4 Ways Employers can Make an Impact with their Remote Employee Training

The Covid-19 pandemic caused many businesses to embrace working from home (WFH) without having much time to assess just how employees can be trained and on-boarded over the long term. 

Although the mass transition towards remote work was met with widespread concern from employers and employees alike, it is fair to say that WFH has become a popular and cost-effective means of working for companies and staff alike.

Surprisingly, data suggests that employees regard remote work as less successful than their employers. Despite the elimination of commuting times to the office, employees still hold a number of concerns surrounding their WFH positions. 

Many of these fears within the job role are based around a lack of communication and feelings of isolation, but there are many more issues expressed by employees that can be aided with the implementation of an adaptive remote training program. 

There can be many challenges that can harm the personal development of an employee undergoing remote training, like the lack of face-to-face guidance and supervision, and the presence of distractions and limited technology. But this doesn’t mean that employers are incapable of creating impactful training programs that can help to inform and educate staff. 

Let’s explore some easy and cost-effective steps that can be taken to deliver effective training programs for remote employees:

1. Create a Learning Model that Suits your Employees

First thing’s first. It is important to set yourself up with a learning model that suits both your employees and the company.

Many people interpret remote training as an online meeting, but there are actually plenty of different ways in which you can work to train your employees. Such as:

a). Synchronous Learning

Synchronous learning occurs when all participants are learning at the same time, and this can be done either online or offline.

This form of learning is very time-oriented and generally takes place in a single time slot. Synchronous learning requires a facilitator to plan teaching sessions and to make sure they are announced in good time. 

b). Asynchronous Learning

On the flip side, asynchronous learning is far less time-intensive, and participants can learn at a pace that suits their needs. There is no need for virtual attendance and can simply consist of challenges or tasks that require the user to show off their initiative to solve problems. 

c). Blended Learning

There is also blended learning, which can combine both synchronous and asynchronous learning formats to create a tailored learning setup. This can allow employees to learn in virtual classroom settings before taking their knowledge and completing challenges in their own time. 

2. Use Technology to Support Training

For businesses aiming to train employees remotely, a little technology can go a long way. For instance, platforms like Slack, Zoom, and Google Hangouts have become widely used as offices have become more remote. Now, it’s possible to use these tools to live stream lectures, share insights within different teams, and post video content. 

This technology can help your business to generate screenshots and videos illustrating the steps in a new process, which can be utilised for remote training purposes for employees. 

Furthermore, platforms like Powered Template have grown to become an excellent resource for professionally pre-designed presentation materials that can make the process of sharing data for training purposes far easier and more engaging. 

With more than 94,000 templates spanning presentations, business materials, and web elements available via Powered Template, the platform has become a key tool for businesses looking for effective ways to communicate impactfully with staff in a remote environment. 

3. Keep Things Real with Deadlines

When creating training programs for your remote staff, it is essential that they are presented with realistic deadlines for their work to be completed. Whilst your business may value greater levels of flexibility within its workforce, setting a challenging deadline can be a great way of fostering a more effective level of commitment from employees. 

By building a stronger sense of urgency that challenges staff to work their way through their learning materials at a steady pace, it is possible to see better levels of employee engagement and higher completion rates within the results of your program. 

4. Track Your Results

Finally, it is important to track the results of your remote training. The specific metrics that you choose to track will depend on your business needs.

Whether you are looking for completed assignments or deeper metrics about performance or time management, it is possible to access more comprehensive results via a dedicated LMS system like iSpring Learn. 

Other metrics surrounding employee engagement within virtual classrooms can be monitored both manually and in an automated manner by searching for specific reference points or keywords within the completed training content.

Ways Employers Can Make An Impact With Remote Training

Fundamentally, your training program will be designed to maintain employee competence and satisfaction within their remote working environment. Here are some ways employers can make an impact with remote employee training:

• Create a learning model that suits your remote employees.

• Use technology to support training.

• Keep things real with realistic deadlines.

• Track your results with ideal metrics.

Factors like a lack of understanding of workloads and daily tasks can contribute to feelings of isolation and job dissatisfaction. 

In creating an engaging and impactful training program for new and existing employees alike, you can be free to grow as a company without the fear of leaving any workers behind – or the risk of contributing to employee unhappiness.