Category Archives: Training Room

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How to Boost Knowledge Retention in Employee Training

Over the last few years, one thing that successful organizations have been consistently doing is focusing on training knowledge retention. Research has proved that over 80% of what has been learned in a training program might get forgotten in 10-15 days. Often, companies invest in training room rental, experienced trainers, and effective material, but underestimate designing them for knowledge retention. Here are a few techniques, implementing which can help you make your program enjoyable, engaging, and memorable.

Construct training material using narratives

Humans are genetically compelled to pay attention to and retain stories. All the information available for common consumption is stored in people’s minds in the form of narratives. That is why it is such a good idea to pass on corporate training by designing material using narratives. This can be done by having the coaches narrate personal anecdotes and industry-specific precedents. You can also consider playing short clips of the same and hanging posters on walls.

Help them focus by hiring the right facility

Training can very quickly become monotonous and breed boredom in the training hall. This needn’t necessarily be the fault of your course material or the trainer. Training venues that are comfortable can help employees focus and thereby retain what has been learnt. Make sure that you have easy access to washrooms and water coolers so that attendees aren’t distracted. If you are conducting the training for long hours, it is important to have air conditioning and food stalls. When you rent a classroom, provide commute or ensure easy accessibility.

Train them by intervals and repetition

Traditional employee training expects employees to retain huge amounts of information. This is unfair, since the mind needs repetition over a period of time to remember things. Instead, use spaced repetition to exploit the brain’s capacity for remembering things that have been told multiple times. This helps in retaining information over longer periods of time and helps every learner stay on track. Trainers can set up modules for spaced repetition manually or use software for the same. This technique scientifically trains the brain to memorize information quickly.

Provide opportunities for application

Ask your training room rental company to provide 24/7 internet connectivity and sufficient electrical outlets. Platforms for virtual simulation offer challenges that are similar to real-life situations and help trainees apply their training to them. Simulations work because they are stress-free and trainees can apply training takeaways without worrying about criticism. Knowledge retention can also be brought about having trainees that have undergone the program once, pass on their learning outcomes to fresh trainee batches.

Leverage technology and online resources

Before you rent classroom, make sure it has facilities for using audio-visual aids. Trainers will need to screen clips and give presentations to make training material engaging. Intranet sites help training coordinators share or post important information for trainees to access. Organizations should also create online databases for learners to find information after the training. You can also use social networking to help employees stay abreast of each other’s progress.

Top Lighting Tips for Your Corporate Event

One of the strongest mediums available for transforming your event into an elegant and exciting one is lighting. Opting for an assortment of impressive and technically superior lighting fixtures and patterns is therefore extremely important. So, right after you finalize your training room rental, the first thing to think about is the lighting scheme for the event. We look at some useful tips that can help you in choosing the correct lighting theme for your event.

Finalize on a layout

Once you have all the facts related to your event ready, the first step towards creating a perfect lighting scheme is to develop a computer-aided design program. You need a complete layout that takes into consideration all tables, the performance arena or stage, the area designated for video projection, the buffet tables or any other inclusions that you might have. Once the layout is ready, you can refer to it at any point in time while finalizing your lighting choices.

Settle for colorful LEDs

LEDs consume about ten times less electricity for producing the same degree of light. Naturally, they are much more cost effective as compared to tungsten bulbs. Using a mix of colorful lighting that can be controlled electronically for creating the desired shade is a great idea. Prior to the advent of this technology, a colored gel would have to be placed before an incandescent lighting fixture for creating the desired impact. However, this was a grossly cumbersome mechanism. Colored LEDs allow a great deal of flexibility and are extremely easy to operate as well.

Lighting the walls and the ceilings

Once you have finalized your seminar room rental, one of the best ways to transform it is to use a single lighting color for washing the walls and settling on another shade for washing the ceiling. You can use a geometric pattern or a theme pattern or even a four fixture project for creating an impact. You can also stick to a symmetrical pattern like a series of palm trees for instance for adorning the walls.

