Synchronous vs Asynchronous Training for Remote Teams
Bradford R. GlaserRemote team management means variables. The training format question alone can take up far more time and energy than anyone plans for. Different time zones break up availability, budgets put a ceiling on live facilitation, and your employees all arrive with different schedules and their own preferences for how they learn.
The stakes have gone up quite a bit over the past few years. Remote work stopped being a temporary fix a long time ago - it's just how most teams work now, and L&D has had to keep pace with that change. A live session that half the team can't even log into sends the wrong message. A self-paced module with no actual structure or accountability will quietly disappear from everyone's to-do list by Thursday.
The training format choice has a direct effect on retention, on how fairly the training reaches different parts of the world and on how far the L&D budget actually goes - even though teams treat it as a logistical afterthought. The right choice does depend on a few main variables - the content that needs to be taught, where the team sits across time zones, and how much live interaction a particular skill needs. They don't usually line up neatly on their own. Without some deliberate planning up front (even a well-designed program can underdeliver for a large portion of the team), it's an expensive miss for everyone involved.
Let's talk about these training styles so your remote team can get the most out of them.
- Enhance remote teamwork
- Improve team communication
- Strengthen remote managerial skills
Table of Contents
- The Real Difference Between These Two Training Formats
- Why Async Is the Default for Remote Teams
- Why Some Skills Still Need a Live Session
- Blend the Two Formats Into One Program
- Why Async Courses Are Hard to Finish
- Keep Your Remote Learners on Track
- Find a Format That Fits Your Team
- The Best Format Depends on the Situation
The Real Difference Between These Two Training Formats
Synchronous training happens in real time - live video calls, virtual workshops, or instructor-led sessions where everyone shows up at the same time. Asynchronous training works the other way around, and it lets each learner move at their own pace through recorded videos, written guides or self-paced courses.
That said, the differences between these two run deeper than their schedules. Live sessions do a much better job of building connections, and they make it quite a bit easier to ask questions right when something doesn't quite make sense. A shared space (even a virtual one) has everyone more tuned in and engaged in a way that pre-recorded content can't match. The Association for Talent Development actually supports this - their studies show learner engagement is one of the biggest differences between the training that sticks and the training that's forgotten by Friday.
Asynchronous formats do give up some of that live-session energy. But what you get in return is flexibility and consistency. Every learner goes through the exact same material in the exact same way - no detours, no content drift based on whatever questions came up mid-session. For learners who need a bit more time to sit with the new information before it finally clicks, that structured experience does a better job of making the material stick.
LinkedIn's 2023 Workplace Learning Report found that most organizations use a combination of formats instead of locking into just one, which makes sense, because neither format has the upper hand in every situation. Live sessions usually work best for active practice, real-time feedback and team alignment. Self-paced modules are a much better fit when you're trying to give learners the time and space to absorb and revisit material at their own speed.
The format itself is almost never the problem. What I see in most cases is a perfectly fine format that's just been paired with the wrong type of learning.
Why Async Is the Default for Remote Teams
A team spread across multiple time zones will have a hard time finding a single meeting window that works for everyone. There's no convenient overlap between cities like Sydney and Toronto, and no amount of schedule adjustment will create one.
Asynchronous training is the most sensible default for that setup. Recorded lessons, written guides and self-paced modules all give each person a chance to learn at a decent hour (not at 6 AM or 11 PM), which matters far more than it gets credit for.
When a team member's only option to finish training is to log on in the middle of the night, you're telling them that their schedule and their comfort just don't matter. Remote teams already face enough obstacles to actual inclusion, and friction like that (even when it seems easy to forget) builds up over time.
Async formats also give everyone the room to move at their own pace. If a team member needs to re-watch a section or step away between modules, they can do that without delay for the rest of the group - that flexibility legitimately does mean better retention and a much less stressful experience.
That said, live synchronous training does have its place in a remote team's training strategy. Real-time conversation and a genuine shared experience can be helpful when the situation calls for them - those moments deserve protection. The goal is to be more intentional with which one you actually default to.
Why Some Skills Still Need a Live Session
Async training has plenty going for it - and for most use cases, it delivers. Leadership development is one area where it starts to run into some friction, though. The ability to manage others, have hard conversations and earn the trust of a team is not something you can absorb from a slide deck or a pre-recorded module alone. A video can cover the concepts just fine. What it can't do is tell you where you went wrong right then or why your response didn't land the way you intended. That real-time feedback is a big part of what actually makes the learning stick.
Conflict resolution training has the same issue. What makes these sessions work is that participants get to role-play messy scenarios - they push back, respond on their feet and have to handle whatever comes up.
A video watched alone at a desk on a Tuesday afternoon just can't replicate that unpredictable dynamic.
Live technical troubleshooting is another big upside worth mentioning. When a learner gets stuck, an instructor can ask follow-up questions and then re-explain the material from a fresh angle, right there.
Pre-recorded content doesn't have that flexibility - it gives the exact same explanation every time, whether the learner is following along or very lost.
CPR training is an example of this - you probably wouldn't want to learn it from a pre-recorded video alone. Skills like this do need a live person there with you to watch what you are doing, catch your mistakes and push you until you get it right. Live training is harder to coordinate - the scheduling part alone can be a challenge. For high-stakes learning, it is the better option.
Blend the Two Formats Into One Program
There's a name for this in academic circles - it's called the flipped classroom, and it's a model worth paying attention to. Learners go through the core material on their own time first and then arrive at the live sessions already up to speed - ready to ask questions, work through practice scenarios and dig into the harder concepts together.
