There Are Plenty of Reasons Employees Don’t Attend Training

“What’s wrong with them?”

That’s the question training managers ask when people don’t show up for the training they offer. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong question. A better one is, “What kept people from attending this session?”

When you figure that out, you’ll be ready to answer the next best question, “What can we do to keep that from happening again?”

The Session That Sparked My Curiosity

One of my clients regularly had problems getting people to attend the sessions she scheduled. She’d invite the whole company and typically less than 10 would show up.

For one session, I called to confirm and learned that only five people RSVP’d that they would attend. It wasn’t great, but enough to move forward.

On the day of the session, she and I prepared the space and waited. Eventually, one person arrived, and that was it. The three of us decided to move ahead. I turned it into an informal discussion, and I believe all of us thought it went well.

Still, it felt like such a lost opportunity. I wondered why people wouldn’t show up. My client and I talked about it. The next day, I decided to give it some more thought. The result was a list of potential reasons.

8 Possible Reasons Why Employees Don’t Attend Training

I’ve been to many organizations over the years that also struggle with attendance issues. My goal is to save you the time of identifying possibilities. Although you can certainly add to my list.

Instead, take the list I’ve already made and try to determine what is happening within your organization. Once you know what the problems are, you’ll be ready to plan how to address them. And in most cases, the problem itself suggests what needs to happen.

1. Poor publicity: People can’t attend a session if they don’t know about it. A single email blast doesn’t cut through the communication clutter. Getting the word out requires a significant effort that uses repetition, multiple senders, and multiple channels.
2. People are too busy: This is by far the most popular reason, but it also needs more investigation because it comes in three versions.
   1. People legitimately are too busy. Taking time out for training just doesn’t work for them.
   2. They claim they’re too busy but manage to find time for other activities.
   3. They want other people (especially their managers) to think they are busy. It feels risky to appear underutilized.
3. Lack of management support: In some organizations, you must get your manager’s permission to attend training, and the manager doesn’t give it. Another possibility is that the manager doesn’t encourage training for employees and in the worst cases, talks about training as a waste of time. Finally, it helps when a manager specifically nudges an employee towards a particular training, but in this case, it didn’t happen. The top level of support could make it required and ensure all the managers attend themselves to set a good example.
4. People don’t see the benefit: They believe they are already well-equipped to do their job and won’t get any benefit from attending. They also might believe the topic doesn’t apply to them. The problem here is that you didn’t answer their main question, “Why should I attend?”
5. Scheduling problems: There are times of the day and days of the week that will work better or worse for people. To make this more challenging, what works for some is terrible for others. For example, I’ve seen clients schedule early morning so the night shift people could just work an extra hour or two and catch the session at the end of their shift. It’s not hard to imagine the problems that will create, and yet people do it all the time.
6. Poor location: These days one major choice is whether to make it in-person, virtual, or hybrid. Having people drive into the office who are used to working from home has now become a major ask. Travel takes away from other value-adding activities. Doing it virtually creates problems too, as people are overloaded with screen time and others might not be comfortable using the technology.
7. Training is considered a perk rather than a necessity: One way to show it’s not valued is offering training during employee’s free time (i.e., lunch hour). If it’s important, people should be paid to attend.
8. History of boring, poorly delivered workshops: It only takes one session that was boring for them to not want to attend another. Training sessions must be consistently high-quality and buzz-worthy. Wow them once, and they’ll come for another and hopefully bring a friend.

Put the list to work to improve your attendance

Persistent poor attendance happens for a reason. Your job is to find those reasons and then build and implement a plan to address them.

If you’re not sure which causes apply in your situation, do a little research. This can be as simple as having conversations and asking two simple questions:

1. Were you aware we had a training session on TOPIC X last week?
2. (if yes) I’m curious about any reasons you have for why you didn’t attend. Can you think of any you’re willing to share with me?

To be a bit more rigorous, put this in the form of a two-question survey, and send it out. Yet another option would be to host a couple of focus group sessions.

Lack of awareness and busyness are the two most likely reasons, but there are other possibilities.

Can you think of some I haven’t included? Share them in the comments. Also, if you have specific ideas about how to address any of these, I’d love to hear your thoughts.