CEO at BrightHR and COO at the Peninsula Group, responsible for the global rollout of HR tech supporting over 44,000 organizations.
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If you cast your mind back three years, you probably would never have imagined that we’d be living in a world where working from home would be the new normal. What was once considered a temporary solution to deal with the challenges of a pandemic is now widely accepted and even preferred in some cases over full-time in-office working. Now almost every company offers an option to work from home at least part-time.
A great thing about remote working as we head into an increasingly interconnected world is that companies have an expanded pool of candidates when hiring for new positions. No longer restricted to their immediate geographical area due to the morning commute, employers can look across the whole country or even the globe when recruiting new employees. Now, a manager based in New York, for example, could lead team members operating in London, Tokyo and Rio.
But this new era of interconnectivity brings certain challenges when managing and training a team dispersed across the country or even the world. Now managers must contend with time zones, connectivity problems, work patterns and cultural differences, all of which make training a remote workforce quite difficult.
So how exactly do you successfully train new employees who are fully remote?
Common Training Challenges With A Remote Workforce
Without direct, face-to-face interaction, remote training can leave employees feeling disconnected. The training can feel impersonal, so it’s easy to get distracted and end up missing out on essential skills.
Combine this with the social isolation and loneliness that millions report feeling when working from home and it can become hard for employees to muster the motivation to complete any training, especially if they’re inundated with training courses or questionnaires all day that all look the same. Add on top of that the frustration an employee may feel when they are looking to make a good impression but can’t connect to an online classroom or training session because of poor connection when working remotely.
It doesn’t matter how well-designed your online classrooms, seminars and courses are, technical difficulties such as unstable internet connection and software issues are common. You can’t remove the risk of network connectivity problems, but there are things you can do to minimize the likelihood of them occurring, like using an authoring tool and ensuring your employees have the latest technology, correct equipment and full IT support.
Best Practices
When designing a training program to be sent to your remote employees, try to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself a series of questions. Is the interface easy to use and access? Does it teach them the skills they value and that will benefit the business? Have I set realistic targets and deadlines, and how can I track their progress?
Streamline your remote training process by creating and distributing resources and using adaptive learning to tailor the learning experience to each employee while gathering feedback and tracking their progress. Reevaluate your current tech stack; cloud-based learning management systems (LMS) can really help here.
While there is bound to be some overlap, every employee has different skill sets and abilities and therefore will have their own unique training needs, yet some employers fall into the trap of giving everyone the exact same training. The truth is that now more than ever, employees are on a journey of constant self-improvement, looking to boost their skills through continuous learning. A properly implemented learning strategy will help them do this by creating a training program suited to each individual and their needs, resulting in happier employees and better retention.
Even with an LMS in place, there are still things you can do to make your training program more engaging. One way to make remote training more engaging is through gamification. This is more than an empty buzzword; it’s something companies are including in their training programs to add some healthy competition to the mix. Gamification is a training practice that uses features typically associated with gaming, such as points, milestones, badges and leaderboards, making the whole experience more immersive and rewards-driven.
At the end of the day, the age of homeworking is about letting employees fit their work around family and other commitments so bear this in mind. Deadlines are important, but it’s unlikely that everyone will be working to the same schedule, so it’s best to let employees follow a self-paced, asynchronous learning pattern that allows them to work flexibly and at a time that suits them.
What’s The Future Of Remote Training?
We all know remote working can leave many of us feeling isolated, lacking the sense of community that comes with being in the office with one’s peers. Someone working from home may only have infrequent interaction with their manager or co-workers, especially if they live a long distance away.
A study revealed that 81% of younger workers expressed concerns about feeling alone when working remotely. By leveraging technology, management can effectively reach out to these isolated employees during their development and make training a more communal and interactive experience.
Remote working can become less of an isolating experience if managers step in to foster connection between their atomized employees. Part of doing this is by encouraging meetings, cooperation and competition, and the sharing of expertise between team members. Develop a culture of peer-to-peer learning, ensuring they don’t lose out on the human touch that they might miss from the office.
Training while working from home can be hard on your employees, but by showing them that you value them and their development, you can maintain a healthy ethos, one where they feel empowered and part of a wider community. You can do this by encouraging a strong culture based on trust and the sharing of knowledge, which starts with the creation of a cohesive training program.
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