Webinars for Effective Employee Engagement

Webinars are a powerful marketing tool. They increase engagement and generate warm leads for sales. And with digital experiences becoming normalized over the past couple of years, the use of webinars is accelerating – according to the ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report 2021, the use of webinars went up 162 percent last year. But what about using them internally? Are webinars effective for training employees?

When well implemented, webinars can be just as useful for employee engagement as they are at engaging your company’s external stakeholders. Let’s unpack what an effective employee training webinar looks like to understand why webinars are such an excellent choice for training.

What Is a Training Webinar?

A training webinar is a virtual event where the audience learns new information. It can be live training or recorded. Either way, it enables participants to upskill, refresh their understanding of a subject, or complete coursework for certification purposes without having to attend in person.

The Benefits of Using Webinars to Train Employees

Because they are online, training webinars offer both employers and employees a level of flexibility and convenience that’s not possible with traditional training.

Your company can open up a training session to dozens – or even hundreds – of participants and offer the same level of quality for all. This is game-changing for larger companies that have to provide routine safety classes or other recurring training to all employees.
For introverts on your staff, the virtual environment can be a welcome change. With a year that sent many office workers to the home office for the first time, introverts – which make up about half of the population – tend to prefer online over in-person events. By using training webinars, you may be able to better engage your employees who are happy to go days without seeing another person.
Everyone doesn’t have to attend in real-time. You can make your webinar available for people to view later. This is a major benefit for people who couldn’t be there because of a meeting or other scheduling conflict.
Online training for new team members can save time and increase productivity. With a recorded webinar, your new hires will have a resource they can review later if they have questions or didn’t absorb all the information shared in the initial training session. This means less time wasted on new employee confusion and less stress for them.
Making training more accessible to all supports a stronger work culture. Both your remote and in-house employees can participate at the same time. This gives your company a rare opportunity to engage everyone on your team and supports healthy relationships between employees who may not normally have the chance to interact.
Webinars can be more engaging than in-person training sessions. This is because of all the tools that are available with a leading-edge webinar and video conferencing platform. Live interaction, HD video for an impeccable visual experience, and the ability to bring in a panel of your company’s best minds to present during the webinar put all the tools your company needs to create highly engaging employee training webinars in your hands.

What to Look for in a Webinar Platform

Training webinars are effective at engaging employees. But you’ll need to have the right features to make your training engaging. A basic video conferencing platform isn’t enough.

Here are the modern features your webinar software should have:

1. Quick polls

You’ll get your participants to interact, and at the same time, you can gauge sentiment by sharing the results. Using polls during your webinar can also be a great segue for a deeper conversation on a subject.

2. Easy screen sharing

The last thing you want during a webinar is to slow down the momentum while you set up your screen so everyone can see it. With one-click screen sharing, making your screen visible or switching presenters appears seamless.

3. Rich chat

Ideally, your platform will allow employees to ask questions, share comments, and express their thoughts and mood with rich chat features like emojis. Dynamic chat features can also help the presenter understand the audience’s interest level in real-time. Then, if employees seem bored, they can decide to change the tone or pace of the webinar to re-engage.

4. Post-webinar engagement

Email a survey or quiz to your employees after the webinar to find out if they have further questions and to gain feedback. This gesture will give you more insight into how effective your training webinar was. It can also help to boost employee engagement even more – post-webinar interaction keeps the momentum going. It also demonstrates that you are available to ensure everyone has learned all the information they need to do their job well.

5. Cloud recording

To ensure you’re giving your employees the full webinar recording, you need to know you have plenty of storage space to save everything. It’s also key that your recording has all the slides, videos presenters may have played, and screen shares.

With all of these features, your company can create engaging training webinars. Even more important, you have the analysis data and tools to continually improve online training events for your team.

Are Webinars Effective for Training Employees?

When it comes to employee engagement in the post-pandemic world, webinars are probably the best option. They’re inclusive of both remote and on-site employees, convenient for everyone, and may be more comfortable than in-person training for all the introverts on your team.

And, with the right platform, you can keep your employees engaged throughout the webinar and beyond. If your company doesn’t already have an advanced webinar solution or if you’re looking for a more efficient option, try out Intermedia AnyMeeting. It has all the tools you need to empower your company to give employees an excellent training experience.