What is Remote Training?

You must at some point have sat through a conference or a video call where you struggled with getting the screen connected, or the audio wasn’t clear, with frequent interruptions from your or the other end like “your voice is breaking off”, or “the screen went black, we can’t see you”.

Typically, around 10–15 minutes are then lost in fixing the issue, with wires being pulled and pushed to check if they are properly connected, opening and closing tabs, reconnecting the session etc.

Now imagine if this continues throughout a training session. Needless to say, it’s going to be quite ineffective and a waste of time. These audio/video and connectivity issues are a part of online conferencing.

With these problems, how do you expect to efficiently manage a remote training program?

In today’s global marketplace, employees are scattered across cities, countries and even continents. And remote training is the most cost-effective solution to train your global workforce. Organizations are branching out and still manage to stay in constant touch with their employees, ensuring that effective communication takes place among all the team members.

This ease of operation without the employee being required to be physically present at the workplace gave momentum to the remote training model.

Before you proceed to design a training module, you first need to analyze the learning requirements of your employees. To do this, you can talk with their reporting managers, as they’ll be able to give a fair idea of the team’s performance and skills.

In remote training, employees are disconnected from the trainer due to the physical distance. And if the trainer is unable to view the learners, it becomes difficult to judge the employees’ response to the training being imparted.

The purpose of every training program is for employees to learn new skills and concepts and apply them in real-world situations. Whether you are delivering training on a mobile-based platform or via webinar or live call, ensure that you give them tasks to perform.

Based on the time-zone of the employees’ geographical location and their job roles, you can select a delivery method that will ensure maximum impact. A majority of these training delivery methods are designed for employees to peruse on-the-go, as this will enable them to carry on with their daily job responsibilities and simultaneously upskill themselves.

These training methods are quite cost-effective as you can easily find free tools on the internet to develop your learning content.

It is entirely your decision whether you want to deliver a webinar session live or send a pre-recorded version. Based on the availability of the remote team, you can arrange for a webinar at a time that is convenient for all the team members.

Presentations are no longer a boring collection of slides. With new tools available, especially to create presentations, you can create an interesting training module for your remote employees. With animations and special effects, you can liven up your training deck.

Simulation is a virtual representation of a real-life scenario. Mainly used in defense and healthcare training, this model has made its way to corporate training rooms. Simulations can be created on online training platforms, where employees are given a scenario with multiple choices.

Based on the choices made by the employee, the simulated exercise proceeds. The best part about simulated training is that even if the employees make a wrong choice that would lead to some disastrous outcome, they get to re-do the sequence. This helps them learn from their mistakes.

A lot of organizations are going in for video-based training. This is because a video not only conveys the message effectively, but also engages the user with a powerful audio, background music, rich graphics and motion. People on an average spend six hours per week watching videos.

Online learning or eLearning is the most popular form of employee training, where course modules are created and made available on computers. Today there are mobile-first content creation software that help you create mobile-friendly content for your tech-savvy employees. This helps them access the courses anywhere and anytime.

Screen capture is used when one has to explain about a new software. If you have implemented a new tool or software and need to train your remote employees on how to go about it, it is better to use a screen capture software.

A screen capture tool will record the trainer’s screen, while also recording the narrative in the background. So, employees get to view a video where they can see the trainer’s screen, understand each step and hear the narrator’s explanation.

Whether you are delivering training via a conference call or mobile devices, always ask for feedback at the end of the training session. This is important so that you can improvise based on the suggestions offered by the employees. This will help you conduct a better session next time or make changes to your online training module for better engagement.

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