The Future of Training is Hybrid

And now Impact Factory is focusing on hybrid training, combining our dynamic, relevant, practical and fun face-to-face training with our dynamic, relevant, practical and fun remote training. We admit that for 29 years we believed that face-to-face was the best way to experience our training; then lock-down happened and through the creativity of our brilliant trainers we developed our work on-line and it has proven to be hugely successful.

How Hybrid Training Evolved

With the lifting of restrictions, we began offering face-to-face training again and found that many people simply weren’t ready or able to take up that format, so like any adaptable species we evolved our own version of hybrid training. Once again, we wanted to make sure that the best of Impact Factory’s in-person style and newly evolved on-line style were in sync so that both ‘sides’ got a fabulous training experience.

We have re-imagined the future world of training and work by breaking down geographical barriers and using innovative audio-visual technology and techniques to create a hybrid learning vision. We now deliver hybrid training for a thoroughly modern world of work where geographical boundaries melt away and we connect learners and trainers from multiple locations, geographies, continents through the most up-to-date technology.

The key is to get the balance just right, so that the people on-line don’t feel as though they are an audience observing the training and the people in the room don’t feel neglected with too much attention given to the remotes. This requires not only the right technology (more than one camera is essential), it also requires the trainers knowing where to place themselves to create a feeling of inclusivity, how they arrange group and pair work, how they are specific when addressing people (rather than a generic ‘Does anyone in the remote group want to comment?’ we would say, ‘Jo Ellen, what do you think about the exercise we just did?’).

Advantages of Hybrid Training

The advantages are many and cover just about every situation.

Switching: It happens on a weekly basis now where delegates switch from remote to face-to-face or vice versa even on the morning of the training. A recent example was when one of our delegates was scheduled for face-to-face and on the morning of her course her son wasn’t feeling well and had to stay home from school. She was able to ring up and change her mode of training, didn’t lose her place and still got to participate fully.

Savings: There are big savings in time and costs for remote delegates. Clients have woken up to the idea that they don’t have to pay for travel (which may still be really difficult for some of their people, depending on their location), for hotel rooms and other ancillary costs. For long-haul flights, there’s also the exhaustion factor and for many, the stress of travel.

Everyone can join in: You can run real-time events with delegates joining in from anywhere in the world. It’s really not too difficult to manage a variety of time zones by scheduling the training so that no one has to get up before dawn or stay up past midnight.

To summarise, Hybrid is great for:

• Those who want an In-Person experience
• People who continue to work from home or who have last minute changes to their schedules
• Those who may be back in the office and are OK about travelling for training and those who would prefer not to travel
• Overseas delegates who would prefer to stay put and those who would like to have a London experience
• Cost savings and less travel wear and tear
• Adaptable across the globe

Don’t just take our word for it:

Here’s a to link a video which gives you a glimpse of how we do it.

If you’re reading this before the 10^th of November 2021 you can join us for a 60-minute remote Hybrid Taster where we demonstrate how we do it.

If you’re reading after that date, sign up for our Newsletter so you can get news of when we’ll run it again.

The future of training is definitely Hybrid.