Pixel mapping is a great choice too

One of the technologies related to LED lighting is pixel mapping. As this equipment can be created in miniscule sizes, they can be fitted very close together and they also have the ability of changing the quality of lighting instantly. This technology is known as pixel mapping and finds a myriad of creative applications.

Do not forget the stage

Filling light and color across the stage platform is a great way to add that much needed zing to your event. You can use the “stage wash” technique for making your stage stand out. Tilting the stage lights down, for instance is one of the ways to make the event stand out. It helps in bringing the focus to the stage or the performance area and urges the audience to divert their attention towards it.

One of the best ways of getting the lighting right could be to engage a professional lighting consultant. However, these simple tips can also help you to create an impact with your personal lighting choices.

Event Promotion Mistakes to Avoid

Organizing an event can seem surprisingly easy when compared to promoting it. Often, companies rent training rooms only to realize they don’t generate enough ticket sales. Organizers should also know when to start promoting the event.

The success of a company event depends mostly on marketing it well. Generating the right kind of buzz and using social media effectively is imperative. To make sure your event is a success, avoid these mistakes.

Setting unrealistic goals

Aiming to sell different tiers of tickets over several months is vastly different from selling them in a couple of days. Both require different promotional strategies, and the same goes for selling VIP tickets. Rent seminar room keeping in mind you will promote it and generate interest.

The goals of your campaign should be high, but realistic at the same time. Sit down and try to reach a clear idea of the amount of registrations/sales you hope to make. You also need to think on what channels you can target and the time frame you have at your disposal. Not giving these factors enough thought could be disastrous.

Not capitalizing on SEO

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is ignoring the power of search engine optimization. To track your analytics, head over to the ‘Channels’ section on your Google Analytics page. This will reveal what percentage of visitors on your page is locating you via organic search. The rest of the users are being redirected from social media and other channels.

Not getting high numbers on organic search reveals a crack in your event promotion strategy. It indicates that your optimization of the event website is not up to the mark. However, this can be rectified. Look for any social media posts or ads that might be outperforming organic searches. You could borrow the text from here for better optimization.

Underestimating proper data tracking

Too many businesses forego proper tracking and lose out on event registrations as a result. You need tracking to know who it is that is buying tickets to the event, how they got to know about it, and the ads they are clicking. Additional information includes when these purchases are being made, and why some of them aren’t buying the tickets.

Not tracking information as useful as this only leads to wastage of your event promotion resources. Google Analytics is a free to use tool, using which, reports can be checked throughout the day.

Ignoring conversion rates

Conversion rate, in this context, refers to the number of people visiting your site and buying event tickets. Companies that rent seminar rooms for events should always focus on upping conversion rates. For instance, this can be achieved by changing your Facebook objective to increase conversions on the website.

This enables the platform to show your ad when conversions are the most likely. When it comes to Google ads, you can actually view the number of conversions generated by campaigns or keywords. Pay attention to survey form length and layout as well, keeping in mind mobile phones.

How to Choose the Right Speaker for Your Event

If you have been assigned the task of making your company’s next event a success, hiring a good training room rental is half the job done. The other half is about choosing the right speaker. Understanding your audience’s demographic is as important as hiring someone with enough experience behind them.

Depending on the topic and your target audience, you may want to choose a speaker from within or from outside of the industry. Here are some ways to choose the right speaker for your event.

Determine the purpose of the event

Establish the goal of the conference/meeting right at the outset, so that you can be clear on where you should look for speakers. This will also depend on whether the objective of the event is to increase brand awareness, to educate the audience on a specific issue, or lead generation. The right candidate will let you in on how they plan to deliver the course or a keynote in order to drive home the agenda of your event.

Choose a speaker from the right field

The next step is to narrow down to speakers from the right industry and field. This is because no matter how effective a certain speaker is, if they’re not from the right industry, they’ll be ineffectual. If you want to train your employees on leadership, choose a motivational speaker.

