In 2015, U.S. business spent over $160 billion on employee training.
Considering this massive expenditure, a stellar onboarding and training process is critical for receiving an ROI through the future success of employees.
But those new recruit manuals, emails with walls of text and a myriad of attachments, and 30 year-old training videos that clearly show their age are not engaging anyone; or setting them up to succeed.
In today’s digitally-focused world, information consumption has shifted from lengthy texts to brief posts and visually stimulating content.
When information is presented in more outdated formats, it can be extremely challenging for individuals to focus, process, and comprehend complex information when they are too busy battling their own attention span.
And since organizations cover a multitude of sizes, cultures, structures, and locations, there is unfortunately no one size fits all solution for this conundrum.
In the digital environment, however, there are wholly customizable solutions that can be tailored to meet the varying needs of nearly every company format. And this is where webinar software become an indispensable ally.
Using webinars to train employees with tools like ClickMeeting allows organizations to create more engaging and interactive environments than with face-to-face meetings and sessions.
These sorts of platforms provide trainers with a great array of features and ingredients to achieve this goal; customized invitations, presentation tools, polls and surveys, collaborative whiteboard elements, screen sharing options, and many other compelling components are all at the disposal of presenters.
If you’re ready to push your training process into the 21st century, here is how you can integrate webinars into the onboarding process, as well as detailed explanations of some unexpected benefits.
How to Leverage Webinars for Employee Training
Creating an onboarding webinar system is a relatively simple and intuitive process.
If you haven’t already established your training program’s new flow, make that a top priority. Be sure to chunk information into intuitive sections that will make sense to the uninitiated; this will help to turn challenging materials into info that is much easier to understand.
Throughout your presentation, weave in various documents, slides, videos, and other visually appealing elements to help new workers fully integrate the topic and its nuances.
Additionally, at certain intervals you will want to open up for group interaction and collaboration. You can this with Q&A sessions, group chats, or (if your webinar tool allows) whiteboard exercises.
At the end of each section, it’s wise to incorporate a short quiz to ensure all attendees are absorbing the lessons.
When ready, schedule your training session in your webinar platform and send branded email invitations to attendees. Additionally, be sure to activate the waiting room feature and provide your trainees with an agenda and any pertinent downloadable materials so they know what to expect.
And just like that, you have yourself an effective and streamlined way to train employees – remote or otherwise.
On its own, this may not seem worthy of adoption. When you consider the benefits, however, this process only gets more and more appealing.
Why Convert to Webinar Training?
In order to get into the webinar training game, you will of course have to make the initial investment in the software. After that, however, your company stands to save bundles of cash and attain a variety of other perks that will ultimately lead to an increased ROI.
In order to train new employees, your company needs to organize an event. This means that one of your staff will be preoccupied with these dealings.
Additionally, your company will have to shell out for the venue (if offsite), food and beverages, physical copies of material handouts, and potential travel costs for new and current employees.
Using webinar software, however, effectively eliminates many of these expenditures, only leaving businesses to pay for the webinar platform fee and the time it takes your staff to set up and present the information.
And since webinar services keep track of who is in attendance, presenters will no longer have to waste any time figuring this out. That means less time on the clock and less money spent.
Outside of these direct financial benefits, your brand stands to save money or increase its ROI in several indirect ways.
Firstly, in order for your employees to value your company, creating a premier experience is key. When face-to-face training sessions are held, it is typically in a drab and uninspired setting; this can immediately set an unengaged tone for the day.
Using webinar software, you deliver your new employees a brand perception that is much more likely to create a heightened state of commitment and respect. This is achieved through personalized emails and webinars branded with company logos and colors.
Next up is engagement. It seems counterintuitive to think that a virtual meeting room would increase engagement, but this can absolutely be the case when webinars are correctly structured; this is especially true for those who are just as capable, but not as confident to speak up.
This increased level of engagement directly correlates with the next benefit, which is heightened comprehension. Again, long emails, thick manuals, and other dull materials aren’t engaging new employees; this is likely to lead to lowers comprehension rates. Less courageous folks are disinterested in asking for guidance for fear of embarrassment; a well-executed webinar training session obliterates this issue.
The integration of visuals helps to boost retention rates too. A 2017 study found that when people are presented with audio-only information, they only retain 10% after three days. When this data is paired with an image, however, individuals can recall 65% of the information after three days.
What all of this ultimately means is that your company will be producing more informed and better trained employees; this can have a significantly positive impact on your business’s bottom line, and a positive boost in company culture.
Takeaway
Yes, it’s difficult sometimes to depart from traditional methods and structures. When those frameworks fail to provide meaningful results in a rapidly evolving world, however, your company must learn to pivot as well. Transition your brand’s onboarding and training process from drab conference rooms to engaging webinar chatrooms and you are likely to see a positive impact on your company’s internal perception, retention, and ROI.