Why Most Corporate Training Feels Like a Waste of Time
Some while back, I was designing a workshop for G7 health ministers in Nagasaki on behalf of The World Bank when I was struck by an insight: these were some of the most powerful people in the world, and they could walk out of my session at any moment.
If I bored them for even five minutes, they’d simply leave for one of the dozen other sessions happening simultaneously.
Many trainings avoid this problem by making the session mandatory. It seems like a good idea in theory, but as you read this millions of employees are clicking through mandatory compliance training that nobody (including the people who assigned it!) actually expects will change anything.
The contrast couldn’t be starker. And it explains why most corporate training fails so spectacularly.
The Psychology of Forced Learning
Corporate training violates every principle of human motivation psychology. When psychologists study what drives people to learn and change, they consistently find three core needs: autonomy (choice and control), competence (feeling capable and challenged), and relatedness (connection with others).
Most corporate training systematically destroys all three.
Autonomy gets crushed when training is mandatory. The moment someone says “complete this by Friday or you’re non-compliant,” you’ve triggered psychological reactance. People don’t want to be told what to do, especially when it feels disconnected from their real work.
Competence gets undermined when content is trivially easy. Click through a presentation, watch a video, answer obvious questions about company policy. This doesn’t demonstrate expertise. It signals that the organization thinks you’re too simple-minded to handle complexity.
Relatedness disappears when training happens in isolation. Sitting alone at your desk clicking through slides isn’t learning, it’s compliance theater. Real learning happens in community, through discussion and shared problem-solving.
What Training Looks Like When It Works
That G7 workshop worked because it respected rather than violated these psychological needs. Ministers chose which session to attend from multiple options (autonomy). They were asked to apply complex World Bank infectious disease guidelines to their own national contexts (competence). And they learned from each other’s expertise through interactive activities (relatedness).
But you don’t need to gather executives in a conference room for elaborate card games to apply these principles. The key insight is designing with self-determination theory in mind, whatever your constraints.
Autonomy can be created even in mandatory training. Let people choose their path through the material, pick which scenarios to work through, or decide when to take breaks. Even small choices restore a sense of control.
Competence means matching challenge to expertise. Instead of basic policy recitation, give experienced managers complex scenarios that require them to apply policies to realistic situations. (Hint: game designers can help with this) Let new hires work through simpler cases that build confidence.
Relatedness happens when people learn from each other. This could be peer discussion groups, case study debates, or even asynchronous forums where people share how they’ve handled similar challenges.
The specific format matters less than the underlying psychology. A 15-minute team discussion about how harassment policies apply to remote work respects people’s intelligence more than an hour-long click-through presentation about general workplace behavior.
The Compliance Trap
Most corporate training isn’t designed to change behavior. It’s designed to satisfy legal requirements and create documentation that training occurred. This creates a perverse incentive: the goal becomes completing the training, not learning from it.
When I work with companies, I often ask: “What do you want people to do differently after this training?” The answer is usually vague: “Be more aware of harassment policies” or “Understand our values better.”
But awareness and understanding don’t change behavior. People already know they shouldn’t harass colleagues or that teamwork is important. The training problem isn’t knowledge transfer, it’s behavior change. And behavior change requires practice, feedback, and social reinforcement… none of which happen in typical corporate training.
The Real Cost of Bad Training
Sure, poor corporate training is a waste of time. But the problem is actually much larger than that: it actively damages motivation. When people sit through obviously pointless sessions, they learn that the organization doesn’t respect their intelligence or time. They become cynical about future learning opportunities.
Meanwhile, the organization thinks it’s solved the problem by checking the “training completed” box, while the actual behaviors that needed changing remain unchanged.
This is why some of the most successful companies are moving away from traditional training toward embedded learning: mentorship programs, peer learning groups, and real-time coaching that happens in the context of actual work.
Designing for Human Motivation
Real training that changes behavior looks completely different:
Create choice within structure. Instead of mandatory sessions, offer multiple ways to engage with the material. Let people choose their learning path or timing. Even small choices (which case study to analyze, which group to join) restore a sense of autonomy.
Design for competence, not compliance. Give people challenging problems that require them to apply their existing expertise. Don’t talk at them, create situations where they demonstrate what they know while learning new approaches.
Make it social. Learning happens through conversation, debate, and shared problem-solving. Design activities where people learn from each other’s experiences rather than just absorbing information from a presenter.
This works at any scale. A monthly team retrospective where people share how they’ve applied last quarter’s training is more effective than any standalone workshop. A Slack channel where employees discuss real scenarios they’ve encountered reinforces learning better than follow-up emails with additional resources.
Stop Teaching, Start Designing
The solution isn’t better presentations or more engaging videos. It’s designing experiences that work with human psychology instead of against it.
This means starting with behavior change goals, not information transfer goals. It means creating choice and challenge, not compliance and simplicity. It means facilitating peer learning, not delivering content.
When training respects people’s need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, it stops feeling like a waste of time. People engage because they want to, not because they have to. They demonstrate and build real expertise instead of just clicking “next.” They learn from each other instead of learning in isolation.
The G7 ministers didn’t need to be forced to participate. They chose to be there, contributed their expertise, and left with practical tools they could actually use. That’s what all training should feel like.
The question isn’t how to make mandatory training more engaging. The question is how to design learning experiences that people would choose to participate in and that actually change how they work.
Sam Liberty is a gamification expert, applied game designer, and consultant. His clients include The World Bank, Click Therapeutics, and DARPA. He teaches game design at Northeastern University. He is the former Lead Game Designer at Sidekick Health.
