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The same old actions deliver the same old results

Posted on September 15th, 2017

Acknowledge the issues and change will happen

We meet many HR, L&D and training managers who struggle to improve their training delivery because of legacy paper-based administration, old HR systems and internal processes that are no longer fit for purpose. How can you be expected to upskill a workforce with complex training needs while making sure the organisation remains competitive if you don’t have the right tools to get the job done?

Identifying the issues is a good first step

HR and L&D teams need to acknowledge they have a problem and stop fudging the issue. Every year we work with organisations who want to improve, yet face a range of internal problems. Here are the most common:

  • Accountability: You have a responsibility to deliver training and compliance, yet have no real authority to make sure your plans are implemented and supported.
  • Devolved Responsibility: Giving local managers with too much freedom to manage and assign training without quality tracking and reporting can lead to confusion and gaps in both training and compliance.
  • Legacy Systems: Old administration and HR systems that were never designed to support and deliver sophisticated training strategies, create barriers to improvement.
  • Administrative Processes: Old internal processes that have been added to over time, often result in duplication of effort, wasted man-hours and unreliable data.
  • Lack of ‘Big Data’: When you are faced with all these problems, it’s impossible to see the big picture. This makes strategic decision making almost impossible, and little or no value is added to the organisation.

EdgeWorks™ Care Academy can help

Because we know the sector inside out, we can work with you to re-engineer your approach to learning and development. This means putting you and your needs at the centre of our solutions, making sure our technology is fine-tuned to the way you want to work. We start by discussing and documenting what success looks like for you and then we build a solution that puts you back in control. Our 5 step process is as follows:

Our 5-Step process can help you make the necessary changes

  • We document your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you don’t have any yet, we can help you identify and document them.
  • We help you create a coherent training matrix for all key members of staff including; induction, timescales for repeat training and any specialist training needs.
  • We discuss and review your current in-house systems and processes which help us create a draft blueprint for moving forward.
  • The next stage involves us building your Care Academy platform to your exact requirements.
  • We get you up and running and then continue to provide as much (or as little) support as you need via our training, support webinars and online helpdesk.

EdgeWorks™ put you back in control

EdgeWorks™ learning, assessment and compliance platform Care Academy is used by many leading organisations to support their workforce development strategies. We automate and streamline many of the complex training related task’s that consume so much time and put busy professionals back in control, giving them time to breathe, make informed decisions and make a tangible impact upon their organisation.

Contact us for an informal discussion about how we can help put you back in control.

CONTACT US FOR AN INFORMAL CHAT

Care-Academy key features - Content

Quality

All of our e-learning content is designed to exceed minimum standards giving you absolute confidence in the quality of training provided to employees. It is written by industry respected Subject Matter Experts and accredited by nationally recognised Awarding Bodies including Skillsfirst, NCFE and City & Guilds.

 

Learner Guarantee

We guarantee that any learner who completes our learning and assessment will be ‘fit-for-work’ and will meet the learning outcomes applicable to their course or qualification. In the unlikely event of an issue being raised, we will provide access to further training from within our portfolio at no extra cost. This means we share the risk of achieving 100% compliance with you.

 

Updates

We update our content in line with changes to legislation at no cost to you the client. Therefore you can rest assured that our content will always reflect industry best practice.

 

Structured Learner Pathway

We offer a fully integrated pathway from induction, specialist course and mandatory refresher training through to fully accredited qualifications. This means your learner's can quickly progress from new employee through to qualified worker with the minimum support. This reduces your cost of ongoing support and frees up your training personnel to provide higher value training interventions.

Assessments

Assessment Methodology
Multiple assessment methodology including computer marked Alternative Response, Matching, Multiple Response and Short Answer. The ideal combination is mapped directly to each course or qualification ensuring every learner is guaranteed to meet all of the required learning outcomes with no gaps or grey areas.

Rigorous Computer Assessment
Multi-choice- multi-answer randomised question bank improves the quality of our assessment and leads to robust results that both learners, employers and auditors can have confidence in.

Intelligent Assessments
Following completion of an assessment, learners are provided with immediate detailed feedback and are required to only re-attempt any questions answered incorrectly. This approach saves a significant amount of time and effort.

Fast-Track Screening Assessments
Diagnostic screening assessments to quickly assess the knowledge and understanding of new employees and let Care Academy automatically drive the required learning and assessment. Learners can save up to 50% of the time typically required to complete induction.

