Our response to the changing business environment in light of coronavirus.
As the measures around the coronavirus lock-down start to ease, we wanted to take this time to reflect on our journey over the last 3 months and say thank you to our incredible InPD team, our amazing associate tutors and to our hard-working delegates.
At the end of March, like many other businesses, we had to adapt our ways of working to meet the new coronavirus guidelines set by the Government.
This meant supporting our entire workforce in their transition to remote working and setting out a new plan around how we could continue to deliver high-quality, transformative learning to our clients.
As the health and safety of our staff and delegates will always be our up-most priority, we felt that the safest and most appropriate way to continue to deliver professional development training during this time was via the virtual classroom, with the support of Zoom. Our biggest task was to ensure we maintained the high standard of delivery that our learners were used to with our face-to-face approach.
At the coalface of delivery, Head of Operations, Michela Sumner shares how we adapted our services and the processes we have put in place to ensure our virtual classroom delivery took off without a hitch.
“Prior to launching the new virtual classroom, the InPD operations team carried out various risk assessments for delivering online and devised appropriate easy-fix solutions for each potential risk. From here, we worked with our associate tutor base to adapt each lesson plan from the classroom delivery to the virtual classroom. Our Quality and Assurance team have been working on some new tutor guidelines and processes that will support the successful delivery of the programmes and ensure that delivery is meeting our usual high standards.
In line with this, the operations team worked around the clock organising Zoom tutorials for our trainers so they could familiarise themselves with the platform and utilise the tools available to deliver the most interactive experiences. The team have been helping tutors operate breakout rooms, polls and whiteboard functionalities, to help maximise the delegate experiences.
What has really come to our attention during this uncertain time is the fantastic attitudes demonstrated by our network of tutors and the collaborative approach between them to ensure the success of the virtual courses. The tutors have been bouncing ideas to each other in our dedicated WhatsApp group and supporting each other with practice runs by giving each other tips for delivery.
It hasn’t been a totally smooth journey for us to get to this point, but our team have come through this experience with more resilience and problem-solving skills. We feel lucky and humbled to have such a great network of trainers and researchers working with us and we look forward to continuing to welcome delegates to our virtual classroom”.
Whilst our operations team were in the process of developing our tutors and materials for the virtual classroom platform, our sales department were working closely with existing and prospect customers to get a better understanding of their expectations for learning during the coronavirus pandemic and their requirements from virtual learning.
Head of Sales, Matt Innes tells us more…
“At InPD, we are dedicated to supporting our customers and their unique training requirements, whether it be for themselves, their team, or the wider organisation. It’s clear from the conversations we’re having with them, that they are very aware of the magnitude of the situation that we find ourselves in and are expressing their desire to take advantage of any potential downtime, or remote working situations and invest in their professional development.
For many of our customers, learning online currently presents an opportunity to take a long and lasting positive from their time in the coronavirus lock down. Not just our customers, but most of the working world is adapting to a new way of working and it is amazing to see how agile people and companies have been, embracing new technology in rapid time. We can see that learning at this senior executive level is on a similar journey, with the vast majority ready to learn from distance, in the comfort of their own homes.
For a lot of our customers, old and new, this could be the first time they have ever tried an interactive, virtual classroom, and as you can imagine there have been questions…
- What technical set up do I need to access the virtual classroom from my own home?
- Will my internet connection be strong enough?
- What happens if my internet goes down during a session?
- Is the class pre-recorded?
- Will I have the opportunity for ‘peer to peer’ learning?
The feedback from our delegates that have attended our virtual training sessions has been incredibly positive – The interactive nature of the online training has proven to be very powerful, and the opportunity to do it from home when travel and mixing in groups hasn’t been an option has been really useful”.
As the demand for virtual learning has grown over the last few months, we plan to continue to run our online programmes alongside our face-to-face courses in the new year. To make our programmes accessible to everyone, we feel that offering virtual products is important so that we can reach as many learners as possible.
If you would like to know more about our course offering then you can visit our courses page or you can email us directly at enquiries@inpd.co.uk.
We look forward to hearing from you!
