Cable&Wireless saves £1.5m with new training scheme

E-learning courses prove much more efficient than classroom-based learning, says C&W

Cable&Wireless (C&W) says it has saved £1.5m by rolling out a new e-learning training programme to its employees.

The telecoms provider worked with SkillSoft E-Learning, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) e-learning provider, and Kineo, a provider of custom-built e-learning solutions.

The training providers developed the subject matter for four mandatory e-learning courses: Security Essentials, Data Protection Essentials, Business Continuity Management and Business Ethics.

The courses sat alongside two existing courses already run by C&W: Competition Compliance, and Health Safety and the Environment.

As part of the training scheme, all new employees were required to complete the six courses within the first month of employment. Existing employees were to the complete four new courses and the two existing courses within a four-month period, if they had not already done so.

In-house subject matter experts defined the content requirements for the course, and then worked with Kineo to create bespoke training modules running for 30 to 40 minutes.

The firm formulated an analysis based on head count, salaries and how much time would otherwise have been spent away from the workplace, and calculated that it made savings of £1.5m. It claimed that e-learning would continue to produce outstanding savings in comparison with traditional classroom-based methods.

"Tasked with strategically planning the delivery of this e-learning project, I wanted to ensure that these courses were packaged as a programme that was not only attractive and easy to use, but also highly efficient at producing measurable learning outcomes," said C&W Worldwide learning technologies manager, Mike Booth.