Brighton (UK), April 2011 - As the Comprehensive Spending Review cuts begin to bite, and the public sector braces itself, one Scottish council has shown it is possible to do more with less and win awards in the process. The City of Edinburgh Council Interactive Learning (CECil) project has so far achieved savings of £1.18m and transformed the delivery of workplace training in the municipality.
The CECil modules - in a diverse range of subjects including leadership, child protection, HR, and energy awareness - have reduced training time and enabled council experts to carry out vital frontline work. Furthermore, using eLearning rather than a classroom-based solution has resulted in cost-per-user savings of 740% and enabled training at a volume that would be impossible given the logistics of face-to-face training.
CECil, and its component parts, has scooped a variety of accolades, including silver at last week's COSLA Excellence Awards in the "Securing a Workforce for the Future" category.
Paul McGhee, Leadership and Development Manager for the City of Edinburgh Council says of the project, "It has enabled high-volume training delivery at lower cost and greater speed, facilitated a quicker response to educating policy and procedural change, and improved the quality and diversity of training and development options available."
"It has also freed up valuable time, enabling the corporate-learning team to move to a more consultancy-led, bespoke service, adding increased value across the organisation."
Charles Gould, Managing Director of eLearning specialist Brightwave, developers of the CECil platform, adds, "In these economically straitened times, it is encouraging to see the transformational impact that well-devised eLearning programmes can achieve. Increasingly, organisations in both the public and private sectors are beginning to recognise that eLearning can increase workforce performance across the board, as well as offer significant cost savings."
