Our Experiences with Remote Training

?? Imagine: It is finally Friday, you are already looking forward to meeting friends for playing sports after you finish work BUT then you remember you have a scheduled training today which will probably run until late in the afternoon and you have to drive home in horrible traffic afterwards so you won′t be able to make it on time ??What a pity, isn′t it?

?? Luckily there′s a solution to this: Remote training. Due to the circumstances of the pandemic, namely working from home and not being able to travel, and a resulting increase in digitalisation we switched from offering on-site training courses running for several days to remote training with the learning content being broken down into small units. Besides the obvious advantages like saving travel expenses (either for your employees or the coach) or being able to stay in a safe environment, remote training offers many more advantages:

? Time Flexibility ? Due to the learning content being broken down into smaller units you are more flexible with finding suitable dates for both the coach and the trainees. We recently received very positive feedback on that from our customer: Since they are usually loaded with daily work during the week, they can′t easily leave their workplace for several days to attend a training. Instead, it was perfect for them to schedule a meeting every Friday for two hours each in the morning and in the afternoon where they could actually make the time in between to learn something new. In addition, it is also a lot easier to postpone training dates if there may occur any inconveniences e.g. if a participant gets sick.

? Individual Learning ? This just leads to the next point which is individual learning. It is up to the customer how many dates they want to schedule, how many blocks they would like to go through in each session depending on how much time is available. This could be two hours a week, four hours every other day or the classic eight hours a day if you wish so. We also offer to record the training sessions and will provide them to you afterwards so you can go through them once more in your own learning tempo.

? Training on the Job ? Another great thing about not having to leave your familiar work environment is training on the job. If you′re usually busy caught up in your daily work, your head might not be receptive to mere theory while you have a serious problem to solve. How much better would it be, if the training could actually help you solve a real problem? Remote training supports you in learning new skills at the workplace. You bring your project and apply what you learn directly. There is more flexibility topic-wise and better opportunities for addressing individual problems. Technology makes it even more beneficial and enables you to share your screen with others so they can learn from you too! And bonus: it reduces stress when everyone can attend without having to go out of their way and leave their familiar environment.

? The Learning Curve ? According to brain scientists learned lessons stick better with our brains if we revise them in regular intervals. Let′s be honest: if you just go there for one or two days and get loaded with tons of information all at once you won′t remember most of it the day after. However, if you schedule your training every week you will be able to process the information according to your own tempo and remember what you learned a lot better. It also gives you the opportunity to recap and ask questions that come up in between the sessions next time.

? Finding everything in one place ? We opened a Microsoft Teams channel for each training customer where we would communicate with the trainees and have all the training documents in one place together. This also opens up another opportunity to ask for quick support in between the training sessions.

To sum up, there are really big advantages to individual remote training. However, it is not that practical for bigger groups and topics that require lots of interaction between the participants. Nevertheless, due to the very positive experiences on both our customers and our employee's side as well this became our new standard.