Problem 6: You train remotely (without heeding the lessons of remote learning)

As part of the launch of The Impactful Executive, Dr Ali Monadjem and I have launched a newsletter focused on the topics of organizational health and performance. Over eight weeks on this site, I will post the previous eight articles from that newsletter, an 8-part series on the problems and solutions with corporate training and professional development in 2024.

The introduction to the series can be found here

If you'd like to read the whole thing now, please go to https://newsletter.impactfulexec.com/

Corporate training is a $300 billion global industry, but much of the training offered is ineffective. Over six weeks, I am detailing six reasons I’ve seen for that ineffectiveness, and how they can be addressed.

Today’s focus…

Problem 6: You do it remotely (without heeding the lessons of remote learning)

The rise of hybrid and remote work has created a paradox that leaders struggle to square. On the one hand, employees prefer and even demand the option of working remotely. An astounding 98% of workers prefer to work remotely at least part of the time, commonly for ~3 days a week. Companies that have mandated full return-to-office policies have frequently faced extreme backlash. Remote work promotes greater diversity, eliminates wasted commuting time, reduces travel demands and helps companies limit their emissions.

At the same time, the evidence for the importance of in-person work is beginning to mount. Remote work has been shown to cause burnout and create security risks. Most employees report that working remotely makes it more difficult to connect with their colleagues, and brain scans have found that people are less “linked” at a neurochemical level when working over zoom than in person. Employers worry about employees losing focus and productivity while working remotely, and indeed, research has suggested that most people can only focus in zoom calls for a mere 10 minutes before starting to zone out.

These problems are especially acute in the professional development space, particularly because the environment is generally so relaxed and consequence-free that people feel more open to distractions (see Problem 4: It is too relaxed). But because we rarely measure the effectiveness of our development efforts (see Problem 3: Your company doesn’t measure it properly—or at all), we do not have great information on the gains we are leaving on the table through remote training, or the practices that can enable us to avoid those losses.

Luckily, there is a place where the question of remote learning effectiveness has been deeply studied for multiple decades: education.

To synthesize the lessons we’ve learned: remote learning is nearly always worse than in-person learning—but it doesn’t have to be.

The first part of this statement is common knowledge. Many people know that the completion rate for massive-open online courses (MOOCs) is abysmally low and has not greatly improved in the past 20 years. They also know that moving to remote learning was an unmitigated disaster for children’s learning—on average, students learned barely half as much remotely as they had been learning in person.

Fewer people are aware of the success stories. For example, Minerva University launched in 2012 with its learning program fully online for quality reasons rather than cost reasons—it allowed its professors to evaluate class discussions more objectively and in much greater depth than they could if these discussions took place in person. Minerva has been named the world’s most innovative university for three consecutive years, has admissions rates below 2%, and produces graduates with skills comparable to the very best universities in the world. Anecdotally, I know from family and friends who have taught humanities courses at Ivy League and Liberal Arts Colleges that their remote seminar courses often felt as effective as in-person classes, and the work the students produced was of similar quality.

So what do these more effective remote learning efforts do differently than the others? Five main things:

1. ? ? They keep it small. A normal group in a successful remote learning experience is less than 20 people—often more like 12-15. Going higher than that makes it very difficult for everyone to stay engaged—it is easier to scan the room and adjust when managing larger groups in-person; remotely, large groups usually mean people check out. Yes, you can incorporate breakout groups, which will increase the interactivity, but there are very often inefficiencies in breakout groups as people struggle to clarify the instructions, get to know each other, ensure everyone is involved and participates, and consolidate responses. Better to keep the full group small if possible.

2. ? ? They keep it short. As mentioned above, people’s attention spans on zoom are shorter than they are in person. Even if we can’t keep our sessions to 10 minutes, we can avoid full-day or multi-day workshops. A good rule of thumb: Do multi-day workshops in person. If you can only do them remotely, just don’t do them at all. Keep your remote training sessions to 1-2 hours maximum—and even that is pushing it.

3. ? ? They keep it interactive. Nothing promotes distraction more than a long presentation. As soon as people realize they won’t be called on or asked to contribute, a large percentage of them will zone out. The examples I referenced above conduct lessons entirely through Socratic seminars—very limited powerpoint, no lectures, mostly people looking at each other’s faces on the screen and talking to each other. Which brings us to the fourth point…

4. ? ? They keep videos on. We get it, not everyone wants to turn on their video. They might not have fixed their hair or put on the right clothes, or they might think their home office or bedroom is too messy. Or, perhaps they are multitasking and don’t want others to know about it. More than 7 in 10 employees report turning off their cameras during remote meetings to hide something they are doing, including looking at their phone (65%), having a conversation with someone else (47%), looking at social media (44%), making a drink or food (42%) and even sleeping (20%)! It is no surprise that effective remote learning experiences almost always require videos to be on.

5. ? ? They keep accountability. As previously mentioned, (Problem 4: It’s too relaxed), corporate training often feels like a pass-fail class that everyone is guaranteed to pass, taught by nothing but disrespected substitute teachers. Effective remote learning experiences do not feel this way. A key commonality among the effective remote universities described above is the inclusion of in-class contribution as a major part of the grade. When you know that your engagement (or lack thereof) will be noted and measured, you are more likely to engage and therefore more likely to learn. Participation scores are not generally feasible in a corporate setting, but involving the boss or manager in some way in the training is a good proxy. This, too, is not always possible, but you must provide some way to bring accountability to the effort if you want it to be effective.

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In-person experiences are often best for learning, but it is not always possible, or even advisable, to conduct training in person. If we are conducting short, regular sessions with participants spread in multiple locations or frequently traveling to visit clients, remote training may be our best bet. We can make it as effective as in-person training, in the right circumstances and through the right practices. But we have to be very careful about how we do it.