Every Indian L&D leader holds two beliefs that quietly contradict each other.
The first: that the half-life of workplace skills is collapsing, that AI is rewriting job descriptions in real time, and that the only reasonable response is to train harder and faster. The second: the training they sat through last quarter was a chore, something to click past between meetings.
Both beliefs are grounded in evidence. Both are pushing corporate learning in opposite directions. The friction between those two instincts raises a serious question.
Can an organisation make learning compulsory without draining the one thing that makes it stick: the learner’s own appetite for it?
The practitioner’s answer tends to be more nuanced than either camp lets on. Asmita Padwal, Founder at Credenza Global HR Solutions, puts it this way: “I believe the real difference is how relevant and relatable the training is to employees. When people understand why a topic matters to them and how it connects to their everyday work, they naturally become more involved,” she stated.
That split is cleaner in principle than in practice. The regulation, the research, and the sheer scale of Indian workforces all push in uncomfortable directions.
Why “Mandatory” Became the Default
Compulsory learning in Indian organisations isn’t a style choice. It’s partly statutory, partly market-driven, and the two have reinforced each other over the past decade.
The statutory list keeps growing. Section 19(c) of the POSH Act, 2013 requires every employer with 10 or more employees to run awareness workshops at regular intervals. The DPDP Act, 2023 has added data-handling obligations, and sector regulators from SEBI to IRDAI layer in their own modules. A mid-sized Indian firm’s compliance stack alone can run to a dozen mandatory modules before any skill-building begins.
The market layer is just as insistent. LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report finds that the skills needed for a job in India will shift by 64% by 2030, and 94% of Indian firms plan to enhance their employees’ skills this year. When the business case reads “upskill or lose to the competitor who did,” voluntary participation looks like a slow boat.
What The Research Says About Being Told To Learn
The counter-argument isn’t anecdotal. It rests on four decades of motivation research, mostly built on the work of psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, whose self-determination theory argues that humans learn best when three psychological needs are met:
- Autonomy: the sense of choice
- Competence: visible progress
- Relatedness: connection to people and purpose
Make an activity feel controlled rather than chosen, and intrinsic motivation doesn’t just stall. It actively erodes. Deci and Ryan’s lab and field work going back to the 1970s shows that extrinsic pressure can displace the internal drive that was there to begin with. Applied to the workplace, this becomes a direct problem for employee engagement with any top-down learning.
The workplace evidence tracks the theory. Francesca Gino’s survey of more than 3,000 employees, published in Harvard Business Review, found that only 24% of workers reported feeling curious in their jobs on a regular basis, and nearly 70% faced barriers to asking more questions at work.
Asmita makes the same point from the delivery side. She describes the gap between what L&D schedules and what employees actually absorb: “In my experience, real-life examples, open discussions and practical situations create far more impact than presentations and quizzes alone.”
“For me, successful training is not about how many employees completed a module, but how much they understood and what they actually applied at work. Training completion can be tracked, but real learning is reflected in behaviour.”
The Scale Problem Nobody Can Design Around
Indian HR leaders can’t simply adopt the voluntary-learning model that fits a 300-person Silicon Valley firm. Scale changes the math, and so does the Indian workforce’s entry-level profile.
Infosys runs its Lex platform across more than 300,000 employees. TCS’s iEvolve, Wipro’s, and HCLTech’s internal academies operate at comparable magnitudes. At that size, a purely opt-in model leaves gaps that regulators, enterprise clients, and ISO auditors won’t accept.
The generational layer compounds it: a sizeable share of entry-level recruits arrive from campuses where learning was almost entirely instructor-prescribed, and the leap to self-directed upskilling and reskilling isn’t automatic.
The practical reality compounds all of this. Most Indian professionals cite burnout and family commitments as the biggest barriers to serious after-hours learning. If L&D is left entirely to personal time and appetite, the employees who miss out first are already stretched thinnest.
