Online Training

 

Online Training

On a Saturday morning kids were dressed in Swimming wears and waiting for the instructor to teach them how to swim. The instructor greeted the kids and said "Atul mute your Audio" and with the first slide on basics of swimming.

Hold on, I can guess you will be asking "What the hell is going on? Yes, it is online swimming class, sounds weird. Online classes are a new normal and it has its own advantages too, but we should also understand whether it is conducive for all types of subjects.

During these pandemic days, I came across many online programs out of which some are suitable for online platform whereas some are not, however, to keep the show running people are experimenting with the knowledge they have

As swimming cannot be learnt online, there are many Life skills, Behavioural skill, soft skills etc. Which cannot be learnt through online., I know my statement is debatable and I leave it to the readers discretion to decide the types of programs which can be delivered online.

During these Pandemic times companies were looking into various options of engaging their employees through various activities and online programs, some were calendar driven or budget driven, but I doubt whether the learner would have benefited, probably his/her man days would have been fulfilled and the training team would have completed their KRA and the training company would have raised their Invoice.

I might sound cynical, but it is time to ask ourselves are we really meeting the learning objectives? This question might sound philosophical, but our livelihood appears to be more important than the learning objective.

At this stage you might be in an ethical dilemma, but the good news is, you can still develop and deliver programs that suits the learners need.

As we know that learning is a continuous process and the world is dynamic, hence there is always a scope to upgrade the employee’s skills and knowledge.

At this juncture trainers should strengthen their Training need analysis process. Instead of pitching for business, we need to offer ourselves for studying the organisation needs, their business objectives, gaps etc. such approach will elevate us from trainer to an Intervention specialist.

The client might ask for a presentation skill program, which we would have done it as a 2-day workshop with video recording and playback, in such programs we would have given our feedback ranging from body language, tone, use of PPT etc. but when it comes to virtual, some of the parameters might not be relevant. However, we cannot tell no the program, but we can probe the client to understand the type of presentation they make in online, their target audience and their expectations. Based on this input we can design a program in line with online presentation, they make.

As trainers we might not have the luxury of workshop mode, where we had time to conduct activities and small group discussion followed by presentation, which was helpful in skills building, but online is an effective platform for knowledge development and we should look for programs related to it

When we do an effective training need analysis in terms of knowledge gap, we can focus on developing mini online knowledge session followed by quizzes.

There are companies where they define the Job Competencies and parameters to measure the competencies, with such companies we can develop modules on how to practically apply those parameters which in turn will help them in improving their competencies.

For example: A company has a parameter named “ Sense of urgency” , in such cases, we can understand the reason behind why sense of urgency is considered to be a parameter and how does it impact the business.

Based on the above understanding we should develop internal case studies self-assessment tools, related to sense of urgency and run a short session on it followed by a post training evaluation of usage of sense of urgency in their roles.  By being specific, we address the root cause and avoid treating the symptoms.

In classroom session the focus was on holding the participants for long hours, but in online though the duration is less but ensuring their involvement has become a challenge.  To overcome these challenges, we need to involve the Learners in TNA too.

It might not be easy to predict when things will come back to normal, but there is a new normal that has set in for conducting online programs for certain topics, we should focus more on strengthening our TNA and deliver the program that meets both their business and learning needs.

M.L. Narendra Kumar