How to implement online training for your field staff: A Complete Guide
We’ve designed this to help you set up a training program that stays relevant for long, while yielding great learning outcomes.
The emergence of COVID-19 has changed the very nature of discussions around online training.
It’s no longer a question of “if”, not even of “when” (the answer to that one is yesterday) but “how”.
And it’s no longer a question of “will it work” but “how do we make it work”.
At Noticeboard, we’ve helped implement training programs across leading companies in India, and having trained over 200k field employees, we have a few tricks up our sleeves that you might find helpful.
To ensure that your upcoming training program gives you the maximum bang for your buck, we’ve made a step-by-step guide designed to deliver your learning and business outcomes.
This guide incorporates all of our learnings from launching training programs through the years. Designing it can take you anywhere between 1–4 weeks depending on the volume of content.
Think of this activity as a multi-player game spanning several levels of difficulty. If done right, you can keep your training relevant for years to come.
Let’s get right to it: there are three phases to launching a training program online. We’ll take it one by one.
Disclaimer: you’re going to be answering far more questions in the initial stages than the ones who are actually undergoing training! :) So we hope you’re all geared up!
Phase 1: This should take 10% of your budgeted time
Define the need
At the start, you should aim to document a lot of seemingly obvious questions.
Why?
Because the truths recorded here will help you move faster in the next few phases. Please answer the questions listed:
- What benefit will this training provide?
- If this training did not exist — what will be the business impact?
- What are the limitations with the current training process?
Take some time to gather your thoughts on these questions and move on to the next step.
Define a goal
These are the business metrics that you should aim to achieve after completion of the training.
Some examples of training goals can be:
- Onboarding time of new employees should reduce by x%
- Safety compliance should increase by x%
- Customer escalations should reduce by x%
Next,
Sketch your learner’s persona
Step into the learner’s shoe to better contextualize the training.
- Does their job require them to be indoors or outdoors?
- What is their education qualification, language preference, mobile phone capability?
- From your experience, what is their single biggest motivation and their biggest fear?
- What will they stand to lose if they do not complete the training, and gain, if they do.
The answers to the first two questions will help you create engaging content, while the answers to last two will help you build compelling case for them to complete training.
Phase 2: This should take around 30% of your budgeted time.
If you have answers to the aforementioned questions in Phase 1, this phase will be a breeze. A few crucial questions to consider in this stage:
Stakeholders, Budget and Responsibilities
Getting a management buy-in is possibly the single most important step in delivering a successful outcome.
Gather your thoughts from phase 1, set up time with the concerned department heads and walk them through the need and goal.
Be warned, this will not be a one-off meeting.
Getting management buy-in might not be a cakewalk, but without it, you’ll end up doing a lot of work with little possibility of hitting your goals.
In your sessions with them, you should get a nod on budget, identify key resources for the project, and also map responsibilities.
Important questions such as the following will get addressed during this phase.
- Who will manage the training program and run it?
- Who are the subject-matter-experts?
- Who can create the content? Would you need external vendors?
Define Timelines
Take a top down approach to arrive at this. When does the business need it? Accordingly, set up a tight deadline that’s 2 weeks prior to business requirements. This will help you accommodate some of the unforeseen delays.
A few pointers here:
- Content creation takes the most time — so choose a vendor/resource that you trust on quality and timelines
- Account for obstacles that you might encounter over the course of the project. A general direction of company growth, business priorities should give you a hint.
Choose a platform
This is key to content management and seamless delivery.
If you have an internal tool, please ensure that it supports training in a form and format that your learners would appreciate. Look for mobile-compatibility, multimedia support, and deep reporting capabilities.
If you don’t have an internal tool, you should look for vendors that check the following boxes.
- Have native mobile applications for Android and iOS
- Have robust reporting capabilities
- Support offline learning
- Should integrate with your existing systems
- Should allow for easy content upload
Phase 3: This should take 60% of the budgeted time
This phase marks the transition from managerial work to more hands-on training-related work. Once there is a stakeholder nod, we should quickly:
Define Learning Objectives
Unlike business objectives, these are learner-centric which specify what they will be able to do after completing the course.
Some example are, he/she will be able to:
- Execute complete a delivery task without calling support
- Answer all customer queries related to product X
- Execute process X at peak time
Define Training structure and elements
This defines a few key elements that should be a part of your training, regardless of the topic chosen. One way to arrive at this framework would be to look at some of the basic principles of andragogy (or the art and science of adult learning).
Adults need to understand why they’re getting trained, they often have short attention spans and crave for feedback and appreciation. Accordingly, your training should compulsorily include:
Objective setting — Actual Learning — Reinforcement — Assessment — Certification
Once the above structure is agreed upon, we go one level deeper to make the actual learning more informative and engaging for adults. For this, we recommend that you choose formats that they encounter every day: Videos, audio narratives, gifs, photos, interactive quizzes
And stay away from those they don’t: PPTs and PDF formats.
Defining these elements will help you budget enough time and resources required for content development.
Create Training Content
In this step, we bring together two key players: the subject matter expert and the content creator so that two are aligned on:
- Learning objective
- Tone of training and its visual language
- Learner persona and language preferences
- Deadlines
This process consumes the largest time but yields rich results. Once the content is delivered, please budget enough time for content review and rework.
Our recommendation would be to create content in formats that’s on par with what they see on social media today. Think of short videos no longer than 2–3 minutes, produced in regional languages, audio-based narratives, gifs and interactive quizzes.
Here’s a video we made for awareness of COVID-19 for field staff. Notice its length, the language, the tone and visuals.
And so, at this point.. we’re 99% done.
After uploading the content, please do a dry run on the LMS with your internal staff and stakeholders, so you can spot any residual changes that are to be made.
And step back, and congratulate yourself. You’re all set to launch your online training!
TL;DR
Launching a course is a fairly involved process, and if done right, can yield robust results that positively impacts business.
At Noticeboard, we work with companies closely to run their training program end-to-end. We have a robust Customer Success team to help you define objectives, a comprehensive LMS platform and a skilled content team to launch impactful training programs for field staff.
If you have any unanswered questions or simply want to have a chat about training your staff, do write to us at content@noticeboard.tech.
All the best!
