I've been getting a lot of questions about remote training.

The shift to work-from-home has caused leaders to re-think how employees are trained. Onboarding new hires, re-skilling existing employees, or just meeting ongoing development needs is a challenge.

My experience with virtual training started in the late 1990s, and I ran my first full-time virtual training program in 2002. As a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP), I've seen what works, and what doesn't.

This post summarizes all you need to know in just three principles. I've also included resources and examples to help you out.

An employee logs into a remote training class.

1. Train to solve a problem

We train employees because we are trying to solve a problem. In the workplace, that problem is fundamentally connected to helping employees do their jobs. That doesn’t change when your leaners are remote.

Here are just a few examples of common training programs and the problems they solve:

New hire training: do a job effectively.
Software training: use software productively.
Customer service training: deliver outstanding service.

The challenge is words like "effectively," "productively," and "outstanding," are too vague and subjective. Assessing subjective qualities becomes even more difficult when we aren’t in the same physical space with our learners. We need a concrete way to define whether someone has been fully trained.

The solution is to create clear learning objectives.

Here are two learning objectives I helped a client create for their new hire training program using the A-B-C-D model. The new hires were contact center agents who answered customer calls.

New hires will achieve a 100 percent monitoring score on four consecutive live calls.
New hires will be available to take live calls for 5 or more hours in one day.

Employees had to complete both objectives to pass the training.

The learning objectives helped my client do two things. First, it was now easy to evaluate whether someone had been trained. Second, it allowed the training program to be laser-focused on helping employees achieve the course objectives.

More on that second part in a moment. First, I recommend you try to create your own learning objectives for a program you are working on.

You can use the the A-B-C-D model to write learning objectives like the ones above.

Some people might feel pressure from a boss or senior leader to just wing it and implement training without clearly understanding the problem. Here's a short LinkedIn Learning video that describes how to communicate with project sponsors.

Communicating with project sponsors from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

Bonus tip: Training will only solve problems that are caused by an employee's lack of knowledge, skill, or ability. In many cases, training isn’t the right solution, or at least not the only one. Here's how to spot whether employees need training.

2. Bad in-person training will be bad virtual training

A class that is boring and ineffective when delivered in-person won't magically improve when you move to remote training. In fact, it will likely get worse.

I asked people on LinkedIn to share what they dislike the most about participating in training. There were a lot of great responses. Here are some common complaints:

Boring lectures
Takes too long
Not enough relevant content
Content not tailored to the audience
Lack of hands-on or practice opportunities

There are two ways to fix this.

First, see principle number one above. Your employees are more likely to sense the training is a waste of time if it isn't clearly connected to helping them solve a problem. You need learning objectives before you move forward!

Second, training programs should be laser-focused on helping employees achieve the objectives.

I once designed a training program to help employees use a new software program. The approach was extremely simple:

Highlight the differences between the new software program and the old one.
Use the new software in class perform common tasks.
Identify job aids and other resources to help if employees got stuck.

No boring lectures. No death by PowerPoint. No theory. Employees were using the new software within the first five minutes of the class and were able to use it to do their jobs in less than an hour.

You can improve your own training program by focusing on helping employees achieve the learning objectives.

My LinkedIn Learning course on Adult Learning Principles can provide some more insight.

Welcome from Instructional Design: Adult Learners by Jeff Toister

3. Adapt what you'd do in person

Adult learning principles remain constant, whether you are training someone in person or remotely. An easy way to improve remote training is to think about best practices you use when training in-person and adapt them to the technology.

Let's look at webinars versus an in-person class as an example.

Imagine you are facilitating an in-person class starts at 9am. What are you doing at 8:55? Hopefully, your classroom is all set up and you are spending that time greeting participants as they come in. This immediately helps break the ice and builds energy for the upcoming training.

Why not do the same thing for a webinar?

Open the webinar room 5-10 minutes early and greet participants as they login. I often use this time to test out the webinar features we'll be using and make sure participants can hear and see me.

What are some other things you might do in person?

Ask participants to complete a pre-assignment.
Give participants a handout.
Have participants work in groups.
Facilitate a group discussion.
Demonstrate a specific skill.
Assign hands-on activities.
Invite participants to share their knowledge.

You can do all of these things when facilitating remote training! In fact, there are some advantages of going remote that make it my preferred way to deliver customer service training.

Here's an example of a webinar that I co-facilitated with ProcedureFlow’s Micah Peterson that demonstrates many of the ways you can adapt to remote technology.

Take Action

Going remote does not mean doing 100 percent of your training via webinar. There's some early research that shows spending too much time on video chats can be exhausting.

I like to give participants self-paced, hands-on assignments in between sessions. If they do need to watch a lecture, I’d rather them get access to that lecture on video so they can watch it on their own time. (And I always keep the segments very short.)

Your training will be much better if you keep your learners in mind.