There is no shred of doubt that the landscape of work is constantly evolving. The reconfiguration of workplace imperatives and the advent of remote work as the new norm necessitate employees to adapt rapidly. Besides, employees need more resources to assist them in navigating through the remote work paradigm to maintain their ideal productivity level. Launching eLearning programs to train, upskill, and reskill employees is the need of the hour.
How can organizations ensure that employees optimally utilize their learning content? How can learning leaders train remote employees in the best way? This blog will discuss the challenges and best practices for managing remote team training.
Challenges of Leading and Managing Remote Teams Training
There is more to remote training than playing a video session or opening a slide show in front of the employees. Listed below are some of the challenges of remote training programs.
Technology Limitations
There is no way to guarantee that the employees won’t have any technological challenges at home. Some of them are a slow internet connection, an older operating system that doesn’t support training, etc. There can also be the case where the resources required to complete remote training may not be available to the learners.
Lots of Distractions
The remote work setting is loaded with distractions unless employees or learners are cooped up in a quiet room with the best workspace. Learners spend much time online listening to lectures or skimming through text rather than actively engaging with the content. Learners who aren’t required to participate in the training lose interest in the presented information. They become easily side-tracked by online discussions and will start clearing up their inboxes and tab hopping in between the training sessions.
Inadequate Training Content
Creating adequate and effective content for each employee training session, in-person or remote, is crucial to the training program’s success. The content should suit the chosen training delivery method, the learners’ capabilities, and learning styles, or the training program will be less effective.
Special Needs and Disabilities
Disabilities and learning challenges are two factors that might make online training challenging for specific learners. Individuals with impairments, such as hearing loss or vision challenges, will require assistance in self-paced learning environments. When training isn’t designed for specially-abled learners, it might be challenging for them to complete the training successfully.
Lack of interaction, poor digital literacy, and lack of supervision are the few other challenges learning leaders face when they launch a remote training program for the employees.
Best Practices to Manage and Optimize Remote Teams Training
According to a report, approximately 50% of organizations want to emphasize learning strategy to keep up with the shifting work environment and preferences of modern learners.
There are several innovative approaches to remote employee training and making it interactive and engaging. The following are the most common and effective:
Encourage Self-paced Learning
Learning and development (L&D) teams should keep in mind that while curating remote training programs for their employees, it is possible that putting them into a rigorous training program would annoy them. Learning leaders should use a full-fledged learning management system (LMS) to offer self-paced learning modules. Leaders in learning can, of course, mandate a cut-off time for courses. In such cases, they also allow employees to plan their daily activities at work.
Establish Consistent Means of Communication
Inadequate communication is a major hindrance to success in a remote work setting. If employees are working remotely, organizations must standardize methods of communication. A communication strategy that includes standardized email templates and automated procedures might be beneficial. Separate feedback and doubt channels in the training programs will make it easier for employees to practice transparent communication.
Make Training Fun and Interesting
Incorporating gamification techniques such as game design principles, theories, and strategies into non-gaming scenarios will incentivize higher performance. Employees can compete for points, badges, or rewards if training modules include a leaderboard system and quizzes. This makes training more engaging and exciting by promoting healthy competition among learners.
Break Content into Smaller Pieces
Information that is too lengthy is difficult to comprehend and can be chunked into bite-sized portions using this approach. The learners will, thus, not feel overwhelmed and can process the training content efficiently. Recently, microlearning has become one of the most widely used approaches to training delivery. Organizations may reap the benefits of higher learner participation, improved training retention, faster deployment, and quicker content updates by utilizing microlearning in their remote training programs.
Organizations may also link learning objectives to performance targets, seek feedback after training completion, and incorporate real-life scenarios for critical thinking to optimize and manage remote team training.
Conclusion
Optimizing and managing remote team training is not an easy task. Learning leaders must chalk out a plan to win their remote training game. It’s not hard to practice the advice mentioned above, but it requires time and effort. With little additional planning, an organization can maximize its return on investment (ROI) and equip its learning leaders to assist and direct employees in their pursuit of knowledge more effectively.
Working with Infopro Learning for your eLearning needs will free up your time to handle more pressing concerns without compromising the learning opportunities. Let’s Talk!
