How to Support Your Remote Workforce with e-Learning
The COVID-19 crisis has thrust the topic of training your remote workforce into the spotlight. With the majority of organisations now supporting work from home teams, there is the question of how you train and support your staff on essential skills training. Most organisations have basic support for work from home staff, however, these measures may not be suitable for training large numbers of staff in a work from home setting. In an instance where an organisation has a remote workforce, an online training solution, or learning management system, will efficiently support staff online training. When carefully planned and implemented, a learning management system can resolve many of the difficulties that organisations face when training a remote workforce.
Online training is flexible
Learning management systems allow learners to choose when, where, and how they interact with the training. In the case of a remote workforce, this means that employees can train outside of work hours. Learning management systems provide unlimited access to training modules, enabling employees to catch up on any missed courses.
Online training can encourage team interaction
Once employees have access to a learning management system, they are able to communicate and interact with each other with regards to the training offered. Creating a sense of belonging is a complex undertaking that does not necessarily align to a plan. Community is developed, rather, through a series of soft-skill actions, activities, attitudes, and enablement. For obvious reasons (lack of physical presence, limited ability to read body language, etc.) this process is more challenging with a remote workforce. For your remote workforce to thrive, you will need to ensure that your team has honed their communication skills whilst ensuring that they remain positive and motivated without access to the traditional office environment.
Offering your learners tools like Gamification, can foster motivated and friendly competition. Specific and attainable challenges can do wonders for unmotivated individuals, and if done right, it can uplift the whole team or community. Additionally, competition, rewards, and collecting points on a virtual scoreboard can be huge motivating factors for continued engagement with virtual assets for teams who do not have onsite supervision.
Online training offers learners engaging training content
Create challenging content stimulates creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration among your remote workforce. This is a universal learning principle. Organisations must strike the right balance; content that is too easy may create a false impression of proficiency and can detract from the learning experience, while challenges that are too difficult may create frustration and despair. Understand your learners and use that knowledge to find the middle ground where they can confidently build on what they know while simultaneously acquiring new knowledge and skills.
Assessments and feedback are arguably two of the most important factors of online training. These allow you to determine if your content is successfully delivering key learning objectives to your learners, and which areas require more attention. By creating custom content with assessments and feedback, you can ensure that your learners are receiving training that is relevant to your organisation, rather than generic content that doesn’t impart the skills and knowledge required to make a difference at your organisation.
