Delivering effective training, remotely

Providing training for your team when they are working remotely can be challenging.

Delivering a training session to a room full of people can be difficult enough. Engaging with your audience remotely presents a whole new challenge. 

The first thing to think about is the delivery method.  Your firm may already have a webinar or conference platform in place. If not, there are lots of good options available such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Skype. Ideally you will want to use a platform that allows you to screen share, instant message and share files. 

Getting people to attend training sessions when they are busy and working remotely can be a challenge. Creating a training schedule and sharing it well in advance can help. 

Provide sufficient notice, explain the benefits of the training session and people will tend to prioritise attending your sessions.

Ideally you should record your session giving anyone who can’t make it the option to view the training session at a convenient time

Remote employees will want to begin their training by knowing what the process will look like and what the expectations are, so outline a schedule reflecting the aims of the training and the overall principles it will explore - but save from going into the detail of the course itself.

Your training is only as successful as your pre-planning allows it to be, so make sure you invest the time before the training is rolled out. It’s also a good opportunity to troubleshoot any problems before they have a chance to arise, whether that’s to do with the platform you’re using, screen sharing, testing that any video content works, or having a test run through the learning content itself.

Keep your training session interesting by including videos, polls and asking questions which stimulate dialogue among your audience. The more discussion you can encourage, the more immersive the training session will be. Provide post-training materials that your attendees can refer back to. 

The idea of post-training is to provide remote employees with the tools to refresh what they learned or build on it in their own time.  Post-training should include some resources that help people to implement what they learned - short videos, infographics and ‘how-to’ guides can be a helpful way of revisiting the training content.