Steve Day from Rotherham Council discusses in-depth the local authority's approach to e-learning and how it fits with their work force development plans. He also touches upon the efficiency savings and the challenges they had to overcome.
What’s your vision for e-Learning?
e-learning helps support our Excellence agenda and underpins our corporate, workforce and ICT strategies and vision, and the Council priority “Rotherham Achieving”, which is about developing talent in the organisation.
What’s your current e-learning activity?
We’re climbing the ladder! We’re well supported and I’ve no doubt we’ll get to the top with the right support and resources. We’ve launched elearning for priority areas and continue to build our offering.
What challenges are you facing at the moment?
Well you won’t be surprised if I say resourcing issues! However getting buy in from Line Managers is also key.
What challenges have you overcome so far?
Getting to grips with Authoring and Instructional design. Being experienced in course design as a trainer helped me, but I find the only way to find the quiet time needed is to work from home.
What’s been successful so far?
We’ve found that involving users is a great way to get them on board. We have L&D advocates and we’re developing staff in e-learning authoring roles.
We ran our first internal authoring workshop which was supported by an e-Learning module I designed, with an L&D Co-ordinator, which is an interesting development for us.
How does e-learning fit into your Workforce Development Plan?
It’s central to our skills and capacity building, linking to our management development programme, employee generic learning needs and Elected Member development.
It also supports organisational development, by familiarising staff with new technology, as well as supporting the rest of our L&D and Performance Management framework.
How do you evaluate your learning?
Evaluation is essential! Based on the Kirkpatrick model we measure at all levels, particularly individual, as part of the PDR process. Evaluation forms an integral part of workforce planning.
What about efficiency savings?
We’ll build ROI models for some of the blended courses we’re developing. We’ve launched our first blended e-learning module (Recruitment and Selection refresher) to replace the current ½ day training course. It’s possible to analyse the noncashable efficiencies from this new approach.
How do you get Managers to buy in to Learning and Development?
L&D is integral to our performance management and driven by continuous improvement. We also have an active Elected Members L&D Panel supporting the development of our Elected Members.
e-learning is one of the tools available to support L&D across the Authority.
We are an improving well 3 Star authority, and aim to be a 4 Star in the next round of CPA, having just missed out in the last round of Corporate Performance Assessment. All our work in Strategic HR supports the Community Strategy and Corporate Plan and Investors in People. Our corporate RMBC logo says it all – “Where Everyone Matters.”