By Dave Evans
Last week, for only the second time in over three years, I had the joy of delivering one of our SAS training courses to my customers, City Plumbing, on-site. Yes, actually face to face, with my customers, in the same room!
It seems incredible that something that seemed so run-of-the-mill before the covid pandemic lockdown of March 2020, can now seem like an adventure and something I feel I’d like to share with you.
The switch to online training in March 2020 was rapid and unpredictable. A seismic event in the training world. No more meeting my delegates and shaking their hands as I met them. Just delivering training from my home study and then, eventually after a few months, back into the office with a setup of three strategically arranged webcams in our training room.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think the switch to online training has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. It’s given our customers who are hundreds of miles away from our training base in Oxfordshire, the opportunity to attend our training with no additional costs of travel and accommodation. Customers who’s staff are now working from their homes no longer need to ask them all to assemble in the same training room on a date that is convenient for everyone (it never is !).
We’ve done a pretty good job. With multiple webcams and screen sharing, I feel we have closely replicated the environment that our customers used to experience when coming to visit us for training.
So, why the ‘joy’ and ‘adventure’ of on-site, face to face training?
When I’m in a training room with my delegates there’s always more of a connection. No doubt about it. It’s easier to spot those tiny glances from the delegates that tell me it’s probably time for a coffee break. It’s easier to keep their attention when they are not attending from home, distracted by work emails or the inevitable distractions of home life.
I’m convinced people are more comfortable admitting they need a little more help understanding a subject when you are together in the same room. We’re all in this together 😊
After over three years, I’d nearly forgotten about the feeling of satisfaction of a course closing and witnessing delegates still talking amongst themselves about how this is going to make a big difference to the job they do. I felt that this week. Simple I know, but I wanted to share it with you.
Another reason for this blog is, I admit, a selfish one. I would love to start meeting my delegates face to face again, and I think many of our customers may not be aware we have re-opened our options of training. In fact, our training now combines all options available both before and after 2020.
In addition to our SAS training courses which many of you will be familiar with, we’ve also recently developed new R and Python courses.