Why 41% of Workers Would Trade a Pay Rise for Better Training

By Esther Smith
Talent and Lifecycle

In a Nutshell
A survey of 505 US hospitality workers found that 41% would choose better workplace training over a 5% pay rise.
Among 25 to 34 year olds, that rose to 54%, making this the only age group where training beat pay.
The more interesting finding is not that workers like training. It is that many workers say information alone does not help them feel skilled or confident.
For HR and L&D teams, the lesson is simple: stop treating training as content delivery. Build in practice, feedback and visible progress.

Workers do not just want more training. They want to get better.

Pay matters. Let's get that out of the way before everyone starts throwing mugs at the screen.

But a new survey from training company Attensi has found something more interesting than the usual "people want development" line. When 505 US hospitality workers were asked to choose between a 5% pay rise and better training to improve their skills, 41% chose the training.

Among 25 to 34 year olds, the figure rose to 54%.

That does not mean employers can swap pay rises for e-learning modules and expect a round of applause. Please do not do that. Nobody wants "instead of money, here is a PDF" as an employee value proposition.

What it does suggest is that, for a sizeable group of workers, training is not seen as a soft benefit. It is seen as a route to confidence, competence and future earning power.

In the same research, 71% said they work on their skills mainly to feel more confident and capable, rather than for rewards or promotion.

That is the real story here. People want to feel good at the job.

The gap is not information. It is capability.

The strongest finding in the report is not the pay-rise trade-off. It is the gap between having information and being able to use it.

Attensi found that 80% of workers said they have access to the information they need to do their job well. Yet 61% said that having information does not always translate into feeling confident or skilled.

That should make L&D teams sit up.

A lot of workplace training still behaves as if the central problem is access to content. Give people the policy. Give them the module. Give them the video. Give them the checklist. Track completion. Move on.

But the workers in this survey are describing something different. They are saying, in effect: "I have the information. That does not mean I can do the thing."

That distinction matters. Knowing what good customer service looks like is not the same as handling an angry customer during a busy shift. Knowing the steps in a process is not the same as making the right decision under pressure. Knowing the compliance rule is not the same as recognising the grey area when it appears in real life.

The report's other findings point in the same direction:

• 65% said most workplace training focuses on information rather than hands-on practice.
• 77% said they cannot master skills without practising them.
• 74% said they had to practise repeatedly before they felt good at their job.
• 84% said real-time feedback helps build confidence.
• 84% said practising in a safe environment helps them learn faster.

This is not a motivation problem in the usual sense. It is a design problem.

Motivation follows progress

The report frames skill development as a loop: practice creates progress, progress builds confidence, confidence sustains motivation, and motivation encourages more practice.

That sounds obvious, but it is often missing from workplace learning.

Many training programmes ask employees to absorb information, then go back to work and somehow convert that information into performance. The learner is expected to close the gap alone.

Better training does something else. It gives people a way to try, fail safely, repeat, receive feedback and see that they are improving.

That is where motivation starts to make more sense. It is not a mysterious inner quality that some employees have and others lack. It is affected by the experience around them.

If training feels irrelevant, passive or detached from the real job, motivation drops. If people can feel themselves getting better, motivation grows.

That has implications well beyond hospitality.

The Attensi sample is specific: US hospitality workers. So HR teams should be careful about generalising the numbers to other sectors. But the principle travels well, especially into frontline, operational, customer-facing and high-volume roles.

People do not become confident because they completed training. They become confident because they can do the work.

What this means for HR and L&D

The practical challenge for people teams is to look at training through a different lens.

Not: have we told people what they need to know?

But: have we helped them practise what they need to do?

That shift changes the design of onboarding, manager training, customer service training, sales training, compliance training and any role where performance depends on judgement rather than memory.

It means creating learning that includes realistic scenarios. It means letting people make mistakes before the stakes are high. It means using feedback while the learning is happening, not three months later in a performance conversation. It means showing people their progress so improvement becomes visible.

This does not have to mean buying a simulation platform, although Attensi understandably makes the case for one. The company sells game-based simulation training, and the report concludes that simulation can address the practice gap.

That is worth noting, but it should not distract from the broader lesson.

You can apply the same principles in lower-tech ways too: roleplay that is not cringe-inducing, peer practice, scenario-based manager conversations, shadowing with structured reflection, live coaching, practice labs, decision exercises and better feedback loops.

The technology is one possible route. The learning design is the point.

Completion is not enough

One of the quiet problems in workplace learning is that completion has become a proxy for success.

Completion tells you someone reached the end of something. It does not tell you whether they understood it, whether they can use it, whether they feel more capable, or whether their behaviour changed back on the job.

The Attensi findings are a useful reminder that confidence and capability deserve more attention as learning outcomes.

That does not mean asking people "do you feel confident?" and calling it a day. Confidence can be misplaced. But when combined with practice, feedback and observed performance, it becomes a valuable signal.

A better set of questions might be:

• Can employees practise the situations they will actually face?
• Do they get feedback quickly enough to improve?
• Can they see their own progress?
• Do managers know how to reinforce the learning on the job?
• Are we measuring capability, or just attendance and completion?

For too long, workplace training has over-invested in content and under-invested in the conditions that help people get better.

This research gives HR teams a useful provocation: workers may already be more motivated to improve than many employers assume.

The question is whether the training gives that motivation somewhere to go.

Source and methodology

Source: Attensi, Motivation and Skill Mastery in the Workplace 2026. The study surveyed 505 employed US adults aged 18 and over working in hospitality. It was fielded online in spring 2026 via an online panel, with quotas applied on age, gender and US Census region. Percentages are rounded and agreement figures combine "strongly agree" and "agree" responses. Attensi funded and published the study.