If there is anything this pandemic has taught us this past year (besides how to properly wash our hands!) it’s that virtual learning will likely be becoming the norm in organizations. Now, you may have mixed feelings about it, because it’s notoriously difficult to keep the learners focused for longer periods of time, especially when they’re sitting in front of a monitor! But challenging as it may be, virtual learning definitely has its benefits, and with the handful of tips we’ve gathered in this article, it will hopefully become second nature to you. Tip # 1. Design with the learner in mind When you first start working on designing a training session, it’s tempting to just open a blank PowerPoint presentation and start typing. To make training really impactful (be it virtual or classroom), you need to take a step back and first build its foundations. Much like building a house, you don’t start with the windows; you don’t even start with the walls! - you start with a blueprint for how the whole thing should look in the end. Some questions to help you outline your training objectives and training outcomes: Who are you designing for? (New joiners, managers, a specific department, learners with special needs, etc.) What is the overarching goal for the session? What are you trying to accomplish? What should the learners know/be able to do by the end of this session? How will you know the training has accomplished the set goal? Tip # 2. Set the stage Once you know what the goals and learning objectives are, you can start thinking about how the whole session would play out. Will it be a 1-hour or 4-hour session? Will it take place over a period of a few days or will it be completed in one sitting? Will it be purely virtual, or are you including other elements like pre-session reading, quizzes, eLearning, etc. Clarify what the learners can expect from the session and make sure you spend a few minutes at the beginning of it to explain the whole journey, as well as lay out some ground rules. Some things to make sure you clarify from the start: Will participant cameras be on or off? Will the chat be enabled? Will participants be muted? Will you host any break-out rooms for working in pairs/groups? Tip # 3. Keep tools simple, but engaging To be quite frank, we haven’t really found the Holy Graal of virtual training (but if you have, you should definitely let us know in the comments!) We tend to use Zoom and Teams, in addition to tools and apps like Miro (for live whiteboarding exercises) and Kahoot! (For real-time quizzes and leaderboards). Whatever your software of choice, make sure you don’t overwhelm your learners. Switching between apps can become tedious and there’s the risk of running into more tech issues than if you just stick to one or two tried-and-tested ones. Tip # 4. Engage learners pre-session Blended learning is a fantastic approach to help knowledge really stick. It will also have learners curious and excited for the actual session. Think of ways to blend different learning methods and create opportunities for the participants to learn on their own. You can design a piece of pre-learning to prime the learners for the session. What that would look like all depends on what you want to achieve: if testing their existing knowledge is the goal - then giving them a quiz or exercise sheet is the way to go; if instead, you’d like them to learn something in advance - then a short eLearning course or mini eBook would do the job. Tip # 5. Invest in good audio In a virtual training session, having crystal-clear audio is simply essential. It’s difficult as it is for learners to stay focused for a longer period of time; when you add to that poor audio, where they have to strain to hear you, you will most likely lose them within the first 5 minutes. You don’t need to invest in super high-tech equipment (unless your side gig is podcasting!) but having a decent microphone and sitting in a quiet, non-echoey room will ensure your voice will be heard loud and clear. Tip # 6. Use a backdrop Spare yourself the embarrassment of a family member randomly appearing in the background or a forgotten pile of laundry making a cameo from behind. Apps like Zoom and Teams offer the option of blurring your background or even adding a backdrop. Alternatively, move your camera to face the wall, so that you can avoid any mishaps. Tip # 7. Do a dry-run before the actual session Having a practice run will help relieve some of the tension you might be experiencing. Plus, you’ll get a chance to practice how the activities would go. You’ll also be able to test out all pieces of technical equipment (camera, microphone, earphones) and all apps you’re going to be using. Tip # 8. Go live 15 min before In the same way, you would be in the live classroom well before the learners, make sure you log in to the virtual classroom at least 15 minutes before. You can put up a nice visual or share the cover slide of the presentation deck if you’re using one. Maybe even play some casual background music.