Industry professionals must be chosen if the message to be delivered is industry-specific and need better elucidation. If you need to generate sales or have a wow-factor, it is a good idea to rope in a celebrity.

Your speaker should be tech-savvy

This goes without saying, as no event is complete without the intervention of technology. Speakers these days deliver presentations on projector screens, and have begun to increasingly utilize videos, infographics, and images. Ask your chosen speaker to come down to the training room rental venue once and make themselves at home with the setup. Do not forget to ask your classroom rental provider for facilities like electrical outlets, 24X7 internet, and audio-visual compatibility.

Research your speaker enough

Your speaker needs to linger in the minds of the attendees long after the event is over. Utilize the internet to conduct proper research on the best you can get. Use the right keywords and never flinch from looking for the best of the lot, even if it means stretching your budget a little.

Another thing to remember is to choose speakers that are active on social media. Use resources like PeerIndex and LinkedIn to find trending speakers, since this will also help attract their niche audience to the event. Read reviews and watch videos of their earlier public speeches before moving on to the next step.

Screening your shortlisted speakers

Insist that the speakers do their homework on the company and the objective of the event. You need to gauge their ease with the job and the effort they have invested in researching about your business. Ask them if they would be co-promoting the event. Speakers that ask challenging questions are better than those that don’t, since it is an indication of their engagement in a discussion. Finally, don’t be afraid to discuss their pricing upfront.

6 Tips for Event Photography

Event photography is often deemed to be monotonous and boring. Most are of the opinion that capturing stills at a corporate event or any event for that matter is hardly a creative job. However, this is not really the case always. A lot of innovation and creativity can actually go into event photography, provided, the organizer and the photographer is willing to think out of the box. It is important for the planner to hunt down a photography specialist who has an experience in dealing with similar events. Right from the time you rent training room, it is equally important to finalize upon the photographer of choice and book him beforehand. Once he is on board, here are some guidelines to discuss with him.

The Right Equipment Matters

Your photographer will be bringing along his equipment. You may want to discuss the types he would be using for the vent. Whereas the choices would largely vary from one professional t the other, mostly, 24-70 f/2.8 or 70-200 f/2.8 lenses are the ones to be most preferred since they offer optimal sharpness, excellent performance in low light and swift focusing. Depending on the nature of the event, your photographer may wish to use macro or fish eye lenses for the purpose.

Thinking outside the norm makes matters interesting

Event photography does not mean asking people to huddle together at important venues and clicking pictures. It is always a good idea to discuss some novel and innovative photo opportunities with your photography specialist. People do all sort of things when they are not asked to superficially pose for a photograph. You could spot a listener completely mesmerized by a musical performance at a cultural event, the bride’s mother shedding a tear as she watches the ceremony and many more such interesting and candid shots. These are the ones that depict what the event is actually about.

Capturing the action

Ask your photographer to concentrate on capturing the action with his stills. The moment when the winner pops the champagne cork and the froth comes bubbling out, is worthier than asking him to pose with an opened champagne bottle. Discuss the different actions you wish to have captured so that your photographer can focus on them. And of course, he will also use his own creative instincts and choose actions that seem intriguing to him. Creating a sequence is ideal for storytelling.

Being Professional

Not every guest is comfortable being clicked. So, it is important to respect others preferences and be extremely professional in approach. Being pesky is never appreciated. Although most professional photographers would be well versed with etiquette it is always advisable to sensitize them about it. Photography professionals also need to understand that sticking to the right behavioral norms would mean more referrals and more work in future.

When you rent seminar room for a strictly corporate event however, the photography norms could be more specific. Your photographer will need to capture empty venues before the show begins, click stills of important people, capture speakers on stage in long shots with the signage behind and so on. A lot of these photos will also be used for corporate branding.

How to Create Buzz around Your Event

For any organization, ensuring that an important event goes successfully is important. This can be achieved only by generating a buzz that attracts attendees, sponsors, and boosts sales. More and more businesses are taking to social media to create an interest and anticipation in the minds of the audience.

