What makes a training great? - on-site vs off-site... and sex
I'm just kidding.... just put the sex in the headline for giggles ;) (remember my last post.....)
I am currently writing some training flyers for a client and one part of the flyer is to "sell" the fact that the training class is "off-site" to the client location .... so what does that mean? and what are the pros (and cons) of both possibilities?
What makes a training great?
[1] talks of 4 elements for a good training - content, facilitation, logistics, and environment
So let's break them down to some focus areas for each ...
Content
Well, I control my training content all the time, no matter where I am - if I am at a customer location in a meeting room or some location I chose - it's my content. right? well ...
There are some corner cases like hands-on labs in the cloud which are affected by internet connectivity speed and sometimes weird firewall rules or proxies that don't allow certain protocols I need.
Facilitation
To be honest, I am not sure what that word really means ;) I guess it's about friction avoidance ... so the location of the training should be convinient to reach and get around?
Logistics
Logistics need to be planned - the biggest advantage in my book for an off-site training is the fact that the participants are away from "normal work" - so no disctractions, no colleagues pulling participants out of the training for "a quick coffee break to fix something" ...
Environment
- quiet room
- good light
- good projector
- whiteboard with enough pens
- flipchart
- if needed some metaplan board and utensils for it
- amenities around for restrooms and coffee
- lunch not too far away
- good connectivity to the internet
the case for on-site is still real
So obviously I can control much more factors of a good training if I choose not to go to the customer premises for the training - but of cause there are some PROs to conducting a training at the customer site too:
- the customer feels more safe
- no travel expenses
- if red alert comes up the colleagues can leave the training for more important stuff (not necessarily a plus in my book)
So at the end both, on-site and off-site trainings, have there place.
Chris
Sources:
[1] https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/site-vsoff-site-training