Quality Reviewed
All of our assessments are written by subject matter experts and reviewed (where applicable) by National Awarding Organisations including Skillsfirst, NCFE and City & Guilds.

Higher Demand Assessments
Skills for Care note that some learning outcomes within the Care Certificate are not easily achieved via traditional multiple choice questions. Care Academy has a range of ‘Higher Demand’ assessments designed to capture more detailed written responses from learners which are available for review and comment. This ensures clients can evidence achievement in line with best practice guidelines.

Bespoke Assessments
Create bespoke online assessments that can be used to evaluate traditional classroom training or workbook based delivery. Integrate ‘digital assessment and evaluations’ to provide maximum flexibility with efficient recording and reporting.

Competency Observations
Our Observation Toolkit is designed to support managers schedule, conduct and record ‘Competency Observations’ where required ie Care Certificate.

PIN Protected Assessments
PIN Protected assessments allow clients the option to control time and location access to assessments, providing the ultimate compliance process and ensure you can confidently meet the requirements of any audit or inspection.

System Administration

Administrator Dashboard
Comprehensive manager dashboard providing real-time 24/7 data– track and report on many variables including enrolments, progress, assessments, sign-offs and completions. Allows you to quickly understand whether an individual, service, branch, division, region or business is compliant or at risk.

Full User Control
Full user control, add/delete users, courses, policy documents and extra resources. Quickly respond to business needs or contract opportunities, no waiting for classroom courses to become available.

Employment Status
Update employment status to ensure training and reporting are always accurate.

Training Matrix
Automatically link ‘business roles’ with pre-defined training plans. Ensure consistent delivery across your organisation. And let Care Academy take the strain of delivering training when required.

Customise Training Delivery
Use pre-assessments to assess knowledge and automatically configure bespoke ILP for each learner.

Auto Re-assign Training
Care Academy can be configured to automatically re-assign training in line with organisational policies, ensuring compliance is never compromised.

Configure Training Completion Dates
Configure ‘target’ completion dates for course’s and automatically manage learner Individual Learning Plans.

Email Alerts
Auto email alerts sent to learners when new training is assigned or annual refresher training needs to be completed ensuring learners are always fully compliant.

Post-Training Evaluations
Our in-built survey system enables you to receive learner feedback covering both online and classroom training. Identify and track the key KPI metrics that are important to your organisation and generate both qualitative and quantitative feedback.

User Support

User Interface
Our learner interface has been designed to provide maximum ‘personalisation’ allowing the user to set the text, colours, audio and images. This ensures you are compliant with Disability Discrimination Act legislation (DDA).

Online Helpdesk
We offer a fully supported online Helpdesk which provides technical support during business hours. This frees up your personnel so they don’t have to deal with day to day queries and keeps learners moving forward.

Interactive User Guide
All learners have full access to our comprehensive online user guide designed to provide advice and guidance to many FAQ’s.

Communication Tracking
Full communication tracking between user, support staff and assessors – quickly understand any issues and resolve without delay.

Tracking and Reporting

Real-Time Reports
Access over 60 standardised real-time reports designed to help you identify and track the metrics most important to your organisation. Gain a real insight into business critical data and get the reports you need to help inform and guide strategic decision making.

Dedicated CQC reports
Compliance is at the heart of Care Academy and our dedicated CQC reports will not only improve compliance, but will also enable you to evidence a commitment to sustainability and continuous improvement which is a key line of enquiry.

Contract Control
System administrators can easily monitor your credit usage and allocation across the whole organisation. Auto-alert emails are automatically triggered at key milestones to ensure budgets are maximised and any unused training credits are automatically re-cycled into future contracts.

Comprehensive Tracking
Report every user interaction including by date, time, IP address and browser to provide a comprehensive understanding of learner access.

Completion Times
Report on individual and average completion times to help guide organisation policy on time allocations.

Individual Compliance Report
View individual compliance reports for individual learners against key training such as Care Certificate. Easily assign further training where gaps identified.

Data Capture
Capture the data you require and monitor and report on metrics important to your organisation.

Evidence Compliance
Policy-Safe is particularly useful where evidence of regulatory or legislative compliance is required for either HR or training functions. It is designed to provide non-contentious evidence to support claims of non-compliance.

Classroom Course Integration

Classroom course management
Manage classroom courses alongside online learning to create a fully integrated approach to scheduling, tracking and reporting training.

Classroom course training matrix
Configure Care Academy to display available classroom courses and enable managers to nominate learners for enrolment. Geolocation parameters ensure only suitable (local) venues are available options.

