CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Companies that want to motivate workers to use electronic-based or digital training programs need to make training modules fun and stimulating whenever they can, and offer extrinsic incentives, such as wage increases and user support, when employees need extra enticement, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois.
Employees' acceptance of technology is critical to the successful implementation of e-learning, and organizations often overestimate the effectiveness of extrinsic incentives as motivators, particularly when training programs are involuntary, said the lead author on the study, Sun Joo Yoo, who is a graduate student in human resource development in the department of education policy, organization and leadership. The department is in the College of Education at Illinois.
Yoo's co-authors on the study were Seung-hyun Caleb Han and Wenhao David Huang, who are a graduate student and a faculty member, respectively, in the same department.
Nearly 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies rely on e-learning for employee training, spending more than $16 billion on it annually.
E-learning has proliferated in South Korea, accounting for more than 45 percent of total worker training in 2005. Korea's burgeoning interest in electronic training is tied to the nation's rapidly growing information technology and communications sector, supported by nationwide availability of high-speed Internet and telecommunications infrastructure.
The research team at Illinois examined the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators on employee acceptance and usage of e-learning at a mid-sized food service company in South Korea, which has used technology-based learning since 2000 to train employees for its franchise stores.
Workers are required to complete at least 100 hours of training annually; to qualify for promotions, they must complete at least two - and managers at least four - e-learning courses. Failure to meet the training requirements adversely affects employees' performance evaluations.
During 2010, the company provided more than 200 e-learning courses monthly, addressing topics such as customer etiquette and leadership using case studies, video clips and Flash movies, Yoo said.
About 226 employees at seven of the company's branches participated in an anonymous online survey that assessed intrinsic motivators (anxiety, attitudes toward e-learning and perceptions that the system was easy to use) as well as extrinsic motivators (perceived organizational and technical support, workers' expectations that use would improve their job performance and perceptions that others believed their using the system was important).
All of these psychological and technical variables determine individuals' acceptance and usage of information technology, according to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. However, most prior studies that explored UTAUT's validity were conducted in university settings in the U.S., and the researchers at Illinois wanted to investigate its applicability in other cultural contexts and organizational settings. They also wanted to examine whether intrinsic and extrinsic motivators differed in their influence on acceptance and usage.
Most survey respondents at the Korean company were in their 20s (76 percent) and female (69 percent). More than 49 percent had no prior experience with e-learning.
The researchers found that the extrinsic motivators did not directly and independently influence employees' intentions to use e-learning, but the intrinsic motivators did.
The effects of extrinsic motivators could only be observed when mediated by the intrinsic factors, the researchers reported.
While some - but not all - prior studies suggested that extrinsic rewards undermine users' intrinsic motivation, the Korean study found no such effect.
The study demonstrates that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are important in achieving employees' acceptance and use of e-learning technology, Huang said.
"Many human-resource professionals focus on facilitating conditions - that is, demonstrating organizational and technical support for using systems - and not on individual intrinsic motivators, but the current study indicates that they should," Han said.
The study can help organizations decide where they might best concentrate their resources when deploying technology-based training. Designing programs that are intellectually stimulating and fun to use can heighten employees' intrinsic motivation. However, when training simply isn't intrinsically rewarding - and some topics and tasks simply are not engaging or enjoyable - organizations might focus on the extrinsic factors, offering tangible rewards and promoting user support, the researchers suggested.
The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Computers in Human Behavior and became available online Jan. 25.