The remote workforce is growing day by day. The number of remote jobs increased 26 percent in 2014, with no signs of slowing down. Besides the ability to work from home, today’s technology allows employees to easily work from the field. This trend is enhancing companies’ bottom lines without sacrificing employee productivity.
However, a successful remote workforce isn’t as easy as giving employees tablets and hoping they adapt. The importance of training remote employees and their development cannot be underscored. Employees not only must learn to use the devices on which they will be remotely working, but also must be able to perform as much as 100 percent of the jobs via the technology. Here are some factors highlighting the importance of training and development of remote employees and their development for a remote workforce:
Communication Chaos
An advantage of a workplace in which everyone is in the office or store is that communication is much simpler and instant. Take employees out of a central location, and this effective communication can suffer. Therefore, a remote workforce must be able to interact, collaborate, share files, and so on, in order to overcome the lack of proximity that comes with telecommuting and fieldwork. Tablet-based training solutions offer features such as direct messaging and secure file sharing that bridge the communication gap and prevent the chaos some companies experience when their employees work outside the workplace.
Independent Learning
The importance of training and development is evident in how quickly employees can get up to speed with new and updated processes. But if those workers aren’t in the office, how are they going to learn the skills they need to become and remain productive? Most organizations won’t send training managers into the field or to employees’ homes to teach those skills, so employees are mostly on their own to learn. Innovative training solutions based on an iPad or Surface can help workers learn as effectively as if there was a live person showing them how to do something step by step. With remote workforce training, employees can view video training content on tablets and send questions along, if necessary, via the software.
Anytime Training
Often, the remote workforce isn’t on the same hours as the rest of the company. These employees may travel, may be working with clients for most of the day, or may be part-time. Flexibility is required so that training can occur when it is most convenient for them. Tablets offer this convenience. For example, workers with an hour to kill waiting for an airplane can turn on an iPad and train while they wait. Furthermore, managers can easily deliver training content to remote employees’ tablets without physically syncing device. Files are dropped into a folder, then are automatically uploaded onto the iPad or Surface, even if the tablets are asleep.
Field Experience
The importance of training and development doesn’t just include how the employee in the field learns. It also encompasses the value of what the employee is experiencing in the field. This important information can be relayed to other employees or back to corporate via the video capabilities of the tablets. Remote workers can easily take video with an iPad or Surface and share it. In this way, learning becomes a truly collaborative experience, with headquarters and the remote workforce both benefiting the training solution.
What factor do you think most emphasizes the importance of training and development?
