Due to COVID-19’s unexpected arrival, many businesses have had to rely on remote workers for the first time. Other companies have remote teams in place to take advantage of the flexibility and retention they gain — along with access to crucial talent outside their area.
Even after the pandemic, remote work is expected to be the new normal. However, not being together in person makes training more difficult. Fortunately, today’s technology makes eLearning and virtual employee training easier than ever.
New team members need to be trained, and current employees often need updates on new processes. eLearning can help with both forms of learning and development in the form of online training resources and instructional design.
How can you use eLearning to make training remote employees easier? Here are 8 tips for training remote teams with eLearning.
Prepare in Advance
Knowing how to train remote teams is a challenge. When you aren’t in-person preparation becomes even more essential, as employee engagement can diminish quickly when a training program or eLearning course is messy and unstructured.
Review your training content even if you’ve used it before. Going over the slides or double-checking the software can help prevent glitches.
If you’re training a new hire, double-check to make sure their log-in information will work, as you don’t want to lose time and money because the system isn’t set up correctly.
Strong preparation will give you confidence once the training session begins.
Use the Right Software Platform
eLearning isn’t easy to do on a video call alone, so to make it effective, you need a learning management system (LMS) that allows you to share information with your audience effortlessly.
Keep things interesting by engaging with a variety of learning styles during your online training activities including interactive quizzes, games, and even videos. This will help everyone understand the material well, no matter what learning approach they prefer.
Know Your Audience
Effective teaching is about knowing your students very well. This is especially important for adult learners. Adults learn differently than kids do, and it’s vital to keep the learning relevant to their daily work.
Adults also draw on their real-life experiences as they learn, which is something you can take advantage of in your lessons. Allow students to share their experiences with the concepts you’re teaching, as you’ll get a variety of perspectives, and it keeps things interesting!
Build-in Interaction
When you work remotely a feeling of teamwork is hard to accomplish. Even remote team building can be a struggle, fortunately, eLearning for remote teams can help.
If you want students to be engaged with what you’re sharing, you can build interaction into the online training courses.
Allowing students to answer questions, participate in brainstorming via social media plug-ins, and even read sections of the material aloud will help keep them engaged. It will also reduce the number of distractions they engage in. You don’t have much control over a remote worker’s environment, so it’s important to keep things interesting.
Tie Learning Objectives to Employee Goals
Part of helping adults learn is tying the lesson to something concrete that matters to them. Sometimes your training is already connected to work-related goals. For instance, a new hire definitely needs to know material about how to do their job.
Other times you can help your students tie personal or professional goals to your lessons, as it can be helpful for students if it’s more than getting learning credits.
Let’s say an insurance agent needs to take a continuing education class about flooding. They might tie that to a personal goal of knowing what to do if their neighbourhood floods. Just saying or writing down that objective will give them a concrete reason to pay attention.
Allow For Self-Paced Learning
If you’re running a live class, it may not be possible to make things self-paced, which may lead you to consider using or creating a self-paced LMS class to teach the same lesson as at a training event.
With the right platform, an online class can teach the same things as a remote live class, as it can include quizzes, short answers, interactive graphics, and video. The best part of eLearning is that students are able to go through all of the material at their own pace.
Concerned about keeping training on schedule? Don’t worry, creating deadlines for the completion of self-paced training will keep you on track.
Ask for Feedback
Whether you use a self-paced module or live training, you need to know how students felt about the experience. Feedback helps you improve or change programs as needed.
Perhaps there need to be more quizzes before the end of the class, as students might tell you that a particular section of the training was hard to understand. Or, they might alert you to technical difficulties during the class delivery.
Regardless, knowing what’s going wrong and what students enjoy will help you improve the current class. You’ll also be better equipped as you create additional remote teams training in the future!
Use Consistent Training For Growth and Development
Many remote workers don’t get the attention they deserve from upper management. It can be challenging for them to be noticed, and that means fewer promotions and opportunities. Unfortunately, that kind of environment leads to employees leaving the company.
The consistent use of eLearning can help bridge that growth and development gap. People can complete training courses and receive certificates for their achievements. Lists of those awards can be shared with management.
When you use eLearning to keep remote teams engaged, growing, and in your leaders’ awareness, you’ll have better employee retention and job satisfaction.
eLearning For Remote Teams Sets You Up For Success
Remote teams aren’t the wave of the future anymore, as this style of working has become the way we do things today. That means we need innovative ways to teach and learn remotely.
When you follow these eight tips, you’ll have more effective training sessions whether they’re live or using self-paced programs. The key is to choose a platform that will support your efforts and make improvements and growth simple.
At Archy Learning, we’re here to make eLearning accessible for everyone, from kids to adults. We’d love to help you set up remote eLearning opportunities for your business.
If you’re ready to get started, contact us for more information today!