Recently someone commented on one of my videos on YouTube how L&D is a profession that can and will be replaced by AI. This isn’t the first time someone has brough up the question. So I thought I’d spend some time explaining why this is both true and false. AI can make parts of our work quicker. That’s true. But deciding what people need to learn, whether the material is useful, and how they'll apply it still requires a human touch. Let's look at both sides of this coin. AI is a tool with a job to do Let’s get one thing straight – AI is a tool not the job itself. Here’s what I mean – generative AI is software that produces content, such as text or images, in response to instructions or prompts. Think of it as a very fast drafting assistant: useful, enthusiastic, but occasionally also far too confident about things it hasn't checked. Speed is valuable when you already know what you're trying to achieve. And this last part is key! If your goal is vague, AI can help you produce the wrong thing at an impressive speed. Before opening the tool, finish this sentence: “I need help with ___ so that ___.” For example: “I need three practice scenarios so new supervisors can rehearse asking clarifying questions during shift handovers.” If you can’t, go back to the L&D basics before being able to give this tool a task and make yourself a standard for judging the result. Five places to put AI to work First, prepare for a learning needs analysis conversation. Learning needs analysis means finding out what people need to learn to do their work well. And the single most important thing you need are the right questions. Imagine you're meeting the warehouse manager about finding errors. Type into your Gen-AI tool of choice “Draft six open questions about picking errors within this context [describe the business context here]. Ask about expected performance, current errors, tools, and working conditions. Do not assume training is the solution.” Now you have some questions to review before the meeting, and you are more prepared to go with the flow and be present during the actual conversation. Second, organise feedback. If you have comments you're authorized to use, AI can suggest themes. You can start with: “Group these comments by recurring issue. Include a supporting comment for each theme and keep conflicting views visible.” Check the original comments yourself. A tidy summary can quietly hide the one person who spotted the real problem. There, you’ve saved a considerable amount of time and you have more user0friendly data to work with. Third, brainstorm activities. You can’t be an expert in every single field of the business. This is where AI can come in handy. For example, for supervisors practicing delegation, ask: “Suggest three short exercises where a supervisor must explain a task, agree a deadline, and check understanding. Use everyday retail situations.” AI can spit up several ideas for you to choose from that would fit the audience and available time, then write the details. But again, I want to make this as clear as possible – unless you know what you’re doing, even the best list of activities won’t produce the right results. Fourth, create a first draft. Let’s say you need a job aid (a short resource people consult while doing a task). Try: “Draft a one-page checklist for handling a returned item using only the approved process below. Flag missing information instead of inventing steps.” The process owner must check it before anyone uses it. Simple, easy and, mostly importantly, quick so you can get something out to your stakeholders for review as fast as possible without waiting for the perfect version, only to be disassembled at first glance. Fifth, adapt existing material. For example, you can ask: “Rewrite this approved explanation for employees who are new to stock control. Define technical terms, keep every procedural requirement, and list changes separately.” This will quickly allow you to compare both versions and choose the one that would fit best. Simpler language is helpful; accidentally simplifying away an essential condition is less helpful. AI is superb at this types of tasks. Where things get slippery AI doesn't see the workplace unless you provide information about it. It may suggest communication training when the actual problem is that two shifts never overlap. It may recommend a role-play without knowing that participants need language support or that the example doesn't fit their work. It can also produce plausible inaccuracies. NIST's generative AI risk guidance discusses this problem, sometimes called confabulation (aka “hallucinations” or “fabrications”). Check factual claims against approved policies, reliable sources, or the relevant expert. Asking the same tool “Are you sure?” isn't an independent check. Treat employee information carefully. Use your organization's approved tools and rules. Removing names doesn't necessarily make comments anonymous: a job title, location, and unusual incident may identify someone perfectly well. You also need to understand the people you're designing for: how adults learn, what motivates them, and how they're likely to respond to different activities. A role-play might look brilliant on paper, but will this group feel