Virtual Training at Scale

 
 

What if we told you that training events could be greener, cheaper, more flexible, more accessible, and allow you connect with employees in any time zone or location? We’re talking about virtual meetings, of course – but have they fallen out of favour in 2026?

Like many organisations, our work pivoted online during the pandemic. We devised a new virtual training practice that was as experiential and creative as our in-person events – and had fun doing it! However, many clients did not stay in the virtual mode after Covid-19. Very rapidly, most of our work returned to in-person delivery.  

Although we’re very happy to be back ‘on the road’, we’ve realised that virtual training still retains one key advantage over in-person events – scalability. There are occasions when our clients want to provide global training events, or organisation-wide events, and the virtual medium is unbeatable for this type of at-scale delivery.  

The challenge is to develop online training that participants actually want to experience. 

Over the past six years, we have identified three key factors for designing and delivering knock-out virtual programmes at scale. They are: 

  • Liveness 

  • Novelty 

  • "What’s in it for me?” 

  

Liveness 

There’s nothing like participants sharing a live facilitated experience – together. That’s easy in an in-person event. But creating a live, spontaneous, human-to-human experience online requires creativity and invention. Fortunately, that’s something we have plenty of at Dramatic Resources! 

  

Novelty 

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Most people don’t want to attend online trainings because they are fundamentally BORING! Virtual hosts are often in presentation mode – going through slides, or following a script. Here’s the good news: it is possible to create novelty online. Follow the golden rule: Novelty is achieved through getting participants doing, rather than listening.  

 

“What’s in it for me?” 

Busy professionals want to know how learning and development is going to help them on a personal level. It’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of this crucial element when designing large, at-scale training. We want participants to feel that they learned something specific and personally relevant in their time with us, so we appeal to self-interest in a variety of ways.  

  • We keep high-level, conceptual elements to an absolute minimum and create as many opportunities as possible for participants to practise skills and rehearse real life scenarios.

  • Most importantly: if we ask participants to do something, we always make sure they get something back. That might be simple validation of a contribution, feedback or live coaching to improve their performance. 

  

Creating world-class online learning experiences that busy executives want to be part of, and voluntarily show up to, is no mean feat. Perhaps you already know what motivates participants in the world of learning and development, but finding a training partner to deliver unforgettable training that is tailored to your organisation’s needs... that’s another challenge. That’s where we come in.

We can promise you this: no two Dramatic Resources events are ever the same!

Why not find out how Dramatic Resources can support your team at scale? You can contact our office team via info@dramaticresources.co.uk. We’d love to hear from you. 

Tabitha Gilbert