Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Best Practices for Engaging Training Webinars

In the last decade, webinars have become a popular vehicle for delivering training. It makes sense. Scores of software options make it possible to simultaneously showcase audio, video, slides, and other visuals to participants around the globe. Organizations don’t have to pay to send their people to one place, and those who can’t attend live have the option of viewing the material at their convenience.

In my career as a human resources and workforce consultant, I’ve conducted around 100 webinars. I enjoy doing them, but over the years I’ve learned that the skills and techniques necessary to deliver an effective in-person course are not the same as those required for an engaging webinar. Here are considerations to keep in mind as you dip your toes into webinar planning and execution.

Interactivity is Even More Important

In an in-person class, participants at least feel somewhat obligated to pay attention, or at least refrain from doing three other tasks at once. There are no such constraints with a webinar, however. Participants can do whatever they want, and the instructor is none the wiser. For this reason, it’s essential that you hold their interest by stopping every few minutes to ask a question, do a poll, or request a chat response. If you tell your participants at the beginning that you’re going to do this, you have an even better chance at keeping everyone on board throughout your remarks.

Beware the Super-Dense Presentation

Just as in an in-person course, less is often more. Not only are wordy slides harder to read on a computer screen (or god forbid a phone), but they will also tempt an instructor to read from them directly. You also run the risk of overwhelming your audience with too much information that they aren’t free to immediately ask questions about, and this may prompt them to zone out. Instead of trying to communicate everything you’ve got on a topic, select three main points, explain them succinctly, and use colorful case studies, statistics, and anecdotes to support them.

Keep Up With New Feature Releases

If you’re been using the same webinar software for a while, it’s easy to get complacent. You think you know the program like the back of your hand, and you don’t think to learn about fresh offerings that can further enhance your presentations. As an example, one program I use is now able to analyze audience chat and questions in real time to determine the topics that are of most significant interest, and/or the aspects of my remarks with which people are struggling or need clarification. This feature helps me enormously in zeroing in on an individual audience’s specific needs, but I never would have known about it if I didn’t regularly communicate with my vendor.

Train the Trainer

In-person corporate trainers often have education or work experience in instructional design and delivery, and many rehearse extensively prior to getting in front of a new audience. For some reason, though, webinar instructions are not always held to the same standards. Being across an Internet connection instead of a room does not remove your responsibility to be smooth and prepared (rather than awkward and stammery). If you are planning your first webinar, consider a trial run with colleagues or friends and collect feedback on strengths and areas for improvement.

Test and Backup Your Tech

In an ideal world, software and wireless connections would be foolproof. However, in delivering lots of webinars over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that this is not the case. Obviously, you cannot conduct a webinar if you are unable to log into the hosting system, so make sure you’ve tested your software in the exact physical location and using the exact hardware and connections that you will employ on the day of the live webinar. If something doesn’t work properly at go time, you may not have time to fix it, so have a backup plan for gaining quick access to your audience. For example, even if a webinar is supposed to run over Wi-Fi, I always make sure I have an available phone line just in case.

Webinars can be an efficient and cost-effective way of conveying experience and transferring knowledge, but don’t take their ease-of-use for granted. Adhere to these best practices and you’ll realize the full benefits of this learning platform.

6 Essential Qualities of Corporate Trainers

As a human resources consultant, I’ve observed many approaches to corporate training, and most focus on content. Decisions involve what should be taught, and in what format. While delivery is equally important, sometimes it’s overlooked. I’m familiar with situations in which someone totally unfamiliar with the subject matter is pegged to teach an in-person course, and others where someone with no public speaking experience at all is expected to rally a group for a full day or more!

You can make the most of your corporate training initiatives by ensuring that the person who delivers your materials is as good as the materials themselves. Here are a few recommendations to that effect. Strong corporate trainers:

Can Appropriately Customize Material

Course materials that may have been developed months or even years ago for a different audience in a different location may not be an appropriate fit for the audience or the trainer herself. Not only do good trainers understand instructional design, but they are able to rework material in a way that targets a specific group and accomplishes a specific business objective.

Can Bring the Content to Life

Edutainment refers to a style in which course participants are entertained while learning. The best corporate trainers have an engaging style that prompts people to listen, pay attention, and apply learnings. They use substantial interactivity, including videos, quizzes, and exercises – to encourage active participation. They walk around the room, write on boards, and converse with the audience in a friendly and enthusiastic tone.

