The changing face of training

F E AT U R E

www.elmhurstenergy.co.uk

In the past few months life as we know it has changed, and training is not exempt. We have seen the uncertainty of the coronavirus transform the country and our everyday lives, and, in some unfortunate cases, waistlines.

Whilst things stay as they are now, we will continue with growing the number of online The courses and webinars... changing face of training

Mitesh Nathwani, Training Manager

I don’t think anyone had a contingency plan for a global pandemic and the best anyone could do was take the advice given by the government and make the necessary changes needed to carry on. With that in mind, on the 17th March we decided to stop all classroom based training, whether in Lutterworth or around the country. We decided from that point, with the uncertainty of everything, we needed to cancel classroom based courses on a rolling monthly basis.

Moving courses online

Elmhurst was in a fortunate position whereby we were able to start producing new webinars as soon as the lockdown started and we already had a decent back catalogue, some of which we were able to offer our assessors for free. What you may not know is that although some of these webinars last approximately 30 minutes, they actually take 3 to 4 days to create. Within the first week we had new short webinars available and we launched our online Retrofit Assessor course, which has proved very popular. I had decided that I wanted an online course that enabled the learner to do the course in their own time and at their own pace rather than be restricted to certain times and days. This method really worked for our members and we have received some fantastic feedback, as well as a spike in the number of assessors wanting to take up the retrofit courses.

Since the success of the online Retrofit Assessor course we have also put a lot of time and effort into bringing some of our other qualification courses to the online platform. This has meant investing in new systems. We have made sure that our assessors are still able to top up their knowledge and skills as regularly as possible. We’ve introduced the following online courses: OCDEA APEL, Section 63, DEA (3 day), DEC APEL, OCDEA, NDEA APEL as well as many more.

Looking to the future

It’s really difficult to tell how the situation will unfold over the next few weeks and months. As you already know, we have established new online courses, adapted from what we have currently, along with fresh new content. We had not envisaged that we would be doing this so soon but sometimes being put in an unusual, unwanted position helps you grow and develop and we have definitely developed a new way of working, and a new way of training, which can only be a good thing.

Above all of this, we have made sure that we are here for you, our members, and made sure that our delegates are getting free and discounted courses to help in these difficult times. Hopefully we should soon start to see a return to some form of normality and be able to restart classroom based courses, both from Lutterworth and around the UK.

Whilst things stay as they are now, we will continue with growing the number of online courses and webinars, and we will keep looking at new webinars and improving what we have. I am always happy to receive ideas of what you as the assessors out there would like to see us provide. Finally, I suggest that the long term future of training will be a hybrid approach with courses that comprise online pre-learning and a shorter duration classroom experience for those that can travel, like to network or prefer to get away from the confines of work or home. We will also have our online presence and that will only grow.

We hope that everyone has had the opportunity to view our dedicated online training platform (if not, take a look!) - as well as the free CPD we have provided. So, with that said, I thank you all for your continued support in these trying times and please stay safe, I look forward to seeing you soon.