How workplace training has adapted to COVID-19
In the face of the pandemic, in-person training has become almost impossible to perform. Largely due to the risk of infection associated with large groups of people in a confined space.
As such, many organizations have had to transition their in-person training to online training in a short amount of time. For this blog, we’ll be discussing the benefits of online training and provide some tips on how to successfully make the transition.
Online training benefits
Even before COVID-19, online training proved to be an efficient way to train your learners, providing flexible training hours, digital materials and improved course accessibility.
Online training provides learners with the freedom to learn from anywhere, use any device, and learn at their pace. There is no limit to the number of learners that can take a course, which reduces the cost per learner for organizations. Finally, online training allows learners to master skillsets and encounter scenarios that they will have to deal with in real life. Increasing confidence among learners in their skillset and cementing positive behaviour patterns. This provides a perfect solution for organizations looking to train a high number of employees remotely.
Now for a real-life example, one of our clients transitioned their orientation just in time for a major turnaround! Since their launch in the beginning of March 2020, they have oriented almost 5,000 learners – a huge savings to the company in time, internal resources, and money.
As an augmented outcome, they now have trackable information about who passes through their gates which can be helpful for tracing during the pandemic.
They are now looking for new learning content to upload to replace their in-person training situations due to their newfound success with online training.
e-Learning typically requires 40% to 60% less employee time than learning the same material in a traditional classroom setting.
3 Tips for making the transition
Transitioning your training from in-person to online can be challenging, especially when it comes to capturing the interactions between instructor and learner. Here are some easy tips on providing interactive online content that will resonate with your learners.
Tip 1: Evaluate learning content and optimize
Learners can immediately disengage from online content if it is not formatted correctly to capture their attention. Evaluating content for ease of reading, learner relevance, and ensuring information is provided in bite sized pieces will allow learners to grasp the information quickly.
In addition, evaluating the visual design of the content is crucial as majority of the population are visual learners. If the information is provided as overcrowded text without any visuals, learners will skim rather than read the information. Utilizing complimentary colours, graphics, and video will improve how the learner engages with the content. An engaged learner is focused and will finish the training faster than an unengaged learner.
Tip 2: Embrace learning management tools
Creating online content is only one half of developing a successful online training strategy, finding and utilizing the right learning management system (LMS) is the other half.
An LMS allows organizations to deliver their training and manage their learners seamlessly online. Learners can take courses, get certifications, and finalize their onboarding all from home using an LMS. While organizations can track learner progress, assign courses to learners, and download reports.
Tip 3: Use the previous training sessions to anticipate questions
Having to transition to online training does not mean you have to start from scratch. You can use the experience and lessons learned from your previous sessions to anticipate what your learners will need more information on. Based on what previous learners had difficulty on, or the most asked questions can lead to creating content or providing extra resources online to eliminate those challenges.
The future of online training
While the pandemic has highlighted the need to move forward with online training, its important to note how online training will evolve past this first phase to adapt to all industries and skill sets. Online learning strategies should be revisited often to make sure they reflect the current needs of the learners. In some cases, traditional online training might not be enough, this is where virtual reality can be beneficial to learn hands on and soft skills.
Ready to make the move to online training?
Let us help you!
We’re experienced in developing successful training and orientation courses from documents, presentations, and videos. We’ve developed ProcessLMS, our very own learning management system specially designed to manage, track, and deliver courses online.
Reach out and we can talk about devising a right-fit solution for your business.