Building Routine, Building Belonging. Why In-Person Training Creates Real Change
The Remote Work Mistake
When the pandemic forced training online, something shifted in how we thought about training delivery. If professionals could work from home, surely people could learn new skills from home?
The logic seemed reasonable. But it confused two different things: doing work you already know how to do versus learning something that requires you to fundamentally change how you see yourself.
You can deliver digital content remotely. You can teach new software features remotely. What you cannot do remotely is rebuild someone's belief in themselves. And that's what digital skills training actually needs to accomplish. We made a deliberate choice five years ago, we removed our remote option entirely. Not because virtual training is bad for everything. But because it's the wrong tool for what we do. This blog is for funders who are considering virtual training because it's "more scalable" or "reaches more people." We want to be clear about what you'd be giving up.
What In-Person Training Actually Creates
When people show up to training in person, five things happen that cannot happen virtually:
1. Routine and Structure
Long-term unemployment doesn't just cost people jobs. It destroys routine. Days blur together. Sleep patterns shift. Motivation evaporates. The structure of showing up somewhere, at a specific time, with a specific purpose creates something that unemployment erases: rhythm.
The first week of in-person training is often just about rebuilding that rhythm. Getting up at a set time. Commuting. Being part of a group. Working specific hours. This matters more than most people realise—especially for long-term unemployed participants.
Virtual training can't create this. You can log in from bed. You can attend sporadically. There's no forcing function pushing you into routine. And routine is foundational to the confidence that leads to employment.
2. Belonging and Social Proof
Watching someone else figure something out changes what you believe is possible for you. It's one thing to have a trainer tell you "you can do this." It's another thing entirely to sit next to someone who looked just as confused as you yesterday and now they're building a functioning website.
This is social proof. It's one of the most powerful confidence-builders available. And it only happens in person.
In virtual training, everyone is in their own home. You don't see peers struggle. You don't see peers succeed in real time. The trainer tells you "others are figuring this out" but you don't experience it directly. The psychological impact is completely different.
3. Real-Time Response and Relationships
When someone's confidence is crumbling—and it always does at some point during challenging training—a trainer who knows them personally can intervene. They can see the shift in someone's face. They can pull them aside and have a real conversation. They can push them when they need pushing. They can reassure them when reassurance matters.
This relationship is built through presence. You cannot build genuine relationship through a screen. You can build transactional interaction. But belief in someone — real, personal belief — requires presence.
Virtual training loses this entirely. A trainer on a Zoom call has no idea that someone is about to quit. They don't see the moment of breakdown. They don't get to have the conversation that changes someone's mind.
4. Accountability That Matters
There's a difference between accountability to a computer and accountability to people sitting next to you.
When you're in a room with the same 15 people for five weeks, you build relationships with them. When someone commits to something and then shows up and does it, the other people see that. When someone struggles and gets support, it matters because it comes from people, not from a system.
This creates accountability that's psychologically meaningful. You don't want to let your group down. You want to show up because these people are counting on you. Virtual training removes all of that. You're accountable to no one but yourself, and self-accountability breaks down precisely when people need it most.
5. Embodied Learning
Humans don't learn by absorbing information. We learn through our bodies. We learn through movement, through spatial memory, through physical interaction with tools and spaces.
When someone sits at a real computer and builds a real website—feeling the keyboard, moving the mouse, seeing the immediate result of their actions—it becomes embodied knowledge. They remember it differently. They believe it differently.
Virtual training where someone's laptop is their training tool often produces more remote learning experience. They're learning on a screen, about things that happen on screens, in a way that's abstracted. The embodied knowledge never develops the same way.
This is why in-person digital skills training produces different outcomes than virtual digital skills training—even when the content is identical.
Why Virtual Training Fails at Confidence-Building
We're not saying virtual training can't work for some things. Online courses are great for people who already believe in themselves and just need knowledge. They're fine for professional development when someone's already employed and confident.
But for the population most councils are trying to help—long-term unemployed people who've had their confidence eroded, self-employed people struggling with imposter syndrome about marketing—virtual training is the wrong tool.
Virtual training can:
Transfer knowledge ✓
Create certificates ✓
Reach more people ✓
Virtual training cannot:
Build genuine belonging
Create real-time relationship
Rebuild routine and structure
Deliver social proof
Generate accountability that sticks
And those are exactly the things that change outcomes.
What In-Person Training Costs (And Why It's Worth It)
Here's the honest truth: in-person training is more expensive. You need a physical space. You need trainers present full-time. You can't scale to 200 people simultaneously. Logistics are harder.
But you get outcomes. And outcomes are why you're funding training in the first place.
The maths are simple: if virtual training costs 30% less but produces 50% fewer employment outcomes, it's not actually cheaper. It's just shifting the cost from training to ongoing unemployment support, lost productivity, and unmet potential.
In-person training costs more upfront but delivers real change. That's the deal funders should be evaluating.
What We Require of In-Person Training
We're not saying all in-person training is equally effective. But if you're evaluating in-person training providers, here's what matters:
Cohort size small enough for real relationships (We keep ours at 12-15. You can't build belonging in a room of 50.)
Same trainer and same group every day (Not rotating instructors, not people dropping in. Consistency builds relationship.)
Hands-on, real-world projects (Not exercises. Not simulations. Real work that creates real results.)
Intentional community building (Not incidental. The belonging is actively cultivated.)
Flexible but structured (People can't just bail, but the programme adapts to real-world demands.)
If an in-person programme has these elements, it will cost more than virtual training. It should. You're buying something that actually works.
The Funder's Choice
You can fund virtual training that's scalable, cheap, and produces completion certificates. You'll get good numbers for your report.
Or you can fund in-person training that's more expensive, smaller-scale, and produces actual employment and business growth. You'll get real outcomes.
Both exist. Both cost money. The question is what you want your investment to produce.
We believe that belonging, routine, relationships, and embodied learning aren't nice-to-haves in digital skills training. They're essential. Which is why we deliver them in person, and why we refuse to compromise on that regardless of pressure to scale or reduce costs.
If you're looking for partners who will — if they'll tell you virtual is "just as good" because it's cheaper or easier to deliver — you'll find them. But you'll be funding training that doesn't actually change lives the way in-person training can.
That's the choice. That's what we believe funders need to understand.