The below blog is a translation from the original blog published in Polish. 

I am a fan of improvement. When I see that something is inefficient, my mind immediately gives me ideas about what can be done to skip some stage and to speed up another one. As you imagine, this does not always work, but quite a few actions bring results. The aftermath of my constant search for better efficiency is that I test various types of applications, tools, techniques and approaches that ultimately are supposed to make me work more comfortably, and because I spend quite a lot of time teaching others, today I want to share with you a set of tools that improve my work.

The magic of efficiency

The words: effectiveness, efficiency and productivity have already been used extensively in all possible languages, and thus their impact has dwindled away. But we have these concepts in the back of our mind and sometimes they come back to us. However, the question arises: How to understand these concepts in the context of the trainer's tools and work?

The dictionary defines effectiveness as the ability to achieve the intended results, and at the same time it is associated with the consistency of actions. Effectiveness to efficiency is also added by the amount of resources used, such as time.

I have prepared the list below based on my own experience and I can recommend all of these tools with full responsibility. These applications are tested, their basic versions are available free of charge and they are easy or very easy to use. In addition, they support almost the entire process of providing closed or open training, training groups and individuals, so regardless of whether you work individually, as a coach, or train hundreds of people at the same time, regardless of whether you train traditionally, use mixed approach or online — they may be useful to you and improve your work.

Tools that increase the efficiency of the trainer's work

1. Meeting planning — Doodle

In my trainer's work I often organize online meetings, video conferences or webinars. Prior to the discovery of Doodle, it was a nightmare to set a date when most of the training group could participate. If one person was OK with Tuesday at 16:00, then someone else would prefer Wednesday at 9:00. It would always make me want to tear my hair out, and finally, instead of one session for several people, I would do individual meetings. Because of this, I lost a lot of time and deprived the trainees of experiences related to learning in a group.

Naturally, Doodle helps me, not only in matters related to online training. Sometimes it is equally difficult to set a date for a physical meeting, conference or mentoring session.

The tool works 100% online and does not require any add-ons. It does not even require the user to register (but it's worth doing). At first, the website informs you how to set up a doodle, how to add dates and proposed meeting times, and which link to send to interested parties so that they can vote on the most convenient date.

When working with Doodle, it is essential that when you send a link for the vote, ask the participants to select all the dates when they can participate in the meeting, and not only the one date that perfectly fits their plans for the week. Thanks to this, you will find a date convenient for everyone much faster. Probably it will not be perfect, but good enough, and that’s what we care about.

The great added value of Doodle is also that all participants can have a preview of the voting results, and sometimes they are willing to change some of their plans to adapt to the most popular date.

I rate this tool very highly because I have not had any problems with it yet. It simply works and is so simple that it does not require any special training to use it.

Link: (link is external) http://doodle.com

2. E-mail communication - MailChimp

When someone mentions MailChimp, most people associate it with email marketing and sending newsletters, or in extreme cases, spamming others. If you also have such associations, you are mostly correct, because put simply the tool is used just to send emails to the list of people who agreed to it, for example, indicated on the website that they are interested in your training.

Personally, I use MailChimp for several purposes. Firstly, I use it mostly for e-mail marketing, but this activity is far enough from typical training activities that I do not want to focus on it at this point. Secondly, MailChimp helps me create a list of people interested in the given training. When I plan a new training, I am able to use this tool to create an online form, in which I attach a description of the planned activities and give the prospective candidates an option to leave their email address. Thanks to this, I am able to assess whether the proposed training may enjoy any interest in the future and whether it is worth implementing at all. In addition, this approach means that I do not spam all recipients of my newsletter, but I only send information about upcoming training to a dedicated list of people who are interested.

And here we move on to the third usage scenario. It is communication with a group of people who will take or have taken part in the training. As we all know, training is a process that begins with the interest and completes with the realization that developmental change has occurred. Of course, I could use a regular e-mail program instead of MailChimp, but this tool gives me an option of creating just one e-mail and automatic personalization (eg by adding the names in the right places) and sending it to the entire list of people. Such tricks can also be done in Outlook, but this is something that a standard e-mail application cannot do. This includes collecting data on who, when and on what device opened the e-mail and whether they clicked the link we mentioned. Such data is extremely important when communicating with people participating in an extended training program. In addition, the data gives the trainer feedback on the effectiveness of communication, and in some cases the ability to automate reminders.

