With technology and business processes continuously evolving, it’s important for workers to keep up with these changes. One of the best ways for enhancing skills and knowledge is through training. By providing your workers with learning opportunities, their efficiency and performance get a major boost.

Other benefits from initiating training programs include:

• Preparing workers for greater responsibilities, such as becoming a leader or using a specific tool
• Improving the skills and/or subjects that were recommended in regular performance evaluations
• Showing employees that the organisation values them and their contributions to meeting objectives
• Learning about particular topics and skills related to information technology to stay competitive
• Testing the efficacy of a new system that you are setting up within the team or the business overall

When your workers are remote

The Future Workforce Report by Upwork reveals that the number of virtual professionals in the next five years is going to be nearly double what is was before the global pandemic. To be precise, over 36 million Americans are expected to go remote by 2025.

While some companies are transitioning to hybrid setups, others are going fully remote. This requires business to adapt to these arrangements. Have you ever thought about how you’re going to train your new hire VA in the Philippines, for instance?

What makes remote training difficult

The same principles apply whether you’re training an onsite worker or a remote one. The difference lies on the approach as you need to be more methodical with virtual employees. Let us walk you through the typical obstacles of remote training below.

Limited access to information

While remote work has been around for a while now, it is new territory for many organisations. Newbies are unsure how to contact their superiors while managers neglect to provide their team with instructions. Not having a fixed system means much time is consumed searching for files and documents too.

Lack of in-person supervision

Since you decided to hire remote staff in the Philippines, it’s a given that you’ll be training them remotely too. It’s hard to maintain their attention because the conversation is done online though. Many individuals learn better when they have a supervisor watching over their shoulder.

Feeling of social isolation

Though there are some people who prefer to stay at home all week, most miss the connections, interactions, and banter that come with working onsite. Spending hours upon hours staring at a screen makes individuals feel like they don’t belong in the team or company.

Potential for technical challenges

Training sessions may be interrupted by technical concerns such as choppy internet connections and problematic computer equipment. When a person is unfamiliar with a communication tool, they take more time and resources to join meetings or navigate around the software.

Abundance of distractions

Unless they’ve locked themselves away in a quiet room, your employees are bound to face a plethora of distractions throughout their workday. It might be that they have children to feed, pets to bathe, clothes to wash, or even video games to play. Distractions are a given when you decide to hire a Filipino freelancer.

How to train remote workers effectively

Although there is a myriad of obstacles that come with remote training, it’s worth doing for your virtual employees. Here are some workarounds to ensure that your staff learn despite the challenges:

1. Choose your training model

You are not limited to holding online meetings when training your new hire Filipino virtual assistant. While synchronous learning is the most popular model, you may also hold asynchronous learning where your workers access materials and participate in activities at their own pace.

2. Set up a mentor system

Most of our learning comes from collaborating with or being mentored by someone. When a newbie is paired with a high-performing worker, they get to learn through their coach’s experiences without directly going through them. It’s even better if they’re taught by someone who was in the same role before being promoted.

3. Keep resources in one place

Whether it’s a slideshow presentation, video, or PDF, you must ensure that they are accessible to all of your employees. There’s no point to hiring Filipino remote workers when they’re going to spend most of their time just searching for training resources so they know more about the job.

4. Invest in the right tools

While Skype works fine for communications, it’s wise to switch to Zoom when you want to hold virtual training sessions. The latter has a limit to the number of hours per video conference though, so consider paying for a subscription. Zoho is highly recommended for tracking attendance and exchanging files as well.

5. Have training at convenient times

If you’ve decided to hire a Filipino VA and your company is based in the west, it’s a given that your waking hours are evening for them. You mustn’t simply think about your own convenience or schedule when arranging sessions. Look for a midpoint where you may all meet virtually without sacrificing personal time.

6. Provide microlearning opportunities

Try to divide the information so the learners don’t feel overwhelmed. Start with the basics within a 1-hour session followed by a short break where they may practice what they’ve learned. Increase or reduce the amount of time as you see fit as some industries are more technical than others.

7. Keep your learners engaged

To prevent your new hire VA in the Philippines from getting bored, strive to make your sessions interactive and interesting. Maybe reward their efforts with a certificate at the end of every session. Combine different formats such as videos with presentations then audio.

8. Maintain a record of each session

When you hire remote staff in the Philippines by group, it’s hard to track who has accomplished what training and when. Recording your video conferences through platform features is a wise idea along with tracking the attendance. This streamlines your training processes and makes them more consistent for future hires.

9. Monitor the performance results

You want to be sure that your new hire virtual assistant in the Philippines is delivering results after being trained. Give them space to make mistakes and provide constructive feedback along each step. Keep a close eye on their performance for the next month or so and slowly let them do their thing.

Need help with training new remote workers?

As we’ve discussed above, there are a number of steps involved to ensure successful remote training. When you lack the manpower or resources for them, get help from an offshore staffing agency for recruitment to training. We at Remote Workmate train our pool of candidates before endorsement.

Ready to hire a freelancer in the Philippines or any other remote worker? Click the button here.