Training Your People is Like Training a Cat
A couple weeks ago, I was having dinner with a couple cousins I hadn’t seen in a while. And the topic turned to… my cats. Specifically, how I had trained my cats to do things most people wouldn’t expect cats to do. Common dog trips like high five, come here, and sit. Leash training. Getting comfortable with other animals and people.
The fact is, I used the same approach I use to training people – I found their incentives, and gave them a motivation to learn.
You see, when most L&D programs fail, it’s not because employees lack interest in growing, but rather that learning is treated as a secondary chore stacked on top of an already full workload. For employees, like a cat that just hears me saying “sit… sit… sit!”, this comes across as a compliance drag, with no clear benefit to them.
Incentives bridge the gap between your or your business’ objectives and an individual’s personal motivation. When properly aligned, they give employees (and cats) explicit permission and motivation to prioritize development.
To transform talent development from a passive expense into a measurable performance multiplier, organizations should build their programs around incentivizing employees.
The Research Behind Incentivized Learning
Psychologist and behavioral economics pioneer Daniel Kahneman found that people learned word pairs quicker when offered (in the experiment, monetary) incentives. Subsequent research confirms that when upskilling carries no tangible or immediately apparent reward, employees make a rational choice: they prioritize the daily tasks that drive their immediate performance reviews and meets deadlines. Building a structured incentive model bridges this gap, aligning your objectives with an individual’s more immediate career goals.
The data behind incentivized development speaks for itself:
Drastic Performance Lift: A major meta-analysis conducted by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) revealed that properly designed incentive programs can boost individual workplace performance by up to 44% when sustained over time.
Higher Engagement and Application: According to Harvard Business Review, traditional, isolated training programs rarely alter workplace behavior on their own. In fact, up to 70% of employees skip or tune out standard video training unless learning is experiential, collaborative, and tied directly to visible career pathways. As someone who came up through the L&D field, I can tell you honestly that I experienced this myself as a learner.
Lower Turnover and Higher Margins: Workplace studies by Gallup show that companies offering clear development pathways combined with structured recognition achieve 21% to 51% lower voluntary turnover alongside 23% higher overall profitability.
The 3-Tier Incentive Framework
Now that we have established that plenty of research shows you best develop your people when you clearly align incentives to their learning and development, we should answer, “How do I do that?” And, ideally, “How do I do that on a budget?” You don’t need a complex and expensive incentive structure to make a training program work. But you also need to do a little more than relying on a single reward approach, and take a deep look into what will motivate your workers. Here are a couple ideas to get started:
1. Monetary Incentives (Direct ROI)
One-time micro-bonuses or stipends for earning industry-recognized certifications. Some accounting firms like this one will help cover the cost of certifications.
Salary adjustments for specialized skills, even if those skills are acquired when the individual is already employed. For example, the US military provides a financial bonus to proficient foreign language speakers.
Subsidized tuition or dedicated wellness/development budgets for top learners. Cigna has a well-known program.
2. Professional Incentives (Career Velocity)
Map career progression steps to specific skills and behaviors (competencies), making it easier for employees to see what it is they need to develop. I’ve worked with clients to define career progression more specifically with a deep focus on defining specific competencies and how they differentiate up and down the ladder.
Access to executive mentorship programs and high-visibility stretch projects. Many companies do this through leadership development programs, but there is no need to limit it to just high -potentials.
Guaranteed dedicated "learning hours" carved out of the regular workweek so employees don't have to study on their personal time. Hubspot has been an ardent practitioner of this for years.
3. Social & Cultural Incentives (Recognition)
Public recognition during company all-hands meetings and internal newsletters. Atlassian has this as part of an internal kudos board.
Peer-nominated learning awards and digital credentials shared across company channels. IBM offers digital badges to celebrate learning and growth.
Structure a coaching and mentoring program where you “graduate” to teach and coach others. As I talked about in a previous blog post, this is something the military does well, and has led me to the career I’ve grown.
Best Practices for Rolling Out Learning Incentives
Reward Application, Not Just Completion: Don't incentivize passive video watching. Tie rewards to practical milestones, such as applying a new skill to solve an operational bottleneck or training a peer. When I was training my cats, I’d first provide their favorite treats every time they performed an action. Then, every other time. I continue to reward them, but it’s not just about “completing the action.” Rather, it’s about accomplishing the goal.
Shorten the Feedback Loop: Delayed recognition loses its impact. Acknowledge and reward completed learning milestones as close to real-time as possible. For example, when I was training my cats, I had the treats ready to go. As soon as they performed the desired action, I clicked a button and provided the treats. This signaled that “hey, that thing you just did? That was good!”
Equip Managers to Be Champions: Ensure department leads actively tie training accomplishments to team performance reviews and 1-on-1 career discussions. Or, for a cat, more treats and chin scratches.
When you incentivize continuous learning, you stop asking employees to find time for training—you give them a clear, compelling reason to make development a core priority. The result is a more agile, high-performing team capable of driving real organizational growth. Or, a cat that will back to you when called.
Want to learn more about how you can develop your workforce? Book some time today and let’s talk! I’ll bring the treats.
An example of one of my cats showing off what he has learned. I found that training my cats for both fun things like tricks and important things like wearing their harness, coming back to us when called, not scratching the couch, etc all follow the same principles as training humans. You can also watch this video on Sound Talent’s instagram account.
