E-learning proves to be a real benefit for workers

I read your article on e-learning (Personnel Today, 24 July) with interest and I can confirm we are one of the companies that have found e-learning to be a positive training tool.

As a prison, we have a strong contractual requirement to provide annual refresher training in a number of disciplines for all our staff. As you can imagine, at a site employing more than 300 people, that is a high level of training commitment, particularly where each of these disciplines requires between half a day and a full-day training.

We are now converting this training to e-learning and have found that not only do staff really like it, but the training can be done at employee workstations in a quarter of the time of the classroom equivalent.

We make our programmes interesting via the use of spot questions and video clips. The test at the end of each module provides evidence of competence and gives an insight into the types of areas that staff are failing to understand. This helps us provide feedback and can look at updating the training package to reflect these weak areas. We like this form of learning and will continue to use it more over the coming years.

Fiona Nolan
HR and D manager, HMP Kilmarnock
Serco Home Affairs