The novel coronavirus has undoubtedly turned the day-to-day operations of many organisations upside down. Processes that were traditionally face-to-face had to either evolve to virtual or perish. In response, organisations are developing new and innovative ways to execute their business operations, convert their learning and development offerings, and support their employees. COVID-19 has created a whole new paradigm for human resource allocation, meeting training and development needs, moving to online education and virtual facilitation. There has been a marked shift from in-person delivery of training, orientation, onboarding to distance learning through virtual facilitation and asynchronous formats.
Requirements from clients ran the gamut from needing assurance that training and development can continue using digital platforms to contemplating the best platform(s) to use. In turn, learning and development professionals are grappling with how to manage and control training sessions while still ensuring these sessions remain engaging and fun? The training is normally run over a full day at least – that’s a lot of time on a call, how do we compress our programme without compromising the objectives.
It’s a daunting task, but it’s not insurmountable if you keep some simple yet powerful concepts in mind. We share some of our observations and strategic adjustments. In addition, we have compiled a comprehensive infographic for download.
1. Convert strategically
First and foremost, converting in-person training to virtual training demands that you convert only the strategically impactful training. What makes a training programme strategic is the impact it has on achieving the most important strategic goals and objectives of the organisation. Work through your programme and decide what is critical to cover in the session, and what could be condensed.
2. Research and understand your platform
There are numerous options to consider for your training platform. What is most important is to consider your goals and the tools you already have available that will be the least likely to cause connection issues with delegates. In other words, if you currently use Zoom and have Zoom licenses, stick to Zoom. The same applies to Teams or any of the other digital platforms. From a content and training perspective, consider each activity and its tools, think about how to use the platform to your advantage to ensure that objectives are met, and engagement maintained.
3. Ask the experts for help
Trainiac canconnect you with the resources your company need to minimise business disruption during this tumultuous time including programme design for virtual delivery that is visually stimulating and keeps your learners engaged; ramping up your facilitators’ capabilities in virtual process facilitation, and creating surveys and assessments that will assist you to evaluate the effectiveness of the digital session to name but a few.
What we should not lose sight of is the fact that people are learning all the time, and the bulk of that learning does not occur in a classroom. What has, however, changed over the last couple of months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is the social setting within which work and learning are situated. With employees working from home where their colleagues are no longer present and where gathering in groups larger than a mere handful is prohibited, a rethinking and re-situation of many of the traditional aspects of learning and development have become necessary. Virtual facilitation can not only be done, but it can also be a very cost-effective and time-efficient way of training your teams since the logistics around printing, venues, travel, catering etc. can now be eliminated.
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