There’s one famous movie from the late 90s called Office Space, about a man who hates sitting at his desk every day at work. In the movie, he had no freedom to move around and work freely. Today, the protagonist must thrive. Ten years ago, the top complaints from a corporate space were about the stationary cubicle and the set schedule hours to be physically present in the office. But now, 92% of the businesses believe movement or being in the field is necessary for a company to grow. With multiple job options to choose from, times are definitely changing. Roles like on-field salesforce, counter salesforce, logistics, field researchers etc don’t require you to sit in one place to get the work done. But are Indian organizations ready to make this shift? Do they have a full-fledged plan to train employees who are always on the go? Let’s discuss!

What are some common challenges to train deskless employees?

Training employees who are not present in the office has its own set of challenges. Simply putting up an online meeting or PowerPoint is not a feasible solution. Let’s go through some of the common challenges faced by an organization while training employees working out of the office.

• Possibility of Irregular working hours: When an employee comes to a workplace, he/she has to follow scheduled working hours in the office. They generally have a fixed timeline for the day and it is quite easy to train them. On the other hand, employees working on the field may or may not be able to follow scheduled working hours. They work as per the requirements and emergency of the tasks.
• Always on the go: As mentioned above, most employees with on-field jobs do not have fixed working hours. Their timings are generally based on the clients’ or customers' schedule. Moreover, they are always on their toes to get the work done. Excessive traveling and no stable workplace makes it difficult to train them.
• Lack of face-to-face interaction: Employees working outside of office like field sales people, logistics people, delivery people face the issue of less face-to-face interaction with the seniors. Even if an organization provides remote training to them, there is no 100% guarantee of attention from the other end. Trainers may worry that learners will not study as hard without in-person assistance. Many trainees, on the other hand, also struggle with a lack of over-the-shoulder communication with the instructors.
• Lack of communication: There’s no denying the fact that working on the field requires extra time and effort to locate information from coworkers. Even getting a simple revert for a question seems like a big obstacle to a worker based on the field. Lack of communication can fail the training module.
• Technical challenges: There’s no save from technical errors even in well-designed classrooms with organizational infrastructure, so imagine how much more likely this is to happen while coordinating it with someone who isn’t present in the office premises. Multiple things can go to the wrong end – network issues, unstable internet connection and VPN connections.

Training employees who are not present in the office has its own set of challenges. Simply putting up an online meeting or PowerPoint is not a feasible solution. Let’s go through some of the common challenges faced by an organization while training employees working out of the office.

Best practices to follow for training deskless employees:

Prepare a learning module:

When we hear the term training employees, the first thought that occurs in the mind is a remote meeting. But a learning module is much more than that. Breakdown the module into three different categories and follow them religiously:

Synchronous learning: This is a type of learning activity in which all the learners participate together. It can be conducted both online or offline; so it’s likely that the instructor-led classes that organizations conduct can fall into this learning category. This type of learning is generally time-dependent – a time slot is assigned to get the training. A trainer needs to carefully plan teaching sessions and make sure they are announced in advance to the employees. Moreover, at the same time, the learners have to book a time slot in the training schedule to attend the classes virtually.

Asynchronous learning: This model is a bit different than the previous one. Here learners access learning content, assessments, and communicate and participate in activities in their own time – or one can say ‘self-paced. Employees don’t require to be in the office or be online at the same time as the classes are being uploaded. Asynchronous learning can also be done without any instructor, as with most eLearning and video-based training, or the instructor can be involved to review assessments or as a contact resource to answer queries online. This model often demands the training results – like a course completion status, score, or assessment – are given before a certain deadline.

Blended learning: Blended learning is a mixed child of both the synchronous and asynchronous models and can be used to create a custom solution. This model is quite flexible with its approach, that’s why a blended solution may be the best way to conduct more complex training requirements. Let’s say, this type of learning model can fuse an eLearning module and a virtual classroom training session scheduled with the help of an LMS.

Get necessary tools for the training:

Good deskless training requires some investment tools to get the job done efficiently. The requirements are:

Webinar platforms There are two types of webinar platforms that can be used for online training of the employees outside offices. The first type is a conferencing/webinar platform. The second one is more like a dedicated virtual training platform with different features specifically customized to run training, like virtual assessments and breakout classrooms for projects and group discussions.

Some of the options worth having a look at are:
For webinar and conferencing purposes: Zoom, GoToMeeting, Zoho, Airmeet etc.,

Learning management systems (LMS) It is important to connect online with your on-field employees and manage, track and deploy the training assistance. This is where a learning management system is required. An LMS will help to take the tedious work of inviting trainees to online sessions, assigning learning assessments, and tracking results. You may want to explore Lurningo.

eLearning authoring tool Authoring tools are specifically designed for creating online courses. Companies should prefer authoring tools that are HTML5 based, as it allows them to create interactive content, are easy to use and support a variety of output formats. Also, opt for an authoring tool that packages remote eLearning classes and makes them ready to work on mobile devices, laptops, tablets, or any browser. Employees working outside of office can access those anytime, anywhere according to the availability of their time.

Prepare learning content:

This step in the process proceeds further on the choice of the organizations. If a company decides on a synchronous remote experience, they will need to prepare or create some presentations for web-based classes and create some reference materials to embed with the online training material.
In case an asynchronous approach is being opted, chances are high that eLearning courses and videos will be the highlighted content that needs preparation. And if the blended approach is selected, then, of course, a lot more of those types of materials and options to prepare.

Deliver training Now it’s time to put the plan into action and the setup would be an easy process if working on an LMS. All can be done merely by uploading the eLearning courses, setting deadlines, and inviting employees. Make sure to give adequate information to the employees regarding the model to avoid confusion as much as possible. A constant communication between the organization and the employees has to be there. Employees who are working outside the office premises should feel comfortable and valued as a part of the organization.

Step 5. Track learning results The last and final practice is to track the results of your training for deskless employees. Tracking is done according to the needs of the organizations – it may be only course completions, or want to understand other metrics such as how long learners took to complete an eLearning course or their scores in a particular test.

One can have a look at virtual classroom metrics such as engagement rate to see if trainees are actively paying attention in the virtual session or if they are busy with other windows or applications that they have open.

Conclusions That wraps up the detailed analysis on the training of deskless employees. In this article, we tried to cover a lot of material on this very current topic and we hope you found some useful information that will help organizations to train their on field employees better.

Do write to us if you have any tips to offer that we might have missed in this article. Looking forward to hearing your opinion.