Other strategies include early-bird offers on ticket prices and shooting videos that give customers a sneak-peek into the event. Putting up billboards around the venue of your training room rental also starts well in advance. Here is how to create a buzz around your next event.

Build hype on social media

Statistics reveal that 2.31 billion Singaporeans are on social media today. This makes building excitement around your event, rather easy. You will have to start well in advance, posting pictures and posts that follow the agenda of your event. Create hash tags that people can use to easily access your content.

However, make sure there is a human element to your content. Respond individually to comments and queries as far as possible. Create an event page on Facebook to post any updates or changes to the event timings or your seminar room rental. Twitter can be used to share shortened URLs of the event page. Do remember to mention any notable speakers attending the event.

Offer value to your attendees

Organizers of any event should know their audience well, because it helps to offer value better. For instance, millennial have been seen to favor events with a solid policy of giving back to the society. In case you don’t know what it is that your targeted audience likes, start sending out relevant surveys in advance.

It is a good idea to have facilities like water dispensers, convenient washroom facilities, and food trucks. That is why you must choose the right training room rental.

Have strategies to engage the attendees

Whether you want to have a food truck or a band performance at the end of the event depends on the kind of event it is. However, these endeavors can help attract only a section of your targeted audience. To generate a buzz that works for other sections, make the event engaging and interactive. For instance, you can hold a quiz about your brand and offer attractive prizes to the winners. Another brilliant idea is to encourage attendees to share pictures and live videos of the event. Make sure the seminar room rental offers free Wi-Fi.

Monitor the event on-site and off-site

Generating buzz around the event does not stop once the event starts. Have two teams to monitor and record the event as it happens. The team at the venue can coordinate with the one off-site to engage with the audience and start trends. Post pictures of any special guests, and post snippets from speeches or interviews.

Invite any locally-based bloggers to cover your event. Offer free tickets and other incentives like discounts on your products and so on. The best part about inviting bloggers is that you could get a share of their niche audience. Get in contact with them and have them blog and generate interest about your event, days in advance.

hiring manager

Tips to Improve Your Company Culture

Setting a high standard for your company’s culture is imperative to employee retention and productive recruitment. Surveys reveal that companies that successfully achieve this can reduce staff turnover by more than 50%. The first step is to define your initial vision and mission and to communicate them to the employees. Right from using technology for boosting communication, to investing in the right training room rental, everything must be done to improve company culture. Here are 7 ways to do it.

Make transparency a policy

Transparency is positive not only for employees, but for the company. The reason why it makes a positive impact is that it allows employees honest insights into the operations of the company. Many also contend that it wins over employees’ trust. One way to embrace transparency is to implement modern collaboration and communication tools. Start a culture where successes and challenges are openly shared with employees.

Valuable contributions must be rewarded

Companies with a recognition-rich culture often have extremely low staff turnover rates. The first step is to identify certain behaviors and outcomes aligned with company success. These behaviors and outcomes must be regularly rewarded. However, do not make employee recognition too hard to achieve. Encourage peer recognition to reduce managerial overhead and build stronger relationships between coworkers.

Encourage strong relations between coworkers

It is true that stronger relationship at work is crucial for employee engagement, but it takes effort. Establish collision spaces for employee bonding. These can lead to chance encounters and unplanned interactions between coworkers, which actually improves performance. Work on engineering such spaces and situations.

Practice employee learning and training

A positive company culture also fosters the further training of employees. It not only boosts employee morale and increased productivity, but requires less supervision. Successful organizations provide 40 hours of training on a yearly basis. Companies commonly rent classrooms for employee training as well. Make sure your training room rental company provides facilities like 24X7 internet, electricity outlets, water cooler facilities and the like.

Allow employees to manage themselves

Employees never like to be micromanaged or excessively controlled at the workplace. It only does harm to company culture. Provide the right kind of training to help employees manage their responsibilities themselves. Flexible working hours, autonomous project teams, and opportunities for decision-making are a few ways to encourage employee autonomy. This can also help with establishing a healthy work-life balance.

