When was the last training workshop you attended with a group of people in a brick and mortar classroom or training facility? A while ago I suspect.
For the vast majority of learners in businesses, schools and universities, the traditional face to face classroom setting is not available during the restrictions of the current pandemic.
Does this mean an end to formal education and learning? Of course not.
What it does mean is that, at no other time in history, we have the perfect opportunity to re-frame, re-imagine and re-design education and formal learning and effectively re-engage learners in how to upskill, learn, adapt, achieve mastery and perform better during and beyond this crisis into the New Normal.
It’s clear, traditional learning formats have been thrown into disarray on every level but, at the same time, we’ve never been better equipped with everything we need at our disposal to keep on learning and educating ourselves, our teams and communities to evolve and move forward.
However, first we need a mindset shift, especially when it comes to business and sales education.
We need to re-frame how we see and value learning and education. Even before COVID-19, for more than 25 years we’ve said we need to ditch the annual 1-2 day training events as the mainstay of business education, especially sales education, and instead embrace applied learning in smaller chunks over time because it delivers real and sustainable results. With the pandemic, this is even more important.
We also need to ditch the ‘either or’ approach to training in business. For instance, in early August 2020 at a live webinar I was giving to 84 CEOs about Sales & Business Growth Strategies beyond COVID-19, I was asked this question:
Do I train my sales team during this lockdown period or should I have them selling instead?
My answer: It’s not ‘either or’, you do both. The best learning for sales teams is applied learning that happens overtime in smaller relevant chunks so it can be applied immediately back in the field with real clients to deliver real results. What we call Real Time Sales Education. This means businesses can actively use a combination of remote, online, infield and, when it’s safe to do so, physical classroom for ongoing education and training – what we like to call ‘creating a Perpetual Learning Environment’.
So the TIME is NOW.
Let’s use this crisis to give us the perfect opportunity to fully embrace remote and online education for our people and make it mainstream. As qualified instructional designers, amongst other things, Jens Hartmann, Barrett’s head of L&D and myself want to share with you how you and your teams can keep on learning and flourishing even during times of crisis by using a range of remote learning options.
Live Webinars/presentations/lectures
While the number of live webinars offered by all sorts of providers, organisation and interest groups has grown exponentially over the past few months, the truth is if there is no audience interaction you might as well send us a recording we can watch later. Instead, the more valuable training and education experiences are interactive, for instance:
- Make time to have Q&A during the event
- Send participants relevant learning materials to read or listen to before the event. Your learners have context so you can then spend the live session working interactively on the practical aspects
- Ask participants to send their questions in before the event. Facilitators can build the session around the questions, particularly for closed groups
- Use polls during a session, or ‘reactions’ emojis like clapping hands to post non-verbal feedback
Remote/virtual interactive training and workshop experiences – ‘Webshops’
- Use Zoom/Teams remote ‘breakout rooms’ facilities to split larger groups into their own small conference environment with just 3 or 4 participants. The facilitator can assign tasks to these groups that they can work on and later present. Or they can conduct role plays, work on scenarios, or work on basically any other task a facilitator would use in such a training setting.
- Use the virtual whiteboards to capture discussion points, or to draft concepts. Files can be transferred between participants.
With these tools and options all it takes is getting used to them. Make sure to prepare the staff you send to remote training sessions by exposing them early on to the video apps you are using.
How long can your learners endure in front of a webcam?
We’ve had reports of remote video workshops running over a full day or even two. It is possible (with lots of breaks), but not the best setup. Instead we recommend breaking up a longer training piece into several segments of 1, 2 or a maximum of 3 hours each. This actually has some significant advantages from a learner’s perspective:
- Learning doesn’t happen in one day. Breaking up learning into smaller chunks helps processing and digesting the content. This is true regardless of the current limitations.
- A great opportunity is to send participants off after each segment with practical tasks. They can practice what they have learned, prepare “homework” tasks, do some pre-learning for the next block, etc. All this allows for the subsequent sessions to be even more practical and applied. Feedback discussed now derives from real life experience and not just a theoretical thought process within a confined training room.
- The “webshops” can be blended further with self-guided online learning modules, coaching through local coaches and leaders and other training means.
- Remote learning is also more sustainable, time and cost effective. Sending your staff to a one-day workshop is an expensive exercise.
As we said at the beginning, the current restrictions that make traditional learning events impossible are a great opportunity to explore highly valuable remote and blended learning options. Remote blended education doesn’t limit good learning, it takes education and training to a whole new level.
Eventually we will be able to meet again physically, but the classroom will now have to blend into this broader range of learning options that are designed for far more effective and sustainable training and education.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
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