But again, like so many, we came together as a community to make online training happen when it became clear that the huge disruption to everyone’s lives was here for the long term.

Between July 2020 and August 2021, we ran 61 sessions online, training 330 people from sectors as diverse as health, prisons and women’s charities. The team at STORM^® worked to become experts in technology we hadn’t even heard about months before. We provided real-time support to participants at the start of every training session, fixing the many issues that working online can bring. We learned about creating breakout rooms for smaller discussions and importantly, bringing everyone back together again!

It was a huge undertaking by the team here at STORM^®, but equally daunting and new for the consultants who deliver our training. 

Jez Spencer soon became used to this very new way of delivering. He told us, 

“It was a different way of using my brain in that I was delivering content and managing participants (such as ensuring emotional safety) as well as managing the technology side – supporting participants, explaining functionality, managing breakout rooms, videoing. Once I was used to it is became quite natural though.”

Feedback from participants has been very positive. In some cases, it made training more accessible for those who could not complete face to face training, despite the pandemic. We do plan to continue to offer online training, for example to support services that are delivered primarily online or remotely. But of course, we will always highly value the richness of being face to face and where possible, that will continue to be our core offer.

Thank you to everyone at STORM^® Skills Training for bringing our work online; to Kirsten who must have fixed hundreds of tech glitches, to our customers for their patience and good humour when things got tricky and to our brilliant consultants, who made it all happen so successfully.