This was my policy with my staff. I straight up told them they can and should take a couple hours a week (tried to start small to make it achievable) on personal development, whether that's reading books, taking courses, etc. I'd even try and brainstorm with them on ways to spend the time.
Funny thing is, with one or two exceptions, few did it because they always felt something else was more urgent during the day...
In the case of training / education, a good solution may be to provide more structure. Get a group of people to sign up for an actual structured class (or run one yourself), and set the expectation that they actually go to the meetings and/or do the work for it. Just "figure out some time to read some books on your own" will work for some people, but lots of people thrive on more structure than that.
But that requires a fundamental change in organizational productivity culture and means this kind of policy probably needs to be implemented -- and critically, measured -- at the corporate level so people collectively recognize that learning time is sacrosanct.
No big deal!
I took a number of month long vacations before there was much in the way of internet and I had people come up to me and basically be in astonishment that I could do that.