Where The Line Actually Sits
Treating “mandatory versus voluntary” as a binary is where most L&D strategies trip. The organisations that have kept both compliance and curiosity alive tend to separate the two deliberately. Research and Indian case studies point to a handful of recurring design patterns that make that split work in practice.
| Design Choice | Effect on Curiosity |
| Mandating the floor (POSH, DPDP, role-critical certification) and leaving the ceiling optional | Protects the organisation legally without colonising discretionary learning hours |
| Framing modules around learning goals rather than pass/fail completion checks | Gino’s research shows learning-goal framing boosts intrinsic motivation |
| Giving meaningful choice within mandated paths (which module, which pace, which project) | Satisfies the autonomy pillar of self-determination theory |
| Measuring behaviour change on the job, not completion certificates | Shifts the signal from “did they click through it” to “did it change what they do” |
The through-line is that mandates are least corrosive to organisational culture when they occupy the smallest footprint they can, and when they’re kept visibly distinct from the curiosity-driven learning around them.
The problem isn’t compulsion itself. It’s compulsion that leaks into territory where it was never needed, and ends up training employees to approach all learning as something to be endured.
Asmita echoes the sentiment: “I don’t think mandatory training necessarily kills motivation. It depends on what we make mandatory and how we deliver it. As HR leaders, we need to be selective. Training related to legal compliance, workplace safety, employee well-being and critical business risks should be compulsory. However, not every learning programme needs to be mandatory.”
“Employees should also have the freedom to explore skills based on their interests and career aspirations. When organisations balance essential training with opportunities for personal growth, learning becomes a culture rather than just another HR requirement,” Asmita added.
In The End…
L&D leaders don’t need to settle the philosophical argument before Monday. They need to audit how much of the current catalogue is actually mandatory, how much has drifted into mandatory status through habit or appraisal weighting, and whether the two categories look and feel different to the employee being asked to click through them.
A compliance module that’s indistinguishable from a curiosity-driven elective trains employees to treat both the same way, and the one that loses that comparison is almost always the one that depended on volunteered attention.
Pull last quarter’s training and development completion report. Count how many modules were technically optional but tracked, nudged, or weighted in reviews. That number shows where your organisation actually stands on this question, more honestly than any policy document.
As Asmita summarises: “My approach is simple: Make compliance mandatory, but give curiosity the freedom to grow.”
FAQs
Does mandatory training kill employee motivation?
Not inherently. Motivation drops when compulsory learning is irrelevant, poorly delivered, or applied to topics that didn’t need to be mandated in the first place. When mandates are reserved for legal compliance, workplace safety, employee well-being and critical business risks, and the delivery connects to day-to-day work, employees generally accept the structure without disengaging from learning overall.
Which training must Indian employers legally make mandatory?
Section 19(c) of the POSH Act, 2013 requires every employer with 10 or more employees to run awareness workshops at regular intervals. The DPDP Act, 2023 adds data-handling obligations, and sector regulators such as SEBI and IRDAI prescribe their own modules. Role-critical certifications tied to client contracts or ISO audits typically sit alongside these statutory requirements.
How fast are workplace skills actually shifting in India?
LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report finds that the skills needed for a job in India will shift by 64% by 2030, and 94% of Indian firms plan to enhance their employees’ skills this year. That pace is the main reason upskilling has moved from a nice-to-have to a business continuity question.
Why can’t Indian organisations rely on purely voluntary learning?
Scale and workforce composition make a fully opt-in model impractical. Platforms like Infosys Lex, TCS iEvolve, Wipro’s and HCLTech’s academies run across hundreds of thousands of employees, where voluntary participation leaves gaps that regulators and enterprise clients will not accept. Many entry-level recruits also arrive from instructor-led campus environments, so self-directed upskilling is a skill they are still building.
What does successful training actually look like?
Behaviour change on the job, not completion certificates. Completion rates track whether employees clicked through a module. Real learning shows up in how work is done afterwards, which is why the stronger L&D teams measure application and on-the-job outcomes rather than finish-line metrics.
How can HR leaders balance compliance with curiosity-driven learning?
Keep the mandatory footprint as small as the law and business risk require, and leave the ceiling optional. Frame modules around learning goals instead of pass/fail checks, offer meaningful choice within mandated paths (module, pace, project), and keep compliance training visibly distinct from the discretionary learning around it so employees don’t start treating both the same way.