comfortable giving it a go? Is there space to move around, or will everyone be wedged between tables like passengers on a budget airline? How does the session connect to what they've already learned and what they'll do next? AI can help you explore options, but you're the one who has to connect those details and judge what will work with these people, in this room, on this particular day. A review process you can actually use Follow this sequence: Give context Generate a draft Review it Improve it Validate it Suppose AI suggests “Discuss good feedback in groups.” You review it against the goal and realize nobody actually practices giving feedback. Replace it with a fictional handover problem. Ask participants to explain the missed information, describe its effect, and agree a next step. Give observers a short checklist. Then ask an experienced supervisor to check whether the situation sounds realistic and pilot it with two people. Our L&D Fundamentals course helps you build the learning design knowledge needed to make those decisions. The downloadable resources in The Ultimate L&D Toolkit can also give your planning a useful starting structure. Try three small experiments this week Prepare questions for one meeting. Improve one draft activity. Simplify one approved paragraph. Use fictional content where appropriate, and keep your original version for comparison. For each experiment, record the drafting time, the checking time, and what needed correcting. Ask whether the final result is clearer and more useful. If checking takes longer than writing it yourself, you've learned something worth knowing. If you're unsure where AI fits into your own L&D work, bring one workflow to a 1:1 L&D consultation. Start with a real task and a clear purpose. The shiny presentation can wait.

I won’t start this post with how important doing a learning needs analysis is. If you’re here, you already know that. But what you might not know is what to actually do once you walk into the room with a stakeholder. This is what we’ll cover here. Greeting It might seem weird me telling you how important greetings are. But there is a reason I’m adding it here. The Greeting stage is where you agree on the agenda and, most importantly, explain the purpose of the meeting. Imagine yourself in the shoes of a stakeholder – you walk into a room, and someone suddenly asks you “what doesn’t work in your team?”. I don’t know about you, but I’d probably get quite defensive. However, if I have been told in advance that some of these questions might be uncomfortable and the only reason for asking them is so that the person in front of me can help me become a better (insert any noun here – leader, employees, person…), I’d be more willing to be open and honest. Another important thing to remember – taking notes. We’re all used to people taking written or typed notes, that shouldn’t be an issue. But you can do that with the assistance of AI or a wearable. It is important to inform the other participants that you will be recording in some shape or form. Voice recordings may be something people don’t feel comfortable with. You need to put their minds at ease – if you insist on recording, explain where the recording will be stored, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. If someone is still uncomfortable, offer written notes as an alternative. Structure Knowing what the structure of such meetings are is important to both parties – L&D and the stakeholder(s). Typically, you want to start from the more general to the more specific. In practice, this means asking first about how the team is doing and then drilling down into the specific issues and their root causes. Once you have discussed all possible performance issues, it’s important that you summarize what you’ve learned and agree on the next steps. We’ll return to this in the closing section. Questions to ask This is a big one. And the reality is that there isn’t really a single most important question you need to ask. The types of questions will largely depend on: · Who you are talking to · What has prompted the meeting · What do the stakeholders hope to achieve A few questions I come back to in most LNA conversations are: What prompted this conversation now? What are you hoping will change? Can you walk me through a recent example of the issue? What did the person do, and what would you have expected them to do instead? What might be getting in the way of doing that? What have you already tried, and what happened? How would you know things had improved? You don’t need to ask them in this exact order or use them as a script. They’re starting points for understanding the problem before deciding what support might help. We actually have a nifty little LNA Question Bank that lists specific questions you can ask for all of these different situations. You can download it here. What to look out for There are several things you need to look out for during an LNA. The list below is not extensive: Issue How to address it The request is too broad (“Our employees need better communication skills”) Ask, “In which situations are employees struggling, and what would you like them to do differently?” The manager cannot give specific examples of problem behaviours Ask them to