The payoff is that the live session time opens up dramatically. A facilitator who used to spend a full hour walking the room through a topic now has that same hour free for something more helpful. The Q&A gets to go deeper, group discussions actually have more room to breathe, and practice activities finally get the floor time they deserve instead of being crammed in at the last minute.
That said, this model only works when the async content is worth doing. If the pre-work is thin or is far too easy to skim without retaining any of it, learners are going to arrive at the live session without the foundation they need - and the whole structure falls apart pretty fast from there. The async piece needs to pull its weight first - otherwise the live session doesn't have much to build on.
The biggest mistake most teams make with this setup (and I see it all the time) is treating the async content like an afterthought. A quick video or a slide deck with narration tacked on won't get the job done on its own. Learners need to get enough out of that pre-work to arrive at the live session with something to contribute - a question, a point of view or at a minimum a rough sense of what they're about to practice. When that pre-work piece is done right, the live sessions practically run themselves.
Why Async Courses Are Hard to Finish
One issue tends to derail remote training programs, and it's better to address it first before we get into the fixes.
Async training has a completion problem. Self-paced courses sound great in theory - you give everyone the flexibility to learn on their own schedule, and everyone wins. The catch is that research has shown time and time again that when learners are left to finish something on their own time, most of them just never do it.
Most of us have at least one unfinished online course buried in our browser history - maybe even still open in a tab. Your employees are in that exact same position, except the stakes are a little higher.
A couple of factors usually fuel this pattern. The first is urgency - or rather, the total absence of it. When there's no deadline, and no one is waiting on you, it's pretty easy to push the module off to tomorrow and then the next day and so on. The second driver is isolation. In-person training puts everyone in a room together, and the proximity builds a natural momentum that moves the group forward. Async training doesn't have that, and without it, motivation tends to quietly fade.
This is just what tends to happen when external structure disappears. A course with no check-ins, no accountability and no penalty if you fall behind is a course that's very easy to push aside. Remote employees already have competing goals on their own, and without some structure in place, a training course is usually one of the first to get dropped.
Keep Your Remote Learners on Track
Remote teams can vary wildly in their course completion rates - some hit 90%, and others barely crack 20%. The difference between them almost never traces back to the quality of the training content itself. In most cases, it's a structural problem.
The cohort model is one of the most effective options for this. The basic idea is that you group your learners together and give everyone the same deadlines instead of letting each person start and finish on their own timeline. That shared schedule builds a light but very real sense of accountability - it's something solo self-paced learning just can't produce on its own.
Message boards work the same way. A learner who knows that their classmates can see if they actually showed up is more likely to get involved. That social layer can turn a passive experience into something with a bit more substance - something that demands commitment.
Progress check-ins are another worthwhile part of that picture. A short message from a manager or a team lead (even just a line or two) is usually all it takes to pull a learner back on track before they fall too far behind. The effort it takes to send one is minimal, and the effect on the person receiving it can be quite significant - it's the pattern that I see come up more than almost anything else in remote learning environments.
The common thread running through all of this is pretty simple - async training does its best work when there's at least a light layer of structure holding everything together. Learners still move at their own pace, and they still have the flexibility that async is known for - but with checkpoints built into the experience and a real community around them. Take all of that away, and even well-made content tends to get abandoned - not because anything was wrong with it, but because there was nothing there to keep learners moving forward.
Find a Format That Fits Your Team
The right training format can depend on a few honest questions about your team and your content - if your learners are in the same place or spread across multiple locations, and how much real-time back and forth the material actually needs. Harder topics (the ones where learners likely have follow-up questions or need to go through a scenario) usually do better in a live setting. It's not that live is always the right call. It's more that some content does need a person there to even make sense of it.
Take a hard look at your team - not the version of your team you wish you had. When half your team members are spread across different time zones and already pulled every which way, a training built around one shared calendar slot is prioritizing the format over the learner. That strategy almost never lands the way you want it to.
Budget and available time are part of this, too. A well-put-together async course takes time and money to get right, and not every team or organization has access to either. A structured live session is usually the more sensible way to go for those with tighter constraints - and there's nothing wrong with going that direction.
The harder question comes up when the format and the content are a bad match. A one-way video on something like nuanced compliance training can leave your audience more confused than when they started. A live session built around something procedural ends up being a waste of everyone's time. Neither of these is a small problem.
Take a minute to look at what you're working with before you settle on a format. Try to remember if the material needs learners to talk it through or just needs to be laid out in a way that's easy to follow, and if your team has room to show up for something live or would do better at their own pace. Those two questions are enough to point you in the right direction in most cases.
The Best Format Depends on the Situation
The teams that actually pull this off aren't the ones with the biggest L&D budgets or the most advanced tools. What sets them apart is that they stopped taking format for granted and started treating it as a choice worth making. A few situations do call for everyone in the same virtual room at the same time. Others are a much better fit for a well-built module that each person can work through at their own pace. In some cases, it can depend on one factor - whether anyone stopped to ask which format made sense for that situation.
No format wins every time (it's fine) - that's what building training for teams with actual constraints looks like. The goal was never about picking a side. What it's always been about is matching the right format to what the situation calls for - that call has to be made with intention every time, as your team and your content change.
Remote teams need more than training to stay in touch and on track - and this challenge doesn't stop at format. The gap tends to show up in how managers lead the employees they don't get to see every day (it's why at HRDQStore we built our Managing Offsite Employees courseware with just that in mind) - it gives managers customizable tools (trust-building frameworks, stronger communication resources and strategies for keeping dispersed teams together) and it's available in virtual, classroom and self-study formats to fit whatever way your team learns best.
