The What, Why, and How of Training Remote Employees

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(Newswire.net — October 28, 2020) — A training program provides a myriad of benefits for any organization looking to strengthen their employee’s skills. It helps in bringing all employees to a similar level so everyone gets equal knowledge and necessary skills to perform their jobs better.

With the restricting measures being taken to contain the COVID19 pandemic, the number of people working remotely has ascended suddenly and drastically. Although the concept of working remotely is not new, training remote employees productively can be challenging. 

  • What does remote employee training entail? Remote training is a way of learning for people who are not working from the office premises. It gives employees who aren’t physically present for an in-person learning experience the virtual access to training content. Training remote employees can be successfully executed with the help of a Learning Management System (LMS). A LMS is a SaaS product and has become a highly popular choice amongst corporates that make the switch from traditional to online training. Investing in a LMS for training remote employees is a must for seamless delivery of information and assessment of employee performance. What’s more is that you can easily find an LMS that aligns well with your training goals within your budget. 

Let’s look at the Absorb LMS pricing structure as an example. It provides a host of features like mobile learning, actionable reporting, high security and customer support at a very affordable price. It also allows custom creation of content to personalize everything based on the employee’s work profile and any company-specific skills, making it more powerful in catering to your business requirements. 

  • Why train remote employees? Learning is an ongoing process. It’s no secret that learning new skills relevant to their work makes employees more confident and positively influences their productivity. Even though remote employees are physically away, it is important to ensure they are able to perform their jobs well with the help of tools provided. Remote employees should not only be able to effectively use the devices on which they are working, but also stay updated about newer technologies and processes or any company product/service upgrades. It is impossible to send trainers to employees’ homes to help them learn about these advancements. This is where eLearning comes to the rescue. A combination of Augmented Reality training and Virtual training presents a highly realistic rendition of even the most complicated concepts, making it easier for remote employees to understand everything in detail. And the best part is, it enables training of employees regardless of their location. Apart from this, training remote employees also helps in determining their individual capabilities. With this knowledge managers can assign them the right tasks in order to make the most out of the situation.
  • How to effectively train remote employees? It is important to ensure the training content is engaging to ensure maximum information retention by remote employees. It will be a complete waste of time and investment if remote employees find the training sessions boring and don’t feel compelled to absorb knowledge. Let’s look at the best practices for effectively training remote employees:
  1. Provide on-demand training so employees can access it when they need it. This allows them to pace their learning process as per their convenience.

  1. The training content should be provided in bite-sized chunks to allow employees to quickly finish training in small sections. Subjecting employees to an overload of information in one go can stress them out.

  1. Use Gamification techniques to make learning fun and to encourage healthy competition amongst employees. Elements such as quizzes, timers, point scoring systems with rewards and badges for successful completion of training are known to increase employee engagement.

  1. It is very important to have the remote training program optimized for all mobile devices to enable learning on-the-go. It allows employees to access the training material from anywhere at any time.

  1. Reward your employees for their achievements to keep them motivated. It is highly encouraging for remote employees to be recognized for their efficacy; especially when they are isolated from others and have no measure to judge their own performance.

  1. Since it is remote training, it becomes necessary to create engagement amongst employees by enabling social interaction. Provide employees the necessary tools and encourage collaboration to create a community feeling.

Conclusion: 

We hope the above information will prove useful in enhancing your remote employee training experience. We would love to know how you are training your remote employees. If you have ideas that we missed in this article, share with us in the comments below.