After more than two years of utilising remote work environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has started opening back up. Video conferences are reverting to face-to-face meeting room assemblies. Training sessions once held online can now be done on-site. It is made more convenient by companies like Priority Management, a trusted partner for in-house training for any organisation.

However, after getting used to virtual training and upskilling, you might wonder if it’s even worth returning to a face-to-face setup. To help you decide whether to invest in this type of training again, we have listed some advantages in-person training setups have over remote ones. Read on to find out if this training arrangement is still the right fit for your company or if you can use it to supplement virtual training.

Fewer Distractions

Most online conferences either allow or require participants to turn their cameras off to avoid distracting the speaker and maintain the participants’ privacy. However, participants can now possibly be distracted by their phones, their browsers’ search tabs, or even household chores. Online meeting services have tried to work around this by creating features such as live quizzes to maximise audience engagement, but distractions are still a click away.

By contrast, a primary advantage of in-person training is the physical attendance of everyone on board the meeting. By being in plain sight of the trainer, participants are more aware of other attendees surrounding them and will, in part, feel self-conscious about doing something unrelated to the training at hand. It, in turn, makes them less likely to use their gadgets for unrelated purposes. Such an environment is also much better at discouraging multitasking, as it’s easier for the trainer to call a participant’s attention should they appear distracted.

These reasons help attendees to focus on the discussion or task at hand unless instructed otherwise by the trainer.

Personalised Learning

Another consequence of having cameras turned off during online seminars is that trainers cannot “read the room” based on the participants’ nonverbal cues like their body language and facial expressions. Consequently, trainers are unable to respond accordingly based on these cues.

It can turn online training into a one-sided learning experience involving the trainer talking to a blank screen. As a result, the trainer may find it harder to determine whether the participants understand what they’re talking about or if they’re still actively engaging with the discussion.

And while turning the participants’ cameras on could help with this, it’s much harder to read a person’s body language based on visual representation of them versus seeing them in person. In the case of participants with slower internet speeds, their reactions may not even show up live on camera and instead viewed after a few seconds of delay.

Everyone benefits when this barrier is removed during in-person training since speakers have a clear view of their audience. Assessing how well the participants understand the lesson based on their body language enables the trainer to prompt them if they need further clarification.

In addition, in-person training allows participants to ask questions during the session or provide comments spontaneously. They can more easily identify when it’s a good time to chime in by observing the speaker’s body language or reading the room. Of course, these questions or comments can be distracting if the trainer doesn’t moderate them. Still, these inputs can benefit the discussion if they’re substantial enough.

A Real-Time Collaborative Environment

Despite virtually being together in the same video meeting, participants of online training setups may still feel isolated from their peers since they aren’t physically present. In addition to having participants’ cameras turned off, online conference facilitators will often have participants mute their microphones to prevent the discussion from being disrupted by loud or irritating background noises. As a result, trainees can’t easily communicate with one another verbally and are restricted to messaging each other via private messages or the public chat room. While these text chat features can help, it’s still not the same as talking to each other verbally.

On the other hand, collaboration is where face-to-face training setups excel. Since participants sit together in the same room, seatmates can quietly talk about or ask each other questions about the training topic. Furthermore, during in-person practical training and activities, participants can openly assist each other in real time. For instance, one person can easily use their finger to point out something of interest to their groupmate. By contrast, doing the same during an online meeting would involve interrupting the discussion to start screen sharing and finding the appropriate pointer tool to accomplish the same result.

With all that said, online setups aren’t necessarily substandard. They still provide a more convenient and accessible alternative to conventional training when circumstances require it, as we have seen during the pandemic. Moreover, it enables participants to study and learn at their own pace.

However, if your company is returning to an in-person setup, consider providing face-to-face training when possible. The possibility of collaborative and more hands-on practical training could prove more beneficial depending on your employees’ personality types and approaches to learning. If convenience is of utmost importance for your organisation, you’ll be glad to know that Priority Management offers in-house training that covers a variety of skills that would prove useful for your staff to learn.

Check Priority Management Australia’s online courses.