BUPA benefits from e-learning

BUPA benefits from e-learning

An e-learning program, developed for international health-care provider BUPA by the e-learning producer Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), has reduced training time by 40 percent, cut travel costs significantly and is proving so popular with BUPA staff that only one person has requested the classroom-delivered training alternative to e-learning since that program was introduced last June.

The program teaches BUPA staff how to operate their Blackberry personal digital assistants (PDAs) efficiently. It has reduced the training time for this from two and half hours in a classroom to one and half hours of e-learning – with consequent reductions in training-related travel times, which averaged four hours per trainee.

Tiina Paju-Pomfret, manager of BUPA’s business-technology training (BTT) department, explained: “BUPA staff who spend time traveling and need to be contactable via e-mail can receive a Blackberry PDA. Of course, all those who have a Blackberry need to be trained in how to get the best value from its many functions.

“Our first solution to this need was to set up a series of two-and-a-half-hour classroom-delivered training sessions. However, it proved difficult to get people, who were spending much of their working life traveling, together at a mutually convenient time and place for training.

”She said: “The introduction of a learning-management system (LMS) pilot that embraces all of BUPA’s business units – enabling the monitoring and tracking of a wide range of training programs – gave us the opportunity to develop an e-learning course to replace the instructor-led Blackberry training program.

“Using the LMS, we can check that the training has been done. The trainees’ skills are not only assessed objectively but also recorded. The learners are happy as they can take the course at a time most convenient for them and receive their new Blackberry faster.”

Since introducing the e-learning program, BUPA has noticed an improvement in skills transfer and a reduction in training costs. Tiina Paju-Pomfret explained: “We have received a great deal of highly positive feedback about the e-learning course from those who have taken it. As an organization, we are beginning to reap the benefits of the program through improved efficiency in our communications.”

The e-learning program has the added advantage of providing easily accessible refresher training at any time for a user who wants to check on any aspect of operating a Blackberry. “Since June, we have been allocating a day a month in our training program in order to run an instructor-led course in using a Blackberry.”

She continued: “However, since the introduction of the e-learning program, only one person has asked to attend the course. Everyone else in BUPA prefers the e-learning course.”