Using webinars as a Learning & Development tool
This year, we extended the use of Webinars across the estate as a key method for learning in stores, building on our use of voice conferences in the past. We have also started to use webinars to engage our teams in our international locations such as Australia and Hong Kong.
As a business we face a number of challenges when providing training to store teams. Geographical locations, expensive travel costs and in-store constraints all contribute to the difficulties we face in delivering face-to-face training.
From experience we have refined our webinar offer to encompass training on the technical systems that our stores need to be skilled in. We now run a monthly schedule of webinars that are hosted by subject matter experts. Using webinars as a tool for delivering more frequent and more targeted training sessions has enabled us to ensure consistency in content and reduced training costs. These sessions are aimed at new appointment Supervisors and Managers who use them as an extension to their corporate induction and also for existing staff who are changing role or responsibility within the business.
We are running on average 12 sessions per month with an average attendance of eight people on each session. No session lasts more than 90 minutes in order to keep the sessions focused and effective. All of the subjects that are offered would have been self taught in the past or the employee would have needed to travel to another store to be trained. The webinars are planned so that staff working early or late shifts can also attend – increasing the number of people in store who can benefit from training in these areas.