Learndirect success story
Learndirect ‘Business Achiever’, Lisa Beattie, explains how e-learning through Learndirect helped improved her business.
Checkmate Guarding, a security services company operating across the six counties of Northern Ireland, is living up to its strap line ‘Quality with Qualification’ with the help of its local Learndirect premier business centre, People 1st, located in Banbridge.
The security services company approached Learndirect for advice on becoming Investors In People and for help with implementing first aid training amongst staff. People 1st now run first aid courses every six months for all interested employees.
People 1st has recently received accreditation from the Small Firms Enterprise and Development Initiative (SFEDI), enabling it to become part of the newly created national network of Learndirect premier business centres, which provide a comprehensive service for small and medium sized enterprises, including a wide variety of inexpensive, flexible online training courses.
To enable Lisa to ascertain which courses would be best suited to each employee, she decided to trial the courses with the management team first, before rolling out the training programme with the rest of the staff. Each of the management team took two courses. Lisa herself took courses in ‘Recruiting and keeping the best staff’ and ‘Business law’.
Talking about the courses Lisa said, “They were very thorough and contained a lot of information, which I have already been able to apply to my job. This has helped tremendously in my day to day roles. I really did learn an awful lot.”
For Checkmate Guarding, one of the main attractions of the Learndirect courses was their flexibility. All of the courses were internet based and could be taken at the trainees convenience – at any time and in any place as long as there was a computer and internet access. “We were going through a very busy period at the company and simply did not have time to take hours out of our day to go and sit in a classroom to have training” Lisa comments. “E-learning was ideal