How to Create a Virtual Training Program at Your Company

What’s the difference between coaching & training?

While training involves the transfer of knowledge from a mentor to a mentee, coaching focuses on empowering, supporting and facilitating individuals to take an active role in their own personal growth and learning. Learn more about the differences between training and coaching with EZRA.

Both training and coaching are really important for companies. In fact, for leaders to implement training programs, coaching can be a really good space to learn and develop these skills from highly qualified coaches.

Why should you have a virtual training program?

Virtual training programs have many benefits, such as continual learning opportunities and employee growth and development chances. But what makes virtual training programs good, in comparison to in person training programs for example? Some benefits include:

• Saves time & money

• Provides flexibility

• Increased accessibility

• Increased efficiency

• Avoids geo-restrictions

• Increased energy & engagement

How can you create a virtual training program at your company?

The implementation of virtual training programs can be integral to a company to ensure continual employee growth, development and efficiency in order to reach the goals and objectives of the business.

When implementing a virtual training program, three areas to focus on include ensuring the program helps achieve company goals, is relevant to employee needs, and how it can be improved or strengthened to do so.

We’ve put together some steps to help you create and implement a virtual training program effectively at your company:

1. Identify problem areas

First things first, in order for learning and improvements to occur, you need to pinpoint where this needs to happen. We recommend looking at and assessing any potential weaknesses in your team. For example, where does performance lag? Or, what areas are you currently overlooking? One way of doing so is by using an assessment test; however, gathering your team members and getting feedback or group discussions on potential pressure points is a good starting place.

2. Set SMART goals

Once you’ve identified the problem areas that you want to address with your training, use them to set SMART goals. SMART goals are: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound; they’ll act as a foundation to understand what exactly the training should achieve, and therefore how you can get there. SMART goals are key to understanding the parameters for success in your virtual training program.

3. Create an outline of your training program around these goals

Think about:

• What should be included?

• How much time is needed?

• How to make it enjoyable (which leads us to our next point…)

4. Have both the company and the employee’s needs in mind

Whilst we know your virtual training programs have the potential to bring great business benefits, you need to think about employee needs too. Happy employees tend to be far more engaged and productive. So boring, mundane, or unnecessary training sessions won’t be any good.

Think about the participants’ needs as you start to outline and plan your virtual training courses – think interactive sessions, visuals, and relevant and engaging topics.

5. Develop the training course materials

Whether it’s an online course that ends with an assessment, or a presentation with a question-and-answer discussion, take the time to develop your training materials. You might want to think about creating different training sessions or modules around each goal you’ve made – that way you have a clear objective for every training session you deliver.

6. Implement your training program

The benefits of an online virtual training program are that its relatively inexpensive and far more scalable, so implementing your training program should be relatively straightforward. Online training means anyone can complete it from anywhere and at any time.

7. Monitor the progress of your employees

There’s no point setting your workplace training and then forgetting about it. Monitor how employees are progressing with the training, and how well goals are being achieved. Has performance improved? Are teams collaborating better? Or is engagement rate booming? Check in with your employees and get feedback on how they’re finding it, and what they’ve learnt.

8. Test & finetune your training program

It’s likely that the first time you implement a virtual training program, there will be things that go smoothly and things that you might need to test and retry. But in doing so, you’ll be able to finetune your training programs to be the most successful they can be and use any learnings you get to perfect future online training.