Southampton (UK), June 2007 - Guinness Trust is just one of a number of companies now seeing the benefits of developing their own online training courses. The Trust is a nationwide housing association originally founded by the great-great grandfather of the Guinness Brewery to "improve the condition of the poorer classes of the working population of London". Being a charity, it is important for the Trust to keep the costs of training down.
The Training department started to look at other ways of delivering training apart from the traditional classroom style. ELearning was presented as a way to provide a greater range of training opportunities to support professional and personal development.
The Guinness Trust decided that developing their own eLearning courses would be a good way to update staff on new legislation. With an eye on cost-effectiveness, Guinness Trust chose the new rapid authoring tool from Jenison, Perform, to develop their own courses. The first project was the Age Discrimination legislation, which became law on 1st October 2006.
The course was developed in a matter of days and is now a learning module that all managers and anyone who is likely to be involved in recruitment are required to complete. The Guinness Trust has found that staff are happy to undertake the eLearning courses and are now focusing on internal marketing to achieve management buy-in around the country, as well as developing further courses.
Reflecting on his experience of launching eLearning at Guinness Trust, Steve Mullings, Learning and Development Manager, outlined the benefits he had found for the Trust. "At Guinness Trust, we have found that implementing eLearning has reduced our training costs and reduced the time out of the office for staff. The online courses enable staff to work at their own pace, and the online mechanism enables us to bring staff up to date on changes in legislation and company practice quickly."
One of the Guinness Trust's objectives for using eLearning was to be completely independent in the development of their own courses. If, however, organizations prefer not to start completely from scratch, the Perform tools work well to customise Jenison's new range of management courseware Management Milestones - Essentials. Once developed with Perform, any changes or additions that will make the course specific and more appropriate to your organisation are easy to add. The easy-to-use template-based structure means that courses can be developed without needing any programming skills.
Guinness Trust is also a member of the Charity Learning Consortium, a network formed to provide support among voluntary organisations to take advantage of cost-effective, market-leading eLearning courses.