Embed ‘third-party’ training into training matrix
Care Academy enables clients to track and record face-to-face training provided via in-house or third-party training providers ensuring a single point of reference for every individual learner.

Embed e-learning into classroom course
Care Academy automatically selects learners who have completed pre-requisite learning for enrolment onto classroom course.

Record classroom training
Classroom course integration allows clients to schedule and record classroom based training within the learner digital ILP. This ensures all reports are centralised and available 24/7 with no requirement to archive paper based reports or complex excel spreadsheets.

Record attendance at classroom training
Use Classroom course manager to mark attendance at important practical training sessions. Keep reports in a single digital ILP.

Record learner ‘no-shows’
Care Academy can record learners who fail to attend and make them available for re-selection. This ensures high levels of compliance is maintained.

Policy Management

Ensure compliance
Policy-Safe is our policy management solution which ensures all key policy documents are uploaded, distributed, accepted and recorded to deliver a comprehensive compliance solution.

Link policy documents to training
Link key policy documents directly to training and ensure they are read and accepted as part of the programme completion.

Evidence compliance
Policy-Safe is particularly useful where evidence of regulatory or legislative compliance is required for either HR or training functions. It is designed to provide non-contentious evidence to support claims of non-compliance.

Licence Models

Flexible
We offer access to a wide range of licence models some of which include offer either part or fully funded licence models.

Unused licences
Unused licence credits are automatically returned to client allocation for re-use.

Access to Funding

Funding
We are adept at accessing additional ESF and SFA funding on behalf of our clients. Over the past 2 years we have secured additional funding for our clients in excess of £250,000. Working closely as a true ‘Partner’ with our clients, many have recouped most of their investment in Care Academy. We continue to develop this ‘consultancy’ side of the business to offer real value-added benefits.

WDF funding management
Our Workforce Development Funding (WDF) forms management feature will automatically generate pre-populated WDF forms ensuring you claim the full amount of funding available. Many of our clients have secured several thousand pounds of funding revenue using this feature, which effectively covers the cost of the system - that’s pretty price competitive!

Qualifications

RQF qualifications
We offer access to a range of awards, certificates and diplomas using our unique qualification delivery technology. Unit learning and assessment is fully mapped against learning outcomes and designed to reduce duplication of effort and allowing for Accredited Prior Learning (APL). The cost of accessing these qualifications is designed to be extremely competitive against traditional classroom based delivery.

Online enrolment
Once registered, learners can start their qualification at a time convenient to them and not have to schedule meetings with assessors and then wait for classroom courses to become available. Employers can take back control of their employee learning and development strategy.

Fully Supported IT

SAAS Solution
Access to Care Academy is offered as a fully hosted solution, meaning clients can sign-up and start taking advantage of the system features and benefits without any additional IT investment.

Integration with existing HR/Training systems
Integrate Care Academy with existing HR/Training systems to automatically streamline the recruitment, training and development of all employees.

Security
Care Academy UK based servers include integrated hardware firewalls and anti-virus protection. All components are actively monitored and the latest security patches are applied as soon as they become available. User access is via encrypted 2018 bit industry standard SSL certificates. Users can be assured that sensitive information is encrypted and remains private.

General Data Protection Regulation
Care Academy offers access to dedicated GDPR management reports designed to ensure organisations can continuously review, monitor and process personal data in line with GDPR requirements. We also offer learners access to our online Privacy Centre where they can access a range of tools covering consent and privacy settings.

Care-Academy key features - Content

Quality

All of our e-learning content is designed to exceed minimum standards giving you absolute confidence in the quality of training provided to employees. It is written by industry respected Subject Matter Experts and accredited by nationally recognised Awarding Bodies including Skillsfirst, NCFE and City & Guilds.

 

Learner Guarantee

We guarantee that any learner who completes our learning and assessment will be ‘fit-for-work’ and will meet the learning outcomes applicable to their course or qualification. In the unlikely event of an issue being raised, we will provide access to further training from within our portfolio at no extra cost. This means we share the risk of achieving 100% compliance with you.

 

Updates

We update our content in line with changes to legislation at no cost to you the client. Therefore you can rest assured that our content will always reflect industry best practice.

 

Structured Learner Pathway

We offer a fully integrated pathway from induction, specialist course and mandatory refresher training through to fully accredited qualifications. This means your learner's can quickly progress from new employee through to qualified worker with the minimum support. This reduces your cost of ongoing support and frees up your training personnel to provide higher value training interventions.