In our April Networkplaceless virtual event, remote workers and leaders from all over the world shared their thoughts on the top interests, knowledge, and skills that are necessary in remote work, which included curiosity for learning, time management, problem-solving, and adapting to new technology. (See learnings infographic below.)
Developing these, and other job-and remote-work specific skills, is critical to keeping remote teams flexible, competitive, and engaged. Employee training doesn’t just help with skillbuilding, but also improves employee engagement and retention, and can even have a positive impact on your company’s bottom line.
Who wouldn’t want any of that?
So, what’s the hold up?
If you are a manager, trainer, or HR professional and have begun looking into remote skillbuilding, you might find yourself at a loss regarding where to start. There’s a lot of content out there about what remote work skills are necessary, but hardly any resources for developing an actual remote learning experience that improves those skills in any measurable way.
Too much content and not enough resources to put that content into a learning experience means that much of the training we see in remote teams takes an ad hoc approach: lots of disjointed event-based learning experiences that aren’t tracked, measured, or even applied in the workplace because the onus is on the employee to find the time and resources to complete the training.
To deliver training that actually helps your employees build the skills they need, it’s essential to avoid this ad hoc approach. By opting for a more deliberate method on how to train your employees, you’ll make smarter moves that will be of greater benefit in the long run. To make training an effective process, then, you’ll need some initial guidance so that you know how to choose learning experiences, facilitate learning, and drive learning initiatives.
Luckily, many tools exist that can help you develop a comprehensive learning and development strategy that will get your team up to speed.
Here are seven of our favorite tools we use to develop and deliver training programs for remote teams, and a couple alternatives that we wouldn’t want to tackle remote training without:
Tools to Create Learning Experiences:
- Course authoring: to create customized, device-agnostic learning experiences
- Articulate Rise – This is our preferred course authoring tool, and is what Workplaceless uses in its modules. By incorporating the latest web technologies, Rise 360 automatically adapts courses for every device–so you can take learning on the go with your mobile or engage from your laptop or desktop computer.
- eLearning development: for developing interactive learning modules
- Articulate Storyline – We’re big fans of this eLearning development tool, and you’ll find it in use across our Workplaceless modules. Storyline 320 enables you to deliver interactive courses on every device; you simply create your course in Storyline 360, then click publish. ➤ Example
- Adobe Captivate – Adobe Captivate comes in a close second here; it’s a smart authoring tool that can be used to create a variety of fully-responsive eLearning content.
- Screen capture: for sharing processes and information related to apps, software and other on-screen tools
- Loom – With Loom, you can capture your screen, record your front-facing camera, and simultaneously narrate a presentation or give your audience a tour of a software program. When you’re done, you can instantly share the recording with a link.
Tools to Deliver and Track Learning
- Learning Management System (LMS): to deliver modules and track learning programs
- MatrixLMS – This is our favorite LMS and what Workplaceless uses. MATRIX is a learning platform that helps companies manage all training activities, such as creating and delivering training content, evaluating employee performance, training clients and partners, and selling online courses.
- TalentLMS – This is our runner up. TalentLMS is an online learning platform that’s immediately accessible, but also offers power and flexibility to spare. You can use it to train employees, customers, partners or even a combination of roles.
- Communication: connecting distributed colleagues to one another and critical professional development resources
- Slack – You’ve likely heard of Slack, the digital collaboration hub that brings people, information, and tools together to get work done virtually. While it’s often used to connect teams and unify systems, Slack is also an excellent platform for providing updates, synchronous and asynchronous interaction and peer feedback in a training context.
- Web conferencing: for the many times when synchronous video communication is a must
- Appear.in – This remote-first company is one of our partners, and it’s not surprising that they developed our favorite web conferencing tool! Appear.in allows for one-on-one or group training and collaboration.
- Visual collaboration
If you’re eager to incorporate these tools into a custom learning and development strategy for your remote team, we cover these tools and more in our newest offering, Trainplaceless, which launches this month!
Want a more turn-key solution? We’ve got you covered, there, too—all our learning programs are developed and delivered using these exact tools. All your organization has to do is:
- Determine the right program fit – from simplifying your onboarding with Remote Work Certification or embarking on the whole kit & caboodle for remote vision with Goplaceless
- Enroll your team members
- Our Workplaceless team takes it from there 🚀
And if any of the remote-specific terms are throwing you for a loop, be sure to check out our Remote Work Dictionary, to help you make sense of the jargon in remote work.
Simone Beltz and Kristi DePaul contributed to this post.
