Training methods for employees working remotely

Before the pandemic, many businesses had never thought about remote working as an option for their team. But due to lockdown measures, thousands of companies worldwide made the switch to remote working to keep their staff safe.

But despite Coronavirus seemingly being under control, many businesses are choosing to stick with remote working. Some of the biggest companies in the world have chosen to go remote permanently.

According to a recent survey, over 60% of remote workers feel the need for extra training. With working from home becoming the new normal, businesses need to adapt their methods of training employees to work remotely. Here's everything you need to know about remote training methods and how to put them in place.

What is remote training?

Remote training is employee training that takes place at a distance. It's on the job training for people who work from home rather than in an office. With the number of remote workers set to nearly double in the next five years, many companies are choosing to adopt remote working permanently. They are adapting their job training to suit the new, virtual workplace.

Remote training methods are not all that different from traditional training methods. The most significant difference is their delivery, with remote training usually delivered via:

Virtual classes
Online courses
Training videos
Webinars
Podcasts
Learning management system

There are two distinct types of remote training: synchronous and asynchronous.

Synchronous training

Synchronous training is a process where the student and teacher are in the same place (real or virtual) simultaneously. This training often takes the form of group sessions, and formats include:

Webinars
Virtual classes
Online meetings

Asynchronous training

Asynchronous training is student-based learning used for e-learning. It's a training method where each trainee learns on their own instead of learning as a group. This allows trainees to work at their own pace. Typical asynchronous video training formats include:

Online courses
Pre-recorded video lessons
On-demand webinars and podcasts

Benefits of remote employee training methods

With so many employees working from home, remote training has become a necessity. But beyond need, well-planned remote learning can be one of the best training methods.

Some of the benefits of remote, online training are:

Boosts productivity
Cost-effective
Increases knowledge retention
Improved employee retention

Challenges of remote employee training methods

While there are a lot of benefits to remote training, it's worth bearing in mind there will be challenges. Some of the most common challenges are:

Employees getting distracted
Communication and feedback difficulties
Impersonal training method

Engaging in training processes can minimise the challenges. You can also request feedback from your employees to make training more effective.

Four Ways to Improve Your Remote Training Methods

Embrace training videos

Both training for new employees and on-the-job training for existing employees needs to be engaging. The old way of overloading your staff with tonnes of information in one go is over, and businesses and educational institutions worldwide are adopting online learning and training videos to engage staff.

You can use training videos for a variety of different areas and topics, such as:

Learning new skills
Relationship building
Getting to grips with new business equipment
Compliance training
Problem-solving skills

Videos are a great way to break down complex topics into digestible snippets that your employees will remember — we retain over 90% of the information we receive through videos compared to 10-20% while reading. Plus, watching a video is far less time-consuming.

Take advantage of technology

Training your team who work from home means that most of the process will probably be computer-based training. If you're using online learning, don't be afraid to make the most of technology.

One of the few pitfalls of remote working is that most employees will spend most of their time alone. With the pandemic making working from home the norm, technology, and apps have been created, developed, and refined for remote working and training. Tools like Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet make keeping in touch with colleagues_ _easier than in person.

They have also made it easier for regular employees to take part in job training by using screenshots and video technology to make easy-to-understand tutorials.

Make training on-demand with video

While some companies are still rigidly sticking to the nine to five model with remote working, many working from home now work flexible hours. Working from home is about more than just your job; your kids, partners, pets, and housemates are all now part of the remote working experience.

Your remote training should consider how your team works from home and their hours when putting together any training. You need to find the most accessible and most convenient training methods to communicate essential information succinctly.

One of the best ways to do this is to create on-demand training videos and documents. This means that your employees can access training whenever they need it. Even live instructor-led training sessions can be recorded and made on-demand for any staff that couldn't attend the session.

Studies show that 82% of employees complete training outside of working hours, which means making off-the-job training accessible is essential. To support employees in their job roles, make your online training on-demand by creating a catalog of videos, presentations, and sessions accessible at any time from anywhere.

Turn training into a game

Regardless of how interesting your recent session with a trained instructor was or how well you make training videos, keeping your staff engaged can be a challenge — especially if there's a lot to learn.

One of the best ways to keep your team engaged with training is to make training a game. Gamification helps to improve engagement and interaction and remove distractions from online training. You can use existing remote training software, so create quizzes and games out of the training and reward your staff with:

Points
Badges
Certificates
Prizes

You can make these rewards shareable so your staff can share their wins and encourage your employees with positive reinforcement.

Not only that, but you can create rankings on a leadership board to appeal to the more competitive team members. This is great for new employees as it can make training less daunting and works well for an experienced employee who may not feel the need for training.

How to develop effective employee training methods

To develop practical training for the different jobs in your company, you must track and measure their effectiveness throughout the process. Training goals can be challenging to measure in the same way that you would measure other performance indicators. But knowing whether your employee training is working and employees are absorbing the content can help you hone, refine and replace certain types of training.

There are several ways to measure how effective your training is, such as:

One-to-one discussions
Questionnaires
Quizzes, assessments, and exams

Once you've measured how effective your training is, you can assess what is working and, more importantly, what's not. With this information, you can make changes to your training methods. Maybe your new employees need more hands-on training, or perhaps it's their theoretical knowledge that needs some work. Doing this evaluation can also help you develop your on-the-job training for more experienced employees and introduce a new employee training method.

Ready to nail your remote employee training?

Remote work is only likely to grow in the coming years, so having remote training methods in place will make your business future-proof. Creating, implementing, and improving your processes of training employees remotely is vital to ensure that your staff continues developing and improve productivity and employee retention.

Here are some final tips to improve your remote methods of training employees: