Two in a week! Once again, today’s post comes courtesy of our prolific Product Manager, Lorna Tyrtania
“Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error” - If ever a quote perfectly summed up the latest challenge we’re hearing, it must be this one from the French playwright Molière. I didn’t know they had elearning courses back in the 17th century, but I’m guessing that unreasonable expectations around the speed of delivering elearning content must have inspired his words (or do I need to get out more?).
There’s no doubt that elearning does speed things up. For example, when a complete Level 2 course on Foundation Food Safety is delivered through face-to-face training it takes one full day in the classroom. eLearning, on the other hand, means that you don’t need lunch breaks, coffee breaks or to spend time travelling to and from the training venue. There’s no time wasted on giving out handouts or workbooks either.
These are the easy time savings. If, as MindLeaders ThirdForce does, you also begin courses with diagnostic pre-tests which focus the training on the learner’s skill gaps, you save more time. A day spent in the classroom can be cut down to a few hours that fit around the learner’s schedule.
But saving time with elearning shouldn’t mean compromising the learning itself. If a learner is encountering a topic for the first time, you need to set aside the hours necessary to cover the full range of content they need to know to be legally compliant. If that takes more time, then it’s time invested well.
We work closely with HABC to ensure our elearning courses are fully mapped to the required level of training, and they endorse us each year to confirm that. Rather than just waving the course under a learner’s nose, we need them to engage with and truly understand the content so that they’ll be able to retain it and actually apply it in the workplace. If a new and inexperienced member of staff in a pub, hotel, restaurant or care home takes only an hour to ‘pass’ a Food Safety or Health and Safety course is that a win? I’d say you’ve won a skirmish (not even a battle) but you may well lose the war!
When compliance training is undertaken in a race against the clock or just as a box-ticking exercise, you risk leaving your employees exposed to making mistakes. Business reputations that have taken a long time to establish can be shattered by a serious food safety or health and safety infringement.
Check out our new White Paper “Using elearning to support due diligence: Defend your Food Hygiene and Health and Safety Record” to see the latest key statistics on Food Safety and Health and Safety enforcement, then decide whether it’s worth cutting corners on what your learners need to know and the time they need to be given to understand and apply their new learning.
