to help people learn skills they need to use right away so they can easily see how their effort will improve their work. Because employees can use Pract.us while working, they can identify a training need and enroll in a card to meet that need in the same day.
Employees can enroll in skills they find relevant.
Employees can enroll in skills they find relevant.Harnessing the power of relevance for your training program not only motivates employees to remember and use the training, but also means that whenever a training gap pops up, you can plug it immediately. Performance continues to improve as your team gets the skills they need when they need them.