Replacing in-person in-house employee training with virtual training may save your business time and money. The issue is that too many companies, especially those who have over 500 employees, have very inflexible, complicated and time-consuming training systems. When the time comes to train their staff, managers often have to call in sick, or be away on vacation for long periods of time. They are then forced to hire new staff to help perform training, and this costs money.
In addition, traditional in-person employee training sessions often break down when participants try to take questions and relate them to real life problems. For example, many people ask questions about what to do next when they run out of stock in the Men's Weekly magazine. The answers given could be completely different from those given by a sales rep in the office. This can cause confusion in the workplace, as well as mistakes in information or misunderstanding of how to best handle various situations.
A better solution is engaging your employees in a series of webinars. Your virtual training sessions can be as specific as the problem at hand, or they could be broad and have training on many different business topics. A good way to start your training is by giving your staff one or two minutes of product demo time, followed by a question or answer portion. If your audience is tech-savvy, they may already know how to answer a question on webinar software. If not, simply ask them to review the site and answer any questions they may have.
Once you have a clear outline of the questions and answers you need in a webinar session, begin by inviting three or four potential attendees. Invite them to download demos of previous webinars, and then go ahead and initiate a discussion within your team. Share your goals, objectives, philosophy, marketing philosophy and what makes your business different from that of your competitors. This is a great way for your current staff to learn new techniques or how to apply past techniques in a way that will benefit your company. Also, the learners will be more engaged with the content than if they are merely viewing a video or PowerPoint presentation.
Another approach to using webinars as training tools is through the web. Webex allows you to create an online exercise for your attendees to complete. After a certain amount of time, you will collect the completed answers, and then you can make a quiz and distribute it to your entire team. Webinars can be another great venue for engaging your staff, allowing them to learn new skills and strategies while they work on assignments for the company.
Some companies prefer to use video webinars instead of webinars. There are pros and cons to this approach as well. Video webinars allow your staff to see the information being presented on screen in real time. The drawback is that this gives the impression that the presenter has put together a slide show or is just giving off lecture style voice over Internet speak. You want to make sure that any presentations that you hand out online are engaging enough to make your staff want to go longer and participate more.
If you use instructional webinars, the best way to set them up is to have an entire seminar type session going on at the same time. It is best to keep the various modules short, and keep the focus on the topic of the modules. For example, if your goal is to educate your team on sales techniques, then you could divide the sessions up into a few minutes per product type, such as tips on handling customer issues. Another thing to consider is how you present the modules. Do you go long with a lecture or cut to the chase with interactive segments? Also, do your participants typically have any questions during these sessions?
If you want to successfully use the power of online training for your business or organization, you need to ensure that your training are engaging and relevant to your target audience. As long as you take the time to properly plan out your modules and deliver your information through the webinars that you have, you can expect to see a positive return on investment from these types of webinars. There is a lot to learn about using webinars for both your business and your Learners. However, if you do not do your homework, you will find that you are going to get nothing out of your efforts.
