Collaboration for successful e-learning in Worcestershire

Background:Like all local Authorities WCC is faced with many challenges over the next 5 years, particularly in terms of the availability of funding its current and future services. We also need to ensure we have a skilled and efficient workforce to deliver these services. Our response to this has been the introduction in 2009 of our Human Resources Strategy “Our People” closely followed by our BOLD programme.
Significant reductions are likely in public spending, as the government responds to the global financial crisis and recession. We anticipate that over the next three years (2011-14) we will have at the very best only 85% of the current budget i.e. a reduction of about £45m in total, but indications are that it could be much worse.Service Reform is at the heart of the BOLD programme, looking for alternative ways to meet customers' needs at lower cost. We will look for joined up One Council solutions, that simplify, standardise and share ways of working across the Council working together to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness, with partners where appropriate.We will not seek to continue to deliver services ourselves, if this can be done better, at lower cost, by others. We will explore options with partners, including enhanced-two tier with District Councils, and joint arrangements with the NHS and others.The BOLD Programme will be made up of about 30 projects over a three year period. The majority of these will be areas of front-line service delivery, focusing on the areas of greatest spend. There will also be a number of cross-Directorate projects, some focusing on service delivered across several Directorates, such as transport, and some focusing on support/back office functions. E-learning and blended learning solutions will have an important role to play towards ensuring we have a skilled and efficient work force. It will also be important for us to support those staff who may be out-placed as a result of these reforms, and need to find alternative career paths within the organisation, and in some cases outside of it.
Another strand of work being undertaken, involves all seven Councils in Worcestershire working closely together to look at more ways of sharing services, and improving efficiency.The Worcestershire Enhanced Two Tier Programme (WETT), plays to our collective strengths as a family of councils without compromising local focus and choice. By combining our expertise, we can create services that:Put the customer at the core of our service design and delivery Are as efficient as they are effective.The first programme under WETT to be realised involved the amalgamation of Trading Standards, regulatory services and licensing departments across the County and Districts. One service is now delivered by 120 staff instead of 165 at a single premises at a saving of £1.3 million. This has been achieved by reducing the management and admin but protecting specialists. Based in Bromsgrove/Redditch area which have also joined together to produce a combined management team under one chief exec, but still retaining their own political identities.More recently a new ICT shared services unit has been developed to bring together some, but not yet all of the ICT support staff across the County and Districts, again economies of scale will result in budgetary efficiencies.
Against this backdrop we have been working with Learning Pool since 2008 to start to develop e-learning across the County Council, supported by two clear business benefits of e-learning that were highlighted:That the increased use of flexible working means that staff will require some training to be available away from normal workplaces. This will be particularly relevant in relation to Health and safety Issues.That the availability of short and direct e-enabled learning will allow face-to-face learning to concentrate on issues where it is most effective. Ultimately this will lead to more effective learning as well as efficiencies which can expand the scope of learning and development.We identified a need to look at our organisational training needs in line with our new Corporate Plan, Our People Strategy and BOLD and undertook in February three TNA sessions across the whole authority with senior managers and the results of these sessions will be used to shape the new Learning and Development portfolio, with a mixture of face to face, blended and e-learning solutions.We have now developed the Worcestershire E-learning Zone that incorporates a range of repurposed courses from the Learning Pool core catalogue, content purchased from both Learning Pool and third party providers, and a range of new content created internally. The current content will be added to as we develop the priorities revealed by the TNA work, in particular the areas of leadership, succession planning and performance management.
In order that we can develop the identified learning solutions we will need to collaborate with both internal and external partners if we are to be successful.Internally we need to work with our subject specialists across the organisation to develop new content or repurpose existing content to reflect our specific training needs. The specialists create the content and the trained authors in the learning and development teams put it into Learning Pools authoring tool. The first project we worked on was commissioned by our HR department, covering the requirements of the 1998 Working Time Regulations to use with home care managers. e-learning module supported by case studies and a quiz which requires 70% pass rate. pilot of 8 staff has taken place. This is now rolling out across our homecare staff.
The latest content to be created was written by our County Ecologist is about biodiversity and covers the council's obligations for wildlife under the NERC act and related legislation for use initially with Property Services, but potentially for all staff whose work may potentially infringe the law. This is now available to all members of staff within the organisation.
Corporate InductionOne of our largest projects is Corporate induction.A project plan for redesigning corporate induction as an e-learning solution has been written . This includes a suite of modules such as safeguarding, equality and diversity, Understanding your organisation, health and safety, and IT induction. Some modules will be compulsory, whilst others will depend on the sector the individual is working within and their post in the organisation. A separate Senior managers e-induction suite will compliment the core programme.
