With most employees working remotely nowadays, many businesses have decided to forego training. However, don’t let the distance stop your employees from learning and developing new skills. With the help of a learning management system (LMS) software, you can develop effective remote training strategies for your employees and successfully overcome the learning challenges in remote working.
Current technology has allowed easier access to information and communication for your remote workers. In fact, a recent study by the Training Magazine shows businesses have set aside 16% of their usual budget to invest in learning tools and technologies to accommodate the new setup. The most in-demand software is the LMS software.
How to Overcome Learning Challenges in Remote Working with LMS Software
With that, here are some challenges you might encounter during remote learning and how LMS software can overcome them.
Decrease in Engagement
One of the common challenges of managing remote employees is sustaining their engagement. With everyone in their respective homes, you will have to compete for their attention alongside other distractions.
In this case, you cannot just sit them down for a lecture and a short activity at the end. They might just end up getting up and doing something else midway through.
With LMS software, you can make your training more dynamic and interactive despite the distance. It allows for a multi-media approach to remote learning. You can incorporate videos, images, audio, games, clickable links, and text in your training. This way, you can make your sessions less boring and encourage your workers to interact more with the course materials.
Feeling of Disconnection
Working from home can often lead to a feeling of isolation and disconnection from the company. You are away from everyone else. Your usual work structure is gone. And communication is no longer as seamless as before.
This feeling of disconnection can affect your workers’ motivation to learn. As a result, some might just go through the sessions quickly without putting an effort in understanding new concepts and skills. Others might just skip out entirely. As a result, your online training becomes ineffective.
Your LMS software can promote social learning. It acts as a platform where your workers can come together. It can provide discussion boards, forums, centralized dashboards, and messaging channels where everyone can interact. This way, they can share their insights, progress, and achievements throughout the training.
Unconducive Environment
Being at home brings great comfort to anyone. But too much comfort might mean more distractions to your workers. This can stand in the way of effective learning and development while at home.
Unfortunately, you cannot control their environment nor force them to look for a more conducive place to learn. What you can do, however, is come up with a personalized learning experience for your remote employees. This allows you to adapt to each of your workers’ needs and environment for proper learning.
Using LMS software gives your workers more control over how and when they want to take their training. Some provide asynchronous learning experiences so that your workers can choose the best time for them to focus on learning. This also lets them dictate the pacing of the entire process.
Providing Learning Materials
Anyone can easily access information online. But the challenge is finding legitimate sources and learning materials. When conducting remote training, you must make sure that your workers receive the right information and instructional materials for it.
With LMS software, you can ensure that your remote workers have access to the right learning materials for their training. However, not all LMS software can provide a digital library of educational and instructional materials for your remote workers. Others will require you to upload your own materials for it to become accessible to your employees.
We at Mintbook, for example, provide an extensive digital library for your e-l earning needs. It is an online database of various educational books, videos, audios, and more than a traditional walk-in library usually has. With this, you can provide your remote employees with sufficient learning materials to supplement your training modules.
Limited Learning Activities
A common challenge for remote learning is coming up with activities to complement your training modules. After all, you cannot just incorporate the usual fun and games you use in traditional, face-to-face training. You must develop new training ideas for remote employees that they can enjoy from the comforts of their respective homes.
By using LMS software, you can explore new ways to spice up your training sessions. It can add:
- Gamification elements
- Multimedia presentations
- Discussion groups and boards
- Real-time collaboration tools
- Quizzes and tests; and
- Centralized dashboards
With these different features, you don’t have to worry about running out of training ideas for your remote workers. You can also check out what others have to offer as FinancesOnline cites some learning management software examples for your business.
Measuring effectivity
Working remotely makes it difficult to keep track of what everyone else is doing at home. As a result, you are never really sure if your online training is actually successful. But with LMS software, you can easily and accurately measure the effectiveness of your training.
LMS provides tools that monitor your workers’ progress and performance during the entire training. It has built-in features that keep track of their scores, submissions, and engagement with the module. Likewise, it can compile and analyze data regarding their performance, allowing you to see whether they are improving or not during and after training.
Through this, you can pinpoint areas in your modules that need improvement. This also allows you to find better ways on how to train remote employees for next time.
Improving the Learning Experience
According to LinkedIn, 43% of businesses are always looking for ways to improve employee training. And since remote learning is still a relatively new concept, you might feel as if your current processes need more refining to become genuinely useful.
With LMS software, you can streamline and optimize your process for a better learning experience. For one, it can store all the materials, documents, and data needed for your modules. You can also use it to refine your training structure and create templates for all your future courses. Likewise, it automates certain tasks such as:
- Administering quizzes/exams
- Generating reports
- Computing for scores
- Compiling data and submissions
- Reminding everyone of the deadline
With this, your remote employees can easily access your training courses and materials from their homes. Likewise, your LMS software serves as a virtual classroom where they can still interact with their colleagues, share insights, and track their progress along the way.
Unstoppable Learning
How are training and development different for remote workers? Is it possible to overcome learning challenges in remote working to conduct employee training remotely? Will it even work?
The change in setup might require that you make certain adjustments to your plans and preparations. Nonetheless, remote learning and development can still be as effective as any traditional method. You just need the right LMS software to ensure the best learning experience for your remote employees.
This type of software provides all the tools you need to make e-learning possible and accessible. More than that, it performs and automates administrative tasks for streamlined content and processes. This way, you can give your remote workers a seamless learning experience at home or wherever they may be.
