Virtual Insanity (Training)

So, one of the major developments of the past while is that nigh on every single company who has onboarded an employee in the last two years, has had to deliver training Virtually.

I’m not going to go through the challenges and common pitfalls of virtual training- there are literally hundreds of articles about that. Though I’d like to take a moment to take my preverbial hat off to anyone who has trained groups virtually.

What I’d like to consider is what’s next for onboarding?

To understand the next steps, you must first take a step back and understand the goal of onboarding and let’s not make any bones about it- the goal is to have proficient, productive employees out of training as soon as humanely possible.

Generally speaking though onboardings all follow these same steps even virtually:

• Company ethos
• Product introduction
• Policy/Workflow introduction
• Tool familiarization
• Practice

These are some of the pillars of any training that is delivered for workers in the outsourcing world at least- the variables here is the delivery method and the split

The devil is in the details, or so they say! So I’ll start there with the split.. just how much detail do you need to go into with your new hires? What are the options open to you?

• Explain every nuance
• Blend, leaning towards full disclosure
• Blend, leaning towards
• Skim details with emphasis on self education
• Complete self education

When I first started as a trainer, because I had a wealth of product experience I was able to explain every nuance of the product we supported…

However, my once fabled knowledge began to slowly wane and god forbid, one might even say… I started to be wrong… I had to adapt.. we all do at some stage and I began relying more on showing the learners how to educate themselves

How do you go about imparting the your golden nuggets of truth to your new hires? Well there are multiple methods of delivery;

• ILT- Instructor Led Training
• VILT – Virtual Instructor Led Training
• E-Learning
• Mobile
• Blended

At the moment most onboarding programs would include a blend of VILT & E-learning but what are the best ratios- as an instructor it’s exhausting talking for 8 hours a day just as it’s tiring watching videos all day is draining.

Some have started introducing a lot of self paced learning, which is an amazing tool to use when combined with other methods… Or when you aren’t really concerned with everyone progressing along the same progression line.

One of the best things I’ve come to realise about training is, there are many ways to achieve similar results- but only by testing and exposing ourself to new ways of thinking, do we improve..

Whether you create your own content or rely on someone else to create your onboarding material/schedule- getting the method & split right is one of the keys to unlocking success in your business.

Let me know what your thoughts are, what does your company do? What is your split? Does your company approach things differently to what I’ve said above? Let me know!!