The Rise of the Webinar
Shaun Schindewolf, Technical Toolboxes’ Director of Training
Technical Toolboxes is well known for its face-to-face training throughout the United States and abroad. In the past, adaptability in training provision extended to delivering courses in a variety of cities, several times a month. However, in late February 2020, as the spread of COVID-19 was accelerating across the globe, throwing the viability of future face-to-face training into doubt, Technical Toolboxes initially contacted four of its instructors to discuss ways to continue to train and bring value to its customers while adhering to new global social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines. The instructors agreed that they could provide sections of their face-to-face classes, as well as additional subjects, via short webinars, between 1 and 2.5 hours in length. After transforming Technical Toolboxes’ webpage to highlight live webinars with content and functionality, Technical Toolboxes was well positioned to offer a suite of webinars to participants as soon as March 5th, 2020. Since then, seven additional instructors have converted their in-person courses to webinar format. With the support of an agile management and support team, in conjunction with industry-leading instructors, Technical Toolboxes’ live webinar offerings now cover 20 engineering disciplines and theory ranging from 2 hours to a day and a half in duration, with all learning materials and certificates of completion delivered virtually.
COVID-19 has pushed the world’s capacity for adaptability to the extreme. Prior to this pivot, the Technical Toolboxes team had concerns that live webinars may not be embraced and accepted in the oil and gas industry, based on past surveys that indicated that clients preferred a classroom experience as opposed to an online setting. It’s true that the classroom provides a collaborative environment that encourages open conversations about how to overcome challenges that customers face in their respective working environments. However, once the move was made to wholly-online training, it was ultimately proven that attendees felt comfortable to contribute questions and comments in a virtual setting and the collaboration that rendered our in-person training so valuable was still apparent. Impactful material is shared with attendees before, during and after the training session, supporting the purpose of fostering continued collaboration and cooperation during a time when many are feeling extremely isolated.
Technical Toolboxes is incredibly appreciative of our clients’ adaptability during these challenging times. Since February 2020, 90% of attendees that were booked for in-person training have agreed to transfer to a live webinar format. Their trust in our training has been instrumental in the success and growing breadth of our webinars. The Technical Toolboxes training department prides itself on building understanding relationships with its customers and takes all post-training evaluations seriously, undertaking action based on the feedback of attendees and meeting them ‘halfway’ when necessary. If family and personal responsibilities disrupt an attendee’s ability to attend a webinar, they will either be allocated into a future webinar on the same topic or one of their choice; provided with one-on-one time with the instructor; or allocated a full refund, no questions asked. If they miss out on a topic because of a crying child or a similar distraction that arises from working from home, any questions can be addressed by the instructor afterwards or in supplemental material.
Technical Toolboxes understands that these are trying times, and that cooperation and understanding will ultimately be the tools that allow us to continue to bring value to, and strengthen our relationship with, our customers and the industry at large. While we agree that the rewards of face-to-face training are substantial for our instructors and our attendees, the adaptable team at Technical Toolboxes will continue to provide training that is timely, engaging and applicable to our clients’ varied engineering roles in an online environment. With another 10 webinars in development, Technical Toolboxes is rapidly adapting to a step-change in industry training and learning.
To find out more about the webinars on offer and to register, visit https://technicaltoolboxes.com/webinars/.
