Learning management
Delivering an Learning Platform (LMS) Where Security is Essential
It has been well documented over the past 24 months, that whether we like it not, all of us have been forced to do something that was previously a face-to-face task, online. From corporate meetings to Speed Awareness Courses or even Zoom quizzes with your granny, the modern world has been thrust upon us.
Now in 2022, with ever-increasing fuel and property costs and with 62% of the workforce happy to work remotely for some portion of their working week, businesses around the world are adapting to some form of hybrid working.
Facilitating hybrid working goes much deeper than providing a laptop, writing a new company policy and a setting up a hot desk booking system when visiting the office.
Questions now arise around how businesses can successfully onboard new staff as well as keep a hybrid or more permanently field-based workforce up to speed with the skills they need to do their job and meet their compliance remit.
Whether it’s as simple as a health and safety course, right the way through to a complex, sophisticated training plan that builds someone’s career path, both may now need to be conducted fully remotely – or at least in a hybrid form.
This poses challenges when it comes to implementing a learning management system (LMS):
- How do companies enable remote and hybrid learning successfully?
- How do you keep users engaged without falling to ‘digital fatigue’?
- How do companies with a mainly field-based workforce maintain an ‘accessible by all’ ethos?
- How can the business remain compliant and report on learning progress, certifications and statistics?
I could keep going but I don’t want you to succumb to digital fatigue!
Learning where security is essential
Tackling any of these hybrid workforce training challenges isn’t easy, especially when maintaining a secure environment is an over-arching requirement.
We have recently delivered a LMS for a large UK Police Force whose main challenge was to keep its entire internal training content accessible to all users, whether they were in the office, out on the ground or travelling.
This hybrid approach to learning and training delivery in the police force is revolutionary in comparison to years gone by, where booking onto classroom course and spending days out of the office or out of active duty were the norm.
Now effective policing means embracing new ways of working and collaborating, and this extends to keeping up-to-date on the various technical and interpersonal skills that allow them to complete their duties effectively.
Mindful of needing to support a wide range of technical ‘savviness’, the Force’s was keen to provide ‘2-click’ experience that gave retired colleagues that were rarely in the office the same easy access to training as currently-serving police officers, whether out and about or sitting in front of a desktop at HQ.
The learning management solution we provided (LMS365) enabled the Force to digitise its training content, build it into their Microsoft 365 environment and present it to users via Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, or their mobile device.
From a user perspective this meant learning content could be consumed alongside what they were already using daily to communicate and collaborate. In other words, ‘Learning in the Flow of Work’.
Leveraging the Microsoft Security Stack
In addition to providing the best experience for end users and learning and development staff alike, the Force faced the added security and data protection concerns that come with any Police sector application.
All ‘I’s must be dotted and ‘t’s crossed for a system to be introduced into their environment.
Fortunately, our solution sits on Microsoft’s multi-layered security ecosystem that includes Microsoft Azure for strong identity management and Microsoft Intune for mobile device security management.
This means our LMS has been assured for use throughout UK governments and is included in the (G-Cloud) digital marketplace. Its compliance with government cloud security principles is also verified annually by the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Similar robust security requirements for online training and training management have been seen with a recent implementation at a large energy supplier within the UK.
Again, the organisation has thousands of users that must be able to prove they are authorised to be working on a particular project/site by presenting a valid training certificate from their mobile phone.
For more information or to arrange a demo for your L & D and/or your IT team, get in touch today.
