What is the future of training? At Questas, the past 12 months have taught us a lot about how to successfully deliver virtual training. We know that you can’t simply take a classroom designed training session and simply put it online. It doesn’t work! We know that every minute of online training needs to be thought through and designed so the user experience is engaging.

A Learning Curve

We have learned about various platforms to deliver virtual training on. And a really positive outcome is that we are now accomplished in delivering online training events that are interactive, interesting, challenging and fun.

We have also seen the very real positives of online training for our clients. Here are the pro’s we have seen our clients benefit from when taking part in our tailored online training programmes.

The Pro’s of Online Training

• Less (zero!) travel time, meaning more time to learn, and less time for employees spent traveling. This means more time can be spent being effectively trained.

• No restrictions on where attendees are based. We have seen that online training means you can bring together people who may not normally have had the chance to work together. This can boost the potential that collaboration can bring within your organisation.

• It can bring together people from different regions to work together. This is something that in the ‘real’ world would be costly and time consuming.

• Efficiencies in delivery;  We have learnt that working virtually, we can actually deliver MORE effective content to teams and pack in more content to our training sessions. Online learning saves both time and money when it come to delivery and production. A real win for businesses!

• Lower costs:  In-person classrooms require both the trainees and trainers to travel to a pre-determined location in order to conduct a training session. Businesses are typically faced with incurring this travel cost from their training and development budgets. Then add in food & drink costs, and you can start to see where real savings can be made.

• Less time away from fee-earning and increased productivity. 

 

But even though the pros of online learning are many, you may be surprised to learn that we (or our clients) don’t want to deliver it like this forever. We like being with our clients, in the same room, feeding and feeling the energy that comes with a lively learning environment. Also because we know that our clients are missing out on some benefits of being together, such as networking and creating new relationships.

They miss the energy that comes from some of those fun exercises that get people on their feet and out of their comfort zones. Also the conversations that can develop and help participants share their stories and experiences.

There are downsides to the online training experience:

Reduced social interaction means that people miss the social side of working together in person. Also working online is not the best environment for networking. Love it or hate it, nothing beats the personal networking experience.

We have also seen that some introverts can be more reticent when it comes to online training. We work particularly hard to encourage those who are introverted whilst training, but a minority can sometimes find the online experience harder to fully embrace.

What’s The Solution?

As the restrictions of the last twelve months are slowly lifted, we look forward to continuing to offer effective online training. But we also believe that ‘blended learning’ could become the norm for our clients. Combining the positives of effective online training, with tailored in-person interactions can enhance the learning journey. It can also give people the human ‘fix’ that we so often feel we need.

A look to the future

So keep an open mind to a hybrid blended approach to training. It could massively improve the way we deliver the outcomes from training programs, whilst keeping them both cost effective, efficiently delivered whilst allowing for the human/social elements. A win/win for businesses and teams!

If you’d like to know more about our training programmes that help businesses to grow, please get in touch. Email hello@questas.co.uk.