describe a recent situation where the problem showed up, including what the employee did or said, and what the outcome was. Then ask them to explain how they would have liked for the situation to have been resolved. The issue isn’t something that can be addressed with training or another L&D intervention Explain what you’ve identified as the barrier and discuss who is best placed to address it. A useful tool to identify what/who else might be able to help is the Performance Analysis Quadrant. The stakeholder has already decided that training is the solution Ask what they need people to do differently, then explore what currently prevents them from doing it. Ask follow-up questions about what prevents people from doing the work as expected. Take time to explain why training may not be appropriate in this case. Success is described only as attendance or course completion Ask what change they hope to see at work and how they would recognize it after the intervention. Be specific with the behaviours and/or outcomes, make them measurable. Verify This isn’t strictly something you’d do during the actual meeting (although it absolutely can). But you need to make sure that the information you’re getting isn’t just one person’s opinion. Verify their observations through additional conversations with other stakeholders, review performance metrics, look at the engagement survey results for the team and so on. As for verifying during the actual meeting, simply ask them to describe more than one examples or instances of the problematic behaviours or actions showing up in the day-to-day. One example may be an exception; several examples give you something to investigate and check against other evidence. Closing Again, this may come off as too on the nose, but you need a good closing. And there are several things to do here. Firstly, summarize the discussion. Make sure to pause and ask if there is anything else they think is important for you to know. This is time for them to hear back the conversation and look at everything from a bird’s eye view. Secondly, list all the steps you (and they) will take going forward. They need to agree and commit to these, otherwise the whole conversation was for naught. Finally, explain what the overall process looks like going forward. This may include additional research (including interviewing other stakeholders), designing the learning intervention, getting preliminary feedback, development and delivery, and evaluation and monitoring. Stakeholders need to understand what their involvement would be. And it’s not just sitting down with you to discuss their needs. In for a penny, in for a pound. And there you have it – some of the most important things to do during an LNA conversation. If you want to learn more about the overall process of an LNA, check out our Learning Needs Analysis mini course.

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< All L&D Topics L&D METHODS & DELIVERY Unsure how to help people learn? Compare learning methods, consider your learners and context, and prepare an experience that gives people the chance to practise. QUICK SOLUTIONS Choose an approach for your next session Check the goal, audience, time, and workplace constraints. Choose a method that supports the skill, then plan clear instructions, practice, and a useful debrief. The Six-Stage Training Checklist Work through the key stages of preparing, delivering, and following up training. View Resource Blended Learning Planner Plan how different methods will work together in a blended learning experience. View Resource Hiring an External Trainer Questionnaire and Checklist Prepare questions and checks when selecting an external trainer. View Resource Show more tools FREE GUIDANCE Explore your options for free Use our free articles and videos to explore learning methods and delivery. Consider when a session, peer learning, coaching, or practice on the job could help. L&D Foundations Learning Path Build your understanding of the L&D process through a free collection of existing articles, videos, and resources. Start Learning for Free Practical Guide to Blended Learning Understand blended learning and how different approaches can work together. Read the Guide How to deliver an engaging face-to-face classroom training (with examples) Prepare and deliver a face-to-face training session with practical examples. Read the Guide Show more free resources GO FURTHER Build your methods and delivery skills Explore Mastering the Art of L&D Methods to expand your options. Choose Training for Non-Trainers if you need support planning and facilitating training sessions. Mastering the Art of L&D Methods Explore different L&D methods and learn how to choose an approach for your learning challenge. Explore the Course Training for Non-Trainers Develop your skills in preparing, delivering, and following up training sessions. Explore the Course Learning Design and Delivery mini toolkit Support the design and delivery of learning using a collection of practical resources. Explore the Toolkit The Art & Science of Effective Feedback Practise giving, asking for, and receiving feedback using structured models and practical exercises. Explore the Course Explore more courses & toolkits Previous Next