Other new projects:Just trained 8 of the Learning & development Team and 1 from WHUB as authors to start building capacity. Projects they are working on include general introduction to the Learning Centre, Stress management and Eco-driving.There is also a big new project just starting, The Outplacement scheme, to support staff who may be at risk of redundancy as a result of the cutbacks, and may need support to apply for new jobs, compile CV’s, improve interview skills etc. We are looking at a possible blended solution for this, with e-learning plus a classroom based workshop to practice interview skills etcWe are also trying to secure funding to buy into Learning Pools Virtual Bus Tour, to support induction, but also to make it available to the general public to develop as a marketing tool for the services of the County Council.
The second area of collaboration is with our external partners. Against the background of the BOLD and WETT programmes, towards the end of last year we embarked on our first shared training project with the 6 Districts to look at Equality and Diversity learning provision.Being Different togetherWith funding from The Capacity Building Fund this project will provide a single equalities framework for Worcestershire and also meet the requirements of the Equality Standards for Local Government. Many strands to the project but in relation to training:Develop an equality and diversity training programme which will be an ongoing process through the development of materials and a ‘train the trainer’ programme to improve Councils’ performance on the Equality Standard for Local Government.Develop e-learning induction level equality training that can be shared amongst all partners hosted on a joint website. This is the aspect of the project I was involved with.
We used the LP quick build Equality and Diversity course branded with the project logo and purchased a separate learning platform to host the e-learning as well as provide a space for our District partners to share learning and development good practice. The success of this collaboration has resulted in interest has been shown by the districts to develop this partnership further to include other e-learning, particularly in relation to HR and Health & safety topics. This would have to be hosted on WCC DLE because of the funding restrictions linked to the Being Different Together project, which means the WHUB DLE as it currently exists cannot be used for anything else apart from the Equality training.It is therefore hoped we can reach some agreement with the Districts as part of the BOLD/WETT agenda to look at learning and development as a whole across the County and 6 Districts and build on the collaborative work achieved so far.
Recent reorganisation of the Learning and Development function has brought together Corporate Training, Social care training, and NVQ teams, together with health and safety and occupational health onto one site at the Learning Development and Well-being Centre in Worcester.This has enabled the teams to work more closely together, particularly in terms of developing e-learning solutions for a wide range of subject matter outside of the traditional management and personal skills training that was previously available. The social care team in particular were keen to look at a range of topics that could be incorporated into the portfolio they currently offer not only to WCC staff, but also under its obligation to the VIP’s (Voluntary, Independent and Private) sectors. This has enabled us to draw on the social care training budget to purchase the new Learning Pool Social care training package. We are now looking at how we can promote the new training portfolio and manage access to our DLE bearing mind lessons learnt from our work with the Districts.
Whether it was dealing with external partners, or other internal colleagues, there are a few lessons we have learnt along the way!Although no one partner is more important than another, regardless of size, you need clear leadership otherwise some decisions will never get made! So make sure that each project has a clearly identified project manager. However small, each project is important to those commissioning it, and you need to remain impartial.Spend time getting “buy in” from all stakeholders, not just those staff directly involved in the project, but the decision makers, i.e. their managers. With the WHUB this was the HR managers in each District; with internal projects it was the Heads of service and Directors. Think carefully about branding. We have a series of templates created that reflected the subject matter of the content. This helps the learner identify their particular learning pathways. Both our sites have their own identity, WHUB site does not reflect branding of one /all District(s). WHUB already had its own unique branding therefore this was used and also helped create more of a partnership feel for the site. The WCC site was designed to reflect the Corporate branding already available on our website. Also have a clear comms plan, work with internal comms team to sell the story to staff, each month we are focussing on learners in a different team highlighting what courses they have completed and the benefits they have found by using our e-learning portal. We are also trying to link in with council events, such as the Health Fair and using that as a hook to launch courses in that area.Be clear about your role in the project and your expectations of them (other partners). As lead officer I had a supporting role and was not there to do everything for them!Make sure each partner has just ONE named contact who passes on information, otherwise comms can break down, people get left out etc which hinders collaborative work. Similarly when decisions need to be made make sure all partners are involved but be clear that the project leader has the final say if no decision can be reachedYou need to check on progress regularly. Have a clear project plan that includes a review process. This will allow you to give other partners a gentle nudge if no progress is being made without seeming to be interfering.
Range of e-learning and blended learning solutions focussing on the outcomes from the Corporate TNA using internal subject specialists as content authorsMore partnership working with the Districts to develop other e-learning packages particularly around HR issuesWorking with the Voluntary, Independent and Private sector to deliver social care e-learningThank you for listening! – any questions?

Collaboration for successful e-learning in Worcestershire

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