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The trap of in-person training: higher cost and lower productivity
Álvaro Martínez
Inbound Specialist
Digitization
The trap of in-person training: higher cost and lower productivity
In many companies, internal training still depends on the same model: in-person sessions where a trainer repeats the same explanations over and over to each new group of employees. Printed manuals, PDF presentations, and long sessions are part of a ritual that consumes more hours than anyone would like to admit.
The problem is that this system, aside from being outdated, creates a hidden cost that hinders productivity and limits business growth. Every time the company expands or updates a process, HR departments must multiply their efforts. What should be a mechanism for scaling knowledge ends up becoming an operational and financial bottleneck.
While it’s true that the face-to-face method brings valuable benefits such as real-time Q&A and stronger trainer–employee connections, it’s also true that basing all your company’s training processes on this method is an unnecessary risk. It comes with a series of logical limitations that can make business expansion harder:
In the medium term, this model doesn’t just create inefficiency — it also wears down the training teams themselves. Far from adding value, it ends up generating negative effects for both employees and the company.
Moving your training programs online isn’t a trend or a long-term project — it’s an immediate necessity. Every month that the in-person model remains in place, the company loses agility compared to those that have already made the shift. Here are some of the main reasons why you should embrace digital training:
In this context, digitalization isn’t just an improvement — it’s the only way to ensure that training grows with the business rather than holding it back.
New technologies offer far more practical and effective resources than traditional formats. Two stand out in particular: video and interactive presentations.
On one hand, audiovisual formats generate much higher retention than text. According to Staffbase (2025), employees remember 95% of a message delivered through video, compared to just 10% when reading it. Additionally, video can be archived and revisited whenever needed, reducing costs and avoiding repeated sessions for each new employee.
On the other hand, interactive content adds a crucial layer of value: measurement. Embedding questions within a video or dynamic presentation allows you to verify employee understanding and identify where attention drops. This not only increases effectiveness but, like audiovisual materials, eliminates the need to repeat training sessions in the future.
Together, these formats turn training into a more engaging, measurable, and scalable resource — one that frees training teams from repetitive tasks while ensuring that knowledge stays within the organization.
Internal training challenges are not unique — they repeat across industries. Below are the most common cases and how to solve them through a more agile, measurable digital model.
Onboarding processes often require repeating the same session several times a month. Training teams spend hours explaining the same content to different groups, and still struggle to ensure consistent messaging.
By turning those sessions into reusable visual capsules, new employees can access key content from any device, always updated and without depending on the trainer’s availability.
Each update to regulations or processes forces teams to redo manuals and resend new PDFs. The result is a mix of outdated versions, unopened emails, and accumulating doubts.
Digitalizing these materials into interactive formats allows you to update a section in seconds and ensure the entire organization always accesses the latest version, without confusion or duplicates.
In industries with high turnover, conveying essential technical knowledge is a challenge — especially when the supporting materials are dense presentations or multi-page PDFs that employees barely retain.
Turning this content into short, interactive audiovisual capsules increases attention and comprehension, while freeing training teams from having to repeat the same explanation over and over.
Digitalizing internal training should be a must for any company. Continuing to rely on a repetitive, in-person model not only increases costs — it also slows the company’s ability to adapt and grow. While trainers repeat the same content again and again, the organization loses agility and falls behind competitors who have already gone digital.
If you lead teams or manage internal training, sooner or later you’ll need to modernize your processes. Today, tools like Vidext make this transition simple and efficient: turning static documents into dynamic presentations or interactive videos with voiceovers, traceability, and real-time analytics. A way to free teams from repetitive tasks and let them focus on what truly drives the organization forward.