Spicing up your webinars
The link between training and ROIs is not direct. But beyond bringing value to work processes, training enables employees to stay relevant and perform at desired levels. Changes in the macro-environment have however forced organizations to rethink their training strategies, and instructor-led classroom training is fast being replaced by webinars, e-learning programs, etc.
Webinars may feature a facilitator, so a trainee has multiple ways to grasp an idea or a concept. As a discovery-based learning experience, this engages people and is one of the finest ways of learning transfer.
Webinars are vastly growing in the popularity received for the past decade or so. The underlying reason is that a webinar may be the best way to facilitate communication among corporate employees. Face to face presence in a board room is not required.
A trainer or a manager can interact with the trainees or employees partly over a webinar, even while they may not be present at a common physical location. Similarly, employees located at a separate branch office can also comfortably attend a webinar without having to fly to the main office.
There are characteristically several ways in which webinars overcome the limitations presented by corporate classroom training sessions:
- Increases collaboration
Reaching out to even more people is simplified by the means of webinars. One can train not only the people who are present at the office but also the people who are located a distance away.
In case, some key personnel who need to attend a meeting are not present, conducting a meeting becomes pointless, in some cases. When a webinar is created for the benefit of all attendees, they can all attend the same irrespective of where they are located.
- Remote workplace
Organizing training sessions and meetings for employees located at a remote workplace is always a difficulty because visiting the head office repeatedly for meetings is difficult.
Webinars make a nice solution in such cases. Employees at a remote location are likely to pay additional heed to the webinars. This helps them be sure of what is expected of them.
Driving engagement with webinars nevertheless becomes difficult at times
Driving engagement and participation with your attendees sitting behind their computer screens nevertheless becomes difficult in several cases, while presenting a webinar. Learner engagement is a quintessential metric for the success of a webinar, and if a webinar fails to drive engagement, it does not meet its purpose well.
A few of the conventional methods for making webinars more interactive are Q & A’s, polls, live chats, and surveys, blending your webinar with experiential learning activities. Such activities deliver an exponential boost to engagement levels, and the participants restrict their tendency to multitask. As a discovery-based learning experience, webinars add value to trainees and the organization as a whole.
Use of gamified learning in webinars
Facilitators nowadays use implements of gamified learning in the webinars. This helps in several ways. Just as an instance, by reviewing scores in real-time, further training can be accordingly paced. Similarly, gamification encourages independent learning and induces learning retention.
This goes to show that even in the era of digitalized and self-paced learning – the value of facilitator-led experience is unparalleled.
