How To Choose The Best Training Management Software For Your Distributed Workforce
One challenge which a lot of companies can face is the fact that their workforce may be split across different offices, which may span different parts of the country or even separate countries altogether. Different ways of working, having to travel, and time zones are all issues which can affect a distributed workforce. As a business, you obviously want to make sure that your entire workforce can work together seamlessly, no matter their location, as this will ensure that your business will continue to run smoothly and be successful. A solution to the distributed workforce problem is training management software! Investing in good training management software can help your whole team work together seamlessly, no matter which office or location they are situated in. Let’s look at all the ways you can choose the best training management software for your distributed workforce.
1. Keep Everything In One Place
One huge problem which can occur if your staff work across a number of different offices is the issue of trying to keep things organised.
Different departments and different offices may have different ways of working, and when it comes to working across different locations this could cause a lot of confusion and you could end up wasting a lot of time.
Everyone working in different ways could also mean that there’s no standardised way to keep documents organised, which again can cause a whole load of problems. Staff can waste lots of time trying to search for the correct document, and waiting for other members of staff to actually get back to them and send them what they need.
Training management software can help you work around this by creating a centralised document storage system. This will enable staff from every office to upload all their documents to the system, and they can then be accessed by anyone else who has access to your training management software.
Not only does this mean you don’t have to waste lots of time looking for what you need, but you can also be assured that the document you are working from is the most up-to-date version there is, as documents can be updated in just a few clicks.
Having a document management system like this is a much better idea than working with files saved on individual computers or working from hard copies, as this makes things unnecessarily difficult for other staff members.
2. Don’t Worry About Time Zones
If you have offices which span different countries, you may not actually get to work directly with members of staff from that office due to time zone differences. They may just be coming into the office as you’re going home, so it can be hard to work collaboratively with these remote staff members.
Training management software can help you work around this. As mentioned above, it can create a centralised place where staff can work together, without having to rely on sending loads of emails or instant messages, where something important could easily get deleted or missed.
Here’s some ways training management software can help teams across different time zones work together:
- As mentioned above, work together on documents by uploading them to the document management system.
- Upload details of new contacts into the sales system. Other staff members can then easily access all this contact information if they need it.
- Track sales in the sales system so staff can easily see the progress of a deal. This stops staff contacting a lead which is already mid-deal with another member of staff.
- See all the events which are scheduled company-wide, not just within their office. This will give your whole workforce a good knowledge of all the training you offer as a business.
3. Keep Courses Organized
When you are scheduling training courses for your own office or location, chances are you are going to be aware which staff are able to teach what classes, as well as which resources and classrooms you have available to you.
However, if you had to schedule some courses for another office, how are you supposed to know all this information?
Training management software can make course scheduling a breeze, even if you are doing it for another office in another country.
Within the course management aspect of your software you should be able to record the following things:
- Teaching staff.
Who the staff are, what courses they can teach, which qualifications they have, any holidays which they have booked in. - Classrooms.
The location of the classrooms, the capacity of the rooms. - Resources.
The location of the resources, the status of the resources (whether it is currently working or not), how many of that resource you actually have, the exact specifications of the resource (whether the laptop a Mac or a PC etc.).
All this key information means anyone within your business will be able to schedule courses effectively, even if the course is running in a different location to them.
Having classrooms, teachers and resources labelled by location also means that people won’t try to book a teacher on to a course in a different office, or assign a projector to an office in a different country, because the training management software will make it really clear where everything is located.
Using training management software to allocate resources to courses will also prevent you from double booking anything, as your training management system will give you a warning or not even give you the option the select things which are already assigned to another course.
4. Provide Internal eLearning
If you get training management software which has an in-built Learning Management System (LMS) this can be a great tool for you to provide internal eLearning to your staff. Obviously you can also use the LMS to provide commercial eLearning, but having the ability to offer training to your staff is a great use of it as well.
This is especially true is your staff are based over several locations, as you can make sure that your entire team are receiving consistent training, and all the main points are being covered in your content.
You can create exactly the personalized content you want, and then upload it to your LMS for all your staff to access.
It also means when you need staff to complete a new piece of training, it’s really easy to upload it and have all your staff have access to it instantly, rather than spending lots of time trying to schedule lots of training sessions across different locations.
5. Make Staff Onboarding Really Easy
The final way training management software can aid your distributed workforce is by making staff on-boarding a really easy process.
First of all, look for a training management system which has good training itself. This may be in the form of eLearning, or an online resource such as a knowledge base, and will get new members of staff up-to-speed on how to use the software quickly and easily.
Having one system in place will be much easier to train staff on that multiple system as well, so swapping to training management software rather than having a separate sales system, CRM, reporting system, etc., will help ensure that your new staff get up-to-speed and using your software as quickly as possible.
Finally, as we mentioned above, you can then get new staff to work through all the company training you have created in your LMS. This means they are able to work through their training at their own pace, and refer back to it when they need a refresher, rather than spending a huge chunk of time in classroom training sessions when they first join the company.
Ready To Buy?
We hope that showing how training management software can help you work better with a distributed workforce has helped highlight all the things you need to look for when you go shopping for training management software for your business.
Make sure you pick the perfect software for your company, as there’s no point in making the move to a new system and it not solving any of your problems, or potentially making things worse!