Possesses Relevant Life and Business Experience

In my experience, it’s difficult for trainers to connect with an audience when they have no firsthand knowledge of participant challenges. For example, as a trainer on workforce issues, I rely frequently on anecdotes and lessons learned from my 10 years in the corporate world. Without these, I don’t know that I would have the necessary credibility to be effective. After all, what can I possibly have experienced about the challenges of working in an office when I basically sit in my house all day?

Is Prepared But Flexible

Good trainers come in knowing the material inside out. While they may make use of a Facilitator Guide, they don’t use it as a crutch. Rather, they can answer most questions about the course material without “looking them up” and are generally considered experts on the topic at hand. At the same time, these trainers can read the audience and understand when material is not resonating, and adjust their approach on the fly for better results.

Can Facilitate Change

The best corporate trainers inspire participants to consider new angles and try different ways of doing things. They inspire a vision and future state in which the participants’ jobs are more successful and rewarding because of the training. They understand that most humans naturally resist change, so they anticipate objections, and school participants in managing obstacles and staying on the right path.

Promotes Blended and Continuous Learning

Along those same lines, good corporate trainers know that learning – and particularly the application of learning – must continue after participants have left the training room. They provide access to supplementary eLearning and self-study vehicles that reinforce lessons, and periodically reconnect with participants to assess how training is being used in role.

Can Evaluate Success Properly

Finally, good trainers don’t simply hand out smile sheets and call it a day, because they know that just because participants say they liked a course doesn’t mean they actually learned anything. Rather, collaborating with business stakeholders, they set concrete metrics (for example, increased sales or quality ratings among participants) that prove training effectiveness and assure learning goals are achieved and sustained over time.

Corporate training has a lot of moving parts, but it’s important to select an individual with the right skills and experience to best steer the operation and maximize your investment.

Are You Strategic About Military Hiring?

Many organizations have prioritized the hiring of military veterans in recent years. This is commendable, as military hiring requires a different strategy than civilian hiring because veterans do not have exactly the same needs as traditional hires. For instance, they are often attracted by different things during the recruitment process, and sometimes respond better to alternative training and development approaches.

The Talent Activation, the Employee Experience, and Skill Development survey, conducted online within the United States by DeVry University on behalf of the Career Advisory Board in August 2018 examined how organizations are currently designing and executing specific employee experiences at the recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, and performance evaluation stages.

Survey respondents included 505 US-based individuals (53 percent male, 47 percent female) with full-time positions at the supervisor level or above, in companies with more than 500 employees (mean company size was large at 15,000). Our respondents’ primary job responsibilities include the hiring, development, and management of employees.

In parts of the survey, we looked specifically at military hiring and development practices. Specifically, we asked our respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: My company has implemented a successful military veteran hiring strategy. Sixty-four percent agreed, confirming that not only do such strategies exist, but also that they have been honed in a majority of organizations.

 We also asked the participants how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement: My company has implemented a comprehensive talent development program that capitalizes on the professional strengths military veterans bring to the workplace. Refreshingly, 67 percent agreed.  And, according to our respondents’ verbatim responses, material is often customized to resonate with veterans’ unique perspectives.

On the subject of the verbatim responses, the survey inquired about where respondents were focusing their thoughts and energies with respect to military veteran hiring and onboarding. Some of the initiatives they cited in the verbatims included:

• Hiring talent acquisition staff with military backgrounds
• Matching current employee veterans with new hires
• Engaging with Military Transition Centers
• Using regional military outplacement centers effectively
• Performing outreach to veteran groups in relevant locations
• Maintaining strong relationships with local VAs
• Holding veteran-specific job fairs
• Partnering with military recruiters
• Sourcing talent from military leaders who have commanded troops
• Participating in military-sponsored job events
• Offering interview and hiring preference to veteran candidates
• Creating onsite affinity groups for military
• Providing tuition assistance and educational incentives
• Emphasizing how military experience translates to work experience
• Understanding and communicating about PTSD and other symptoms veterans experience
• Placing veterans into supervisory or leadership jobs
• Developing veteran-specific onboarding programs to ease the transition to civilian work

For more survey results, check out the DeVry WORKS website.