What are the major factors that make remote training successful?

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the conventional brick-and-mortar offices to remote work. The exact percentage of people working remotely at the moment is not known, but current global trends strongly point that this number is only going to rise in the future.

Recent news from the business world shows that global business giants like Tesla, Amazon, RPG India, TCS India etc. have opted for permanent Work from Home arrangements. While employees have eased into the remote working culture, establishing remote training programs for employees is still a challenge for many companies.

Here’s a look at the factors that can make your organisation’s remote training efforts a success.

1. The right software

A good Remote Training Platform is where it all begins. A powerful training platform assists the development and dissemination of training modules. It encourages employees to plan and work towards their training goals. Lastly, it merges seamlessly with your existing Learning Management System (LMS). Hence, choosing the right Training Platform is very important.

2. The team assessment

Know your team well. Get to know which team members will proactively reach for clarifications and ask questions. Change your training style accordingly. An assessment would also mean understanding the short term and long-term training goals of your employees. Linking them with company goals and productivity targets is a good idea. This way your training can be measured tangibly.

3. Employee support

The biggest challenge in remote training is the fact that it is ‘Remote’. Employees miss the physical touch-and-feel experience of getting training in the office. This gap may cause hesitation in employees about getting their doubts clarified. It is important to bridge that gap by providing active employee support. Show them that you are available to answer their queries and provide guidance proactively.

4. Milestone tracking

As with all tasks, tracking is a very important part of remote training too. However, it becomes more important as it is being done through the software interface itself. Your training platform should enable you to track the training efforts of employees in different ways. Some example metrics could be — Time spent on a module, number of times revisited, Chapter wise, video-wise engagement metrics, overall scoring, queries etc. This will ensure that you know that your employees have assimilated their training and provide you with a positive ROI on the training program.

5. The collaborative efforts

Remote training can make a world of difference when it goes beyond simply providing training and upskilling avenues. It should also encourage collaboration between team members and teams. Such cross-functional connections not only result in better training but also stronger collaborative culture across the organisation.

6. Set Guidelines

Since remote training takes away the face-to-face interaction, for the most part, it is important to govern interactions through preset guidelines. Set important SOPs as ways to interact like quick response times, a protocol for reaching out to seniors and skip mid-level authorities in case of queries and problems.

7. Setting expectations

No matter how top-of-the-line your training management system is, there’s another angle to your remote training efforts. It is the expectations set from both the employees and the management. Remote training being relatively new, the management would be better off to keep lower expectations from the employees as there is a certain learning curve to using the system. Employees, on the other hand, too should be vocal about what they expect from the training management system in terms of learning goals, time taken to achieve a skill etc. Setting expectations opens up the doors to future discussions and optimum use of the TMS.

According to LinkedIn research, 94% of employees would stay with a company longer if there was an investment in learning. In our globally connected world where remote training is the new normal, it is important to invest in the right software and institute the guidelines that go with it.