The sharing economy has evolved beyond car rides and used clothing and has arrived at the office building – but what does that mean for your training sessions?

In fact, both companies and employees alike can not only benefit from but genuinely enjoy offsite meetings, even when training is something they viewed previously as boring. It’s obvious why these meetings are popular – but are they worth more than the typical boardroom training session. 

Check out all the ways that offsite locations can make your training and development more efficient below. For those more interested in who is making these types of meetings popular and why, click the link here for a reader-friendly and informative infographic.

Make your employees feel important

During a training session, it can be easy for employees to feel like show-dogs learning to jump through hoops – but without the treats. When employees learn new skills to improve customer service or learn to use a different computing software, the benefit to their boss is obvious; it is harder for them to see training as something that benefits more than just their employer’s bottom line.

Taking employees offsite for their training makes them feel invested in. They’ll be impressed by the unique space as well as the time and money spent planning the event, leading them to truly feel like an asset to the company rather than a cog in the machine.

Employees who feel valued are more likely to be open to learning new skills with excitement rather than with content or lack of focus…and also less likely to leave a company that invests in their personal development.

Prevent low interest levels

It’s nothing new that training sessions are typically looked upon as boring and keeping employees engaged with the learning material is no easy task. The new software, skill or technology they’re working with will definitely help your business – but only if all of your employees implement their training well.

Renting a unique venue for a training session is a great way to make sure your employees stay focused on the material; a stylish and well-designed meeting room is the perfect environment to keep employees stimulated while learning.

Paying attention to new material becomes less boring in a thoughtfully decorated space as opposed to the nearly-empty white-walled office. Offsite meeting rooms, which are most often private spaces and studios, are more inviting than traditional office settings and gets employees relaxed and ready for new material instead of anxious or annoyed at the task.

Break the routine

Another key to getting your colleagues interested in training is to break the routine. Employees aren’t especially excited to talk over to the same Monday morning meeting room as always, have a training session, and walk back to their desk to start plugging away at the things they just learned.

Traveling to a new location leaves the dread and dust back at the office and gives employees a fresh feeling and an enthusiasm towards the new experience. Changing up the training and development routine can give your employees the motivation and excitement they need to learn quickly and eagerly (which increases the chance they’ll retain the info)!

Boost your employer/employee relationships

It’s been proven that companies with happy employees outperform their competitors, but how to achieve employee happiness is a bit more debated in HR circles. Scheduling an offsite training session is an easy way to make T&D enjoyable. Employees will also look forward to the session with a bit of wonder, like students on a field trip.

When arriving to the meeting, the atmosphere is sure to be buzzing with adventure and appreciation for the new experience. The new, more fun way to train employees is a sure-fire way to improve the employer-employee relationship as well as boosting the reputation of your brand amongst existing (and potential future) employees.

With so many techniques on the market that claim to increase the productivity of training and development sessions, it’s not always clear which method will be worth the time and money spent trying. Yet offsite meeting rooms are quite a small expense compared to the optimism they can yield from employees. Since training is an inevitable part of business improvement, there is no extra ‘time off’ or cancelled operation hours associated with training and development – the only expense is the price of meeting room rentals.

With the rise of the sharing economy and the digital ease of booking online, training room rentals are available with wide spectrum of pricing and with very little effort involved in searching and reserving. Thanks to the ever-growing tech industry, the road to making your training and development sessions is stationed on Easy Street.