With employees wearing more hats than ever in the workplace today, it’s imperative that proper training sessions be implemented.
Workers in the 21st century are expected to show bigger results with fewer resources, know more with less educational opportunities and work faster with less time.
Basically, the more skills you can provide your employees with, the more effective they’ll be at tackling these substantial challenges.
This is the reality of the workforce after the recession, but there’s no reason that you can’t utilize the latest technology in business communication to make sure that all of your employees are highly trained and skilled in a cost effective manner.
This is where live streaming comes in, which allows employers to broadcast training to hundreds, if not thousands, of teams all around the globe. Whether your staff is international or interstate, live streaming technology is one of the most revolutionary innovations to hit the video conferencing industry in recent memory.
Here are four tips on how to maximize its effectiveness for your business.
1. Finding the Right Space
As you develop an employee training program, All Business highlights the importance of finding the right space, such as allowing participants to spread out materials and ensuring a room is equipped with the proper technology for the materials that you’re presenting.
However, when it comes to using video conferencing, you can follow this advice while taking it up a notch into the virtual space.
While there are many free live streaming services, if you’re really serious, you need a professional like BlueJeans. BlueJeans primetime was announced last year as one of the newest services from the well-known video conferencing company, and it delivers.
This is the type of virtual space that you’ll need to give the most effective training, which ensures that information won’t be lost over a faulty connection or due to poor resolution. Using a professional video conferencing provider with extra features for presentations arms you with all the tools necessary to ensure that your training sessions will have maximum impact.
2. Know Who You’re Training
While many businesses currently go after the much sought after talents of Millennials, you can’t forget about your loyal mainstays. Business News Daily advises that you need to be aware of generational differences in your staff.
This is a great way to not only take some time to understand the dynamics of your team, especially for employees who are spread out over wide distances, but also encourage them to assist each other. There’s no better way to encourage team building than to have your employees help one another and overlap different skill sets.
The older generation has a wealth of knowledge based on irreplaceable real-life experience, whereas the younger, entry-level part of your staff may have a superior grasp on technology. This is the perfect opportunity to have a meaningful exchange of information that will benefit your workplace in the long run and strengthen coworker bonds.
3. Bring In Guest Speakers and Experts
Training Mag recommends that in addition to standard employee training, video conferencing in particular can also be used to deliver presentations by guest speakers and experts that can be broadcast across a wide channel to your staff.
While at one time bringing in experts to provide training sessions may have been cost prohibitive due to expenses such as accommodation and airfare in addition to any speaker fees, using live streaming makes it possible to amplify an expert’s presentation across multiple channels.
This is a chance to provide your staff with the rare opportunity to take advantage of the knowledge of a leader in your industry, which may otherwise have been inaccessible. Knowledge is very valuable, and using this type of technology also makes it affordable.
Make sure you also encourage your staff to ask questions. Part of the revolutionary part of live streaming technology is its participatory nature.
Whereas it was once impossible to try to interact with a large group of people via a presentation on camera being delivered to a huge group, you can now use the more dynamic platforms that exist to address questions from participants.
Live streaming technology basically not only helps you to amplify information across a distances, but also makes it a more meaningful experience by encouraging employees to actively engage with the training itself.
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Once you have live streaming technology at your fingertips, the key to using it effectively is mastering the different options and features offered. While broadcasting a training session to hundreds of people may sound impressive to begin with, you need to go above and beyond.
Just as you would with a traditional training session, make sure that your presentation materials are engaging. Use visuals and voice, and invite participation at appropriate junctures. The bottom line of effective employee training, with or without live streaming, is engagement.
However, with the combination of live streaming technology and exciting training material, you’ll be able to give your staff the ultimate edge.
(Photo by Susana Zamora / CC BY)
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