Give and ask for regular feedback

Feedback shouldn’t be limited to the time when you rent classroom and provide training. Often, employees complain about getting vague and inauthentic feedback. Some employees fail to meet the organization’s expectations, and constructive feedback can help rectify any mistakes. Even more important is to provide it regularly, and not just at the end of the year.

Remember your core values

It is important to identify your core values first. They are much more than just your bulleted list of points on your ‘about us’ page. Take your time to arrive at a genuine set of core values to abide by in the years to come. Do not include something in this set just because it sounds trendy. A company’s core values will be those that align better to its goals.

How to Increase Your Event Ticket Sales

A lot goes into planning an event. It is important to publicize it extensively for ensuring maximum attendance. There is no point in having an event with empty seats staring at you! Right from the time you rent training room as a venue for your event, it is essential to have specifically chalked our publicity plans on paper. Plan a fortnight of publicity events at least. Here are some of the ways in which you can publicize your event and ensure maximum foot fall.

Create that Perfect Ecommerce Platform

Creating a website for the event is one of the first things to do. Use it as the perfect ecommerce platform for publicizing your event and also for sale for tickets. Once you have created the website, pick up a few specific aspects like the color of the register button, the headlines of the home page and so on and perform a testing of different variations to see what clicks and what needs to change. Be absolutely sure of every aspect of your site before you launch it.

Plan a Perfect Social Media Campaign

Once the webpage is up, waste no time in creating a perfect social media campaign for your event. Social is one of the most robust tools for spreading the word. Make sure you have created advertisements that are consistent in terms of content and carry necessary information for those wishing to attend. Plan an interactive presence on social media as well. You should be available for community engagement and for answering questions. Attempt to reach out to bloggers and those who can help in spreading the word. Make sure your advertisement campaign is good enough to cover as many channels as possible.

Street Marketing Might Work

Although this might have nothing to do with technology, street activations are surprisingly effective in selling more tickets and spreading the news. You can allot an afternoon for posting flyers and for distributing leaflets at stores near the venue where you have opted to rent seminar room. You can do a bit of research on the places to target for maximum results.

Incentivizing Referrals is a Great Idea

Asking for referrals is one thing and incentivizing them is quite another. Imagine how much your ticket sales will improve if each guest brought along another with him. You can offer free upgrade of seats with a referral or a coffee hamper or free refreshments or just about anything. This will motivate your confirmed attendees to bring along friends and acquaintances.

Starting a Blog

If you have the time, starting a blog is an excellent idea to find favor with search engines. You can post good quality keyword rich content on these blogs and highlight the speakers who would be attending your event. When the content is good and search engine optimized, it will enjoy good viewership.

Planning the event impeccably is what will see you through. From arranging to rent a training room, to finalizing the speakers and planning the publicity for the event, advance planning helps a great deal.

How to Engage Your Audience during a Meeting

A meeting only becomes fruitful when you have an attentive audience. With attention spans becoming shorter and shorter by the day, audience engagement has become a bigger challenge than it perhaps was. Every time you address a group, irrespective of whether it is small or large, you are actually competing with several distractions! Right from the time you rent training room, you need to have a plan in place for ensuring rapt attention. Here are some tips on how to get unflinching attention from your audience.

Have a goal

Have a goal for your address. What is it that you want from your audience? What kind of reaction do you wish to extract? Once you know this, your intention will also fall in line with your goal. Now, with the goal and intention in alignment, your actions including the voice, actions and gestures will be tuned to support it. And this is how establishing connect with your audience will become easier.

Show them the benefit

Every time a group attends a training program or a meeting, the most common question floating around in their mind would be “what will it do for me?” So, sensitizing them towards the tangible benefits of the address is a simple way to keep them hooked to your address. Don’t be embarrassed to state the benefits loud and clear.

