Engagement Is Rarely the Real Problem in Workplace Learning

“We need to make this training more engaging.”

I’ve heard this sentence in almost every learning role I’ve held. In countless conversations with learning experience designers.

It sounds reasonable.
Engagement feels like the obvious problem.

But in adult learning, engagement is usually a symptom, not the cause.

When learning doesn’t land, the issue is rarely that the content isn’t interactive enough or visually appealing enough. More often, it’s that learners don’t see how the learning helps them do their job better.

And when that happens, no amount of polish fixes the problem.

Adults Don’t Engage Because Something Is Fun

They Engage Because It’s Meaningful

One of the most enduring ideas in adult learning theory comes from Malcolm Knowles, who described adult learners as:

• goal-oriented

• relevance-driven

• motivated by immediate application

In practice, this means adults approach learning with a quiet question in mind:

“How does this help me handle my real work more effectively?”

If that question isn’t answered early and clearly, disengagement is a rational response, not a motivation problem.

Why “Make It More Engaging” Often Backfires

When engagement becomes the goal, design efforts often drift toward:

• more interactions

• more media

• more “fun”

These can help sometimes.
But they don’t solve the underlying problem if relevance is unclear.

Learners may complete the course without changing anything about how they work.

The learning looks successful.
The performance doesn’t change.

The Better Design Question

When engagement feels low, a more useful question is:

What does this help the learner do differently — and is that obvious from the start?

If the answer isn’t clear, that’s where design effort should go.

Not toward bells and whistles — but toward meaning.