TL;DR
When it comes to securing your organization against the latest evolution of threats, as well as remaining compliant across a landscape of changing rules and regulations, there is no better defense than your own people. Although technologies like AI may be turning heads in cybersecurity, studies consistently show that humans can either be your best deterrent or your worst vulnerability. For instance, in their 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon found that human error is responsible for as many as 68 percent of security breaches.
All this serves as a reminder of how important it is to make sure your team keeps up with their training. So with the holidays over and the new year finally here, now is the perfect time to hit reset and turn your employees’ attention back to boosting their skills and engaging with Cybrary’s many learning and development paths. After all, there’s no better way to bolster your defense than by maximizing the value of your training investment. Here are our top tips for increasing team participation and skill development this year.
Start out by regularly engaging and monitoring your teams
While you’re bound to have those learners who are motivated enough to keep exploring new courses and taking on new skills, chances are the majority of your team could probably use a little nudge. That’s why the best place to start is by reevaluating how you are regularly encouraging and tracking team progress.
One great way to do this is by taking advantage of Cybrary’s admin dashboards. By making a habit of checking this data, you can stay on top of engagement metrics, identify top performers, and re-engage those users who have become inactive. Other tools, like the Training Progress and Cyber Risk Impact widgets, can help ensure your team stays aligned with your larger goals.
Longer term, it can also be a smart idea to conduct monthly or quarterly license audits to ensure the right people are getting enrolled. This can also help you keep up with adding any new hires and with removing inactive users as needed. And don’t forget to plan regular check-ins with your Cybrary Customer Success Manager (CSM). This will help you stay aligned with goals and maximize platform utilization.
Set clear goals and benchmark your progress
Hand in hand with regular engagement and monitoring should be the formation of firmly established goals that you can work toward. But be careful! Setting learning goals that are unrealistic or unattainable may have the unintended consequence of discouraging more participation. Instead, try to define skill development objectives that align with your organization’s priorities and team’s career paths.
In order to do this effectively, you can utilize Cybrary assessments to evaluate the current skill levels of your team. Try to encourage each of your team members to complete an assessment in order to develop a strong baseline for your entire team. Assessments can also be used to quickly get recommendations for next learning steps. This can be a great way to further encourage everyone to engage with Cybrary’s broader combination of courses, hands-on labs, and sandbox environments. Just remember to continue to check in and track their progress over time.
Want to take those assessment recommendations a step further? Consider working directly with your CSM to create tailored learning paths. These can be based on your team’s specific needs, each person’s specific interests, the broader goals of the organization, or whatever you deem most important. Alternatively, you can choose from our selection of pre-built paths. By letting us handle the upkeep, you can focus on the important work of learning and skill development.
Motivate, recognize, and maximize accessibility and support
Finally, as a team admin, it is largely up to you to keep your team motivated and encouraged enough to keep continuing down their learning paths. But how can you do this without turning into a taskmaster? One fun way is to incorporate challenges into the learning process. By using team-wide challenges, such as completing labs or certifications within a set timeframe, you can help foster a friendly competitive atmosphere that will encourage people to keep learning.
Equally as important as encouragement is recognition. Whenever you can, make sure to celebrate your team members’ achievements and announce them to the broader organization. You can do this by calling out significant milestones and sharing certifications. Even something as simple as sending out a team-wide chat message about a learning success can make a huge difference.
Finally, it’s also a good idea to promote inclusivity by making courses and learning paths as easy to use as possible. One way you can do this is by highlighting features like closed captions in multiple languages. That way, global teams and ESL employees can more easily access valuable content. And don’t forget to keep leveraging your CSM to further promote enablement. By scheduling regular interactive sessions with them, you can help your team explore new features, content updates, and learn about other best practices that can continue to support their learning progress.
We’re here to help you achieve success in 2025!
By implementing these strategies, you’ll not only increase engagement but also empower your team to build the cybersecurity skills needed to excel in their roles. But these are just the start! If you’d like help coming up with ways to further increase engagement and ensure your team remains on track to meet your cybersecurity learning goals, reach out to us. Our CSMs and other experts are ready to help level up your entire team.
Looking for even more information? Check out our Cybrary for Teams Handbook or explore our larger Cybrary for Teams help section.