Have a perfect start

If the audience connects with you in the first 30 seconds of your address, they are likely to remain connected throughout. So, plan a great start that will hook the audience almost immediately. You can use a popular saying, a great anecdote, or just throw in an interesting question for the audience to sit up and take note!

Being authentic helps

Adopting a high handed approach can be misconstrued as arrogance. Remember, it is important to be humble and authentic. No audience in the world can connect with loud and pompous statements. So, share your successes and achievements humbly. Success is never synonymous with superiority. Do not make false claims and allow your actions to speak louder than words.

Simple communication is the key

Words are meant to communicate your thoughts and ideas. If they are way too complicated and lofty, their essence is lost. Remember, an address is not for showing off your vocabulary. It is for getting the point across and maintaining connect with those listening to you. So, make sure you choose simple yet effective words and terms that are easier to understand.

Create a dialogue

A monologue can hardly hold the attention of listeners. A dialogue is better. So, when you are preparing the material for address, sprinkle in questions that can be placed before the audience. It can be ones seeking opinions or simply for asking their feedback. When you strike a dialogue with your audience every now and then, they automatically pay attention to what you are saying and choose to remain engaged at all times.

Planning a meeting impeccably is what will see u through. You will need to sift through seminar room rental for the ideal venue. The matter to be delivered should be prepared after much deliberation as well. A meeting where the audience engagement fails is a gross wastage of time, effort and resources.

 

To read our previous article, please click here.

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Top Tips for First-time Teachers

Teaching for the first time can prove to be a truly intimidating experience. First-time teachers often feel ill-equipped and overwhelmed, frustrated or even isolated. And this uneasiness is likely to last through the initial few sessions. In fact, every new lesson is likely to cause jitters for beginners. One good way to get used to these sessions is to opt for training room rentals and consider mock or demo lectures before the actual session. Here are some more tips for helping first-time instructors with their daunting task.

Learn More about the Target Group

The success of your classroom session will largely depend on the nature of the audience. So, it is of paramount importance to learn more about your class. If you are addressing university students, consider a bit of research about their profiles. This will help in preparing for the kind of questions they might ask and the level of training they would need. Similarly, if it is a training session for professionals, reading up on their qualifications, job roles etc, will help. Just like you will need to plan for training room rental and batch scheduling, it is equally important to plan your research schedule.

Determine the Course or Session Goal

Before you can start planning for the content, you need to decide on course goals you wish to achieve. Determining the goals in advance will make it easier to prepare the course content. Identifying the objective of the course will simplify the process of defining the mode of instruction, the evaluation process to be undertaken after the completion of the course, exams and so on.

Reach out to your Mentor

We all have that one teacher in our lives whose sessions remain etched in our memories forever. It is a very good idea to reach out to your mentor at this point in time to understand what it is in him or her that clicks. Ask more about teaching techniques, preparations before lessons, the manner in which student contact is established and so on. He or she would be the best person to inspire you.

Set Aside Time for Preparation

You can teach well only when you know enough. There is no alternative to preparing thoroughly for your session. The only way to respond to questions satisfactorily is to gather in-depth knowledge about the subject. So make sure you have time for preparing and revising.

Practice

Once you are through with the preparations, practice is essential. You can rent classroom and organize mock sessions with similar target audience groups. Holding practice sessions with friends is also a good idea. Be open for criticism. Pick up points for improvement and work towards perfecting them. These sessions are likely to make you more confident and much at ease. You can also record your own sessions and watch them later for more clarity on improvement areas.

Arrive Before Time

Arriving before time on the day of the actual event is the key to delivering a successful session. Plan your day beforehand. Arrive with ample time to spare. Gather yourself, get familiar with the classroom set up, test your equipment if needed, freshen up and be ready to deliver a top notch session!

Remember, being a teacher is a commendable profession where you impart knowledge and skills to those who need it. Be extremely proud of your duties and deliver the best performance you possibly can.

 

To read our previous article, please click here.