This last issue, i.e. reminder automation is very important to me. Imagine the following scenario. You send an e-mail asking recipients to complete a pre-training competence quiz for training that begins in a month. In the first round, 20% of recipients click the Quiz link. The rest just read the content, or do not want to get involved. Fortunately, this was predicted and you send reminders about the quiz to all those who did not open the original e-mail, and to those who did not click on the link to remind them that the quiz is part of the training. All this can be done long before the training, and subsequently used in various groups (lists) of training participants.

If you train a lot and in stages, then such a tool can save you incredible loads of time and energy.

3. Training sign-up and billing of individual clients - Evenea

I got to know this tool a few years ago by organizing a series of conferences about online courses and e-learning. Evenea is a powerful tool to organize and handle events.

It offers the training participants to:

• familiarize themselves with the details of the event (date, place, description) on the dedicated website,
• process payments,
• receive confirmation in the form of a ticket,
• use the rebate code,
• receive a VAT invoice.

From the trainer’s perspective, it is a powerful tool that serves the back side of sales, i.e. provides the opportunity to set a price, promotion and billing method. For me, it is one of the better tools available with 100% functionality for handling ticket sales commission. Automation of sales, issuing invoices, printing tickets, managing discount coupons is very important to me, and the use of this tool is uncomplicated.

4. Monitor time spent on the project — Toggl

Using this application I began the struggle for my own efficiency. Toggl is a combination of a web application and a mobile app. The tool allows you to measure the time you spend on various projects and related tasks during the working day.
I started using the tool thanks to an international client who used it to manage the work of subcontractors. After completing the project, I installed the app on my phone, tracking out of curiosity, what I spend time on.
At the beginning my approach was very simple There were two categories in the tool: invoiced and non-invoiced time. In this way, after a few weeks I realized how much time spent on various activities that actually bring some money in, and how much time brings no income. In time the latter has developed into several different categories, but thanks to Toggl, I realized that a lot of non-invoiced activities I can and even I should give up if I want to be effective in my life.
The basic version of Toggl operates like a timer. You touch the icon on the phone and the application starts. You then touch the play button, select the project and the time starts to run in the background. You touch stop when your work on the project is finished. Reports are created automatically and you can see what your work week looks like.
Sometimes it's scary, but it's worth a try.

5. Automatic issuing of certificates — Accredible

The last tool I want to describe in this section is all about the activity I truly hate. Personally, I honestly hate issuing certificates to training participants, such as evidence of participation, certificates of completion and all other confirmations.

I am overwhelmed by the need to manage the correct data, emails, numbering, remembering, sharing and so on.

Fortunately, I found a tool that does this all for me. Initially the tool requires some getting used to. It is not as intuitive as it could be, but after a while you can work very effectively in it. You must start by creating a certificate or diploma, which you later connect with a group of participants where data such as name, surname and e-mail is stored. The last step is selecting from the group of people who are to receive the certificate and clicking the Send button.

A few moments later, all participants will receive an e-mail with a link to the dedicated page where they can do the following: preview the diploma, download it in PDF format, share the diploma on Facebook, or add it to the LinkedIn portal.

From the trainer's perspective, the interesting features of Accredible are: Information whether the trainee downloaded the certificate, posted it on LinkedIn, and whether they downloaded the PDF. You can also assign unique numbers to the certificates, as well as define the date to which the given certificate is valid.

In my opinion it is a great tool that helps in the management of certifications, and it can be an interesting promotional tool at the same time.

To summarize this short list I want to emphasise that the list is subjective, and these tools meet my specific needs and probably will not make all trainers happy. Nonetheless I do encourage you to check how they work, because they might save you dozens of hours a year. 

Author: Piotr Peszko — chemical engineer, university and corporate employee, entrepreneur. The organizer of the EduCamp conference and founder of the e-Learning postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Educational Studies. Author of the blog www.blog.2edu.pl. EPALE Ambassador.

Do you train adults? Share your experience! Register and join the EPALE Community!

Futher reading: The Cloud Trainer or About Tools that Improve your Work (part 2)