Virtual training

we caUGhT up with Paul Fahy, Commercial Capability Specialist, to LEARN how he and his team have had to adapt and embrace virtual training THIS YEAR.

Have I booked a meeting room? Have I told the canteen how many extra people will be on site? Have I ordered scones? Have I told my wife I have to leave at 05:30am to be in Cork for 8am to set up? What time will I be home at? Will the projector work when I get there? Will everyone be on time? Are the group exercises engaging enough? Have I remembered to print out all the hand-outs?

These are some of the many thoughts entering my mind when I prepare for a face-to-face training session; the way we did things in the pre-Covid world.

Then the pandemic hit, and all office-based staff were instructed to work from home. We had to accept that there would be no in-person trainings for the foreseeable future and we need to adapt to a virtual world.

My usual questions were replaced with a whole new set of concerns….

What if my laptop crashes? Is my wifi strong enough? Will videos play? What if my PowerPoint gets stuck? How will I know if people are listening to me? How can I engage people virtually? Is it ok if I show-up in my casual clothes?! 

As a commercial capability team we knew this was the time to show our agility and evolve as a team. Instead of a challenge, we saw an opportunity. By delivering training in a virtual manner, we achieved two very important things:

1. We increased customer facing time for our sales team as they no longer had to spend time driving to our head office or regional depots for training.
2. We realised that we could  up skill our people more rapidly, and support them to deal with the changing sales environment.

And we picked up some simple tricks along the way… 

Here are my top tips for Virtual Training: 

1. Ask people to turn on cameras during sessions.

2. Always convert your PowerPoint presentation into a PDF so it runs smoother across Microsoft teams.

3. Ensure people have ample breaks to allow time away from screens.

4. Maintain engagement with  direct questions to specific individuals or break into smaller groups. 

5. Avoid noise disruption!

The biggest technical challenge I often face is making sure people keep their lines muted when someone else is talking. As a team, wesupport each other by joining each other’s training sessions wherever possible to monitor the chat boxes and keep people muted when neccessary. All these little things can have a significant impact on the overall training experience.

And last, but by no means least...

6. Upskill yourself to leverage the latest technology

Another great step into virtual training for me has been the involvement in a group wide project to create e-learning modules on a software program called Articulate. Articulate looks a bit like PowerPoint but it is so detailed. You can create interactive training modules where slides interact with the user in a way that makes learning fun and engaging. It can take a couple of hours to design a slide that the end user might complete in 1 minute so people may never understand the effort and detail we have put in to bring this project to life but it’s so gratifying to now see it rolled out across our 28-market Group. I’m proud to say that a training module I have helped to design will now be used by our sales teams from Lagos to Belgrade, Kerry to Zurich. This project has truly been the most challenging and rewarding one of   my 13 years in Coca-Cola HBC. 

While we have evolved and adapted very well to delivering virtual training this year, I know we want to get better and better at it. As a team we are on a mission to enhance the learning experience for our people even more in 2021.

Stayed tuned...