5 Methods to Make Your Corporate Online Training Sessions More Efficient

For more and more companies today, online interactions and training are both playing an increasingly pivotal role. Furthermore, industries are facing an unprecedented skill shortage, and therefore, optimizing their corporate training online has become synonymous with better employee retention, and successful strategic organizational development in the long term. 

To evolve in this ever-changing landscape, ensuring that your online training sessions are not only well-designed but also streamlined for maximum efficiency is crucial.

Let’s see how to achieve this through this article, where we introduce 5 proven methods that can help you efficiently shape your corporate online training. Whether designed for the whole path of the training or some specific key moments, they can all be customized for your own needs and context to deliver the highest ROI in your training.

The current paradigm shift towards virtual environments necessitates a nuanced understanding of how online working methods can be adapted to your training modules. We will delve into the intricacies of each method, analyzing their nuances and highlighting their transformative potential. From the systematic use of attendance sheets to track and enhance participation to the strategic design of onboarding paths for seamless integration, these methods can all be deployed in Klaxoon’s collaborative work environment.

1. Attendance Sheet: quickly assess your online training audience

When conducting an online training session, the first thing to do is to make sure that your expected audience is connected and ready to start. This allows you to spare more energy for the session itself, rather than interrupting every time a new person comes in. Moreover, as you see people signing in progressively, you can efficiently assess your audience at this session, and adapt your training content consequently.

For this purpose, the Attendance Sheet is a powerful tool designed to enhance both the efficiency and legality of your online training sessions.

In many countries, an attendance sheet serves as proof of attendance during on-site training courses, capturing essential details like the date, course title, training organization, tutor's name, and participants' signatures. If your training license requires proceeding to an attendance check, even remotely, this method helps you quickly adapt to an online context.

Beyond fulfilling legal requirements, the attendance sheet also serves as a valuable tool for tracking attendance, diligence, and punctuality. It provides a comprehensive overview of trainee performance, aiding in explaining results and satisfaction levels based on attendance records. Its electronic format ensures data integrity, eliminating the risk of losing physical documents.

Furthermore, a ready-to-use Attendance Sheet template in a collaborative workspace facilitates a seamless and visual signing process through intuitive drawing tools, allowing attendees to sign easily and electronically, using a single login system. 

Finally, in some collaborative platforms like Klaxoon, this visual model can also be easily exported into a PDF format and saved locally or sent via email.

As organizations embrace the digital shift in training methodologies, the formerly physical attendance sheet now needs to fit the new online requirements. When used with the right collaborative tools, it offers a user-friendly and legally compliant solution for both traditional and virtual training environments.

2. Onboarding Path: efficiently manage a new hire’s arrival, even remotely

Today more than ever in business, a successful onboarding of new hires is paramount for fostering a cohesive and efficient team. This section unveils the transformative benefits of the Onboarding Path method, a complete and structured pathway designed to streamline the arrival of new team members remotely. In addition to its key features for management, this method also adds a layer of interactivity, making the onboarding process both engaging and effective.

Tailored for teams across various industries, the method provides a detailed dashboard for integrating new hires into the team. Regardless of the team's domain, it centralizes information, facilitates feedback, and encourages interaction with different contacts. All necessary resources and information for hassle-free integration are consolidated on a shared visual workspace, creating an engaging and interactive pathway.

Moreover, the Onboarding Path method offers flexibility for customization, allowing teams to either use the suggested pathway or design their own. Drawing a customized pathway is as simple as taking a picture, inserting it in the virtual workspace, and working on it with the various available tools. The teams can also create activities, challenges, quizzes, or surveys along the pathway, incorporating images, videos, and links to enhance the onboarding experience.

In Klaxoon’s Onboarding Path template, teams can invite new hires and their colleagues to join the visual workspace, fostering a collaborative environment. Participants can post photos, share names, and job roles, and include contact details for easy communication. The template facilitates ongoing engagement as new hires move their photo along the pathway, signaling progress with color-coded markers.

Through this ready-to-use method, the onboarding process is transformed into an interactive journey that you can design exactly in the way you want (an epic quest, a hiking trail, etc.). This format ensures that new hires can progress efficiently, and get familiarized with their new missions and processes at their own pace. Regular feedback zones enable newcomers to express their thoughts, ask questions, and efficiently engage with the team, even when working remotely.

3. Co-Development: improve remote team communication through collective intelligence

Co-development, a training method originating in Quebec, Canada, stands out for its emphasis on experience-sharing and peer communication. Developed by management specialists, this approach diverges from traditional training by empowering groups to find solutions through collective intelligence.

In a co-development online training, involving 6 to 10 participants, each session spans about 2 hours. A participant, acting as the "client," presents a problem or project, sparking a collective effort to identify solutions. A co-development coach may guide without influencing discussions. The session unfolds through six stages, from topic presentation to final assessment.

The co-development method offers diverse benefits, such as reciprocal trainer-trainee dynamics, enhanced communication in small groups, and a process promoting thought development. Leveraging personal and collective experiences, co-development becomes a powerful tool for enhancing emotional and collective intelligence.

Klaxoon’s Co-Development template provides a customizable workspace for reporting and sharing within the team. It accommodates various roles, allowing participants to contribute ideas, drawings, and documents, enriching the collaborative experience. The template's adaptability ensures a comprehensive and streamlined co-development process.

Furthermore, this method facilitates efficient reporting and exchange sharing within the team. Whether in the role of a coach, client, or consultant, participants contribute with ideas and enrich the collaborative experience. Their workspace can be customized to suit individual and group needs, encompassing each stage of the co-development process.

In a remote context, it can also be interesting to work on a collaborative platform that allows built-in videoconferencing. This way, your co-development training sessions benefit from seamless communication at a distance. Post-session, asynchronous access can even allow participants to revisit exchanges and ideas for future reference.

Overall, the Co-Development method serves as a versatile and dynamic tool, fostering collaborative problem-solving, improving team efficiency, and providing a unique professional development experience.

4. “Code 408” Refresher: get back to the online training efficiently after a break

Now, let’s focus on a very specific moment that may occur in your corporate online training. You know how maintaining trainees' focus amid a session, particularly after a lunch break, can be challenging. To help you bring back collective engagement and efficiency, the "Code 408" refresher method, designed to last about 20 minutes, aims to invigorate the group and ensure knowledge retention in the training process.

Typically employed between training modules, refreshers serve as brief, lively activities to re-engage participants and assess their understanding of previously covered content. "Code 408" offers a unique twist, introducing an intriguing challenge that captivates participants' curiosity and encourages active participation.

Named after the IT HTTP communication protocol's "408 Request Timeout" error, this refresher presents teams with a mission: to list as many previously covered course items as possible within a tight timeframe - 4 minutes and 8 seconds. The challenge not only serves as a recap but also gauges knowledge retention.

Even better used in a collaborative workspace, this is all about refreshing the participants’ memories while appealing to the group's competitive spirit. The time factor easily motivates team members, even remotely, to recall learned information swiftly for a shared victory.

In your virtual environment, gather the participants and split them into four teams with distinct colors, then each team has to post ideas related to previously covered concepts during the allocated time. Once the time is out, group all the ideas by topic and comment on them, and then establish a ranking of the most efficient team.

To determine the final winner of the exercise, launch a quick challenge in a live form, or with the Question tool if you are using Klaxoon. The first correct answer wins the round for the team. 

Throughout your online training sessions, the “Code 408” refresher can be adapted and reused as needed, offering an efficient and engaging tool for knowledge reinforcement between sessions.

5. The Match: warm up the team to maintain focus

For this last method, let’s keep the refresher spirit, and go through “The Match'' warm-up. Like the “Code 408”, this dynamic and interactive activity is designed to stimulate participants' attention and boost engagement in only a few minutes. 

The specificity of The Match lies in that it incorporates a quiz format, encouraging learners to participate and reinforce their understanding of course content actively. During the exercise, the winner of each round crafts the next challenge question for the group. The warm-up concludes when all prior topics have been revisited. Questions can evolve from theoretical to specific, encouraging deeper thinking and active engagement.

This way, The Match method helps stimulate learning creatively during your online training sessions. It provides an active learning solution, fostering post-training knowledge application. Moreover, it also promotes a collective and informal atmosphere for utilizing learned concepts effectively.

Moreover, it unlocks sustained learning focus for participants. As it engages participants in two phases - finding answers and formulating questions - it reinforces short-term memory and solidifies recently acquired knowledge. Plus, this refresher efficiently balances participants' questions and detailed answers, ensuring active involvement and efficient conceptualization of the course.

The Match also fits well with a remote context, through an online collaborative workspace. Participants join the workspace or the whiteboard and upload their photos and names in colored ideas. The game master (coach) decides the order, times the activity and manages rounds. After that, one by one participants challenge the rest of the team to answer timed questions about what has been learned in previous training. 

As the game progresses, the coach can also quickly adjust the number of rounds to vary in difficulty, depending on the time left.

This is how "The Match" refresher becomes a valuable tool for trainers seeking to invigorate their training approach. Very efficient in a remote environment, this method ensures learners actively participate and review key concepts, contributing to a more dynamic and efficient corporate online training experience.