With remote work becoming the norm, knowing how to keep employees engaged in their training when working remotely is essential. Disengaged employees can cost your business, and therefore keeping them engaged while they train should be a top priority.

For many businesses, L&D is last on their to-do list and therefore the evolution to a digitised, cloud-based LMS system is often held off. However, with 2020 proving that every business needs to be prepared to train their people remotely, it’s time for businesses to invest in the software to keep employees engaged.

Here are the top ways to keep employees engaged when training remotely:

• Communicate regularly to keep them up to date 

One of the key reasons that people switch off with their remote training is that no one is communicating with them. Whether it is reminding them to carry out the work, or offering advice on why learning on the job is so important, without communication remote training can seem like a waste of time to your busy employees.

Remote learning isn’t easy, but having communication channels that sit within a secure LMS is a sure fire way to remind people why they’re doing the training. Communicate with your employees regularly when working and training remotely to keep people awake and engaged.

• Offer reminders to complete the training 

We can all be forgetful from time to time. Whether you’re a manager who needs to keep on top of your team’s training, or the staff members who’s training is overdue, when we’re busy on other things training can slip our minds.

Offering reminders that training is due or upcoming is a great way to allow employees to plan their time. With reminders, training doesn’t come as a last minute shock on a Friday afternoon when employees really can’t be bothered.

 A solid LMS makes this reminder process super easy by harvesting data and keeping track of where employees are up to with their learning. With this data, they are able to remind managers and the individual team members when something is overdue. This not only helps your business remain compliant, but it also allows your employees to stay engaged with their training.

• Use a mobile-friendly system

Nowadays, it is essential that remote learning comes packaged in an easy-to-use mobile system.

Why? Because if you’re an employee on the go, the last thing you need is to have to sit at a desktop on site and complete training. Not only is this often a waste of valuable employee time on site, but it also means that your team members might have to complete training at a time that doesn’t suit them.

Everyone learns differently, and while one employee’s peak learning time might be 3pm on a weekday, others would prefer to complete training at home. With remote learning that is mobile compatible, the choice is placed into the employees hands. By empowering them in this way, you can ensure that they stay engaged and can learn in their own time.

• Encourage them with feedback

Online grading is one of the quickest and easiest ways to let employees or contractors know how they’re doing with their training. With quick and easily digestible quizzes, people don’t feel as though training is a mammoth task. It’s all about offering learning in bitesize chunks that make it more fun.

It’s not just about offering them feedback online though, with live customisable tracking a quality LMS will allow you to see how individuals are doing too. This makes it super easy for a manager to check in on their team and see who is doing well and who needs a helping hand. Once managers can see how people are doing, it is recommended to reach out to team members and offer feedback.

An LMS makes this such an easy task, but the power of feedback and encouragement should not be underestimated. Empower your people with positive feedback, and you’ll soon see training engagement rates soar.

• Make knowledge sharing easy

Not all knowledge on an LMS should come from packaged, external content. This can be helpful for some topics, however often site-specific or company-specific knowledge can only be shared from person to person. Therefore it is important that the content you’re sharing with your people isn’t generic, and sometimes comes from employees within the business.

If your content is boring and generic, your team will likely switch off as they’ve heard it a hundred times before. With a platform that enables knowledge sharing, your people will be much more engaged. When learning off of other people in the team, and handling documents that are actually used in real life, your people will feel more immersed in the learning process.

Do you need to do more to keep your employees engaged when they train remotely? Get in touch now to see how Beakon software can revamp your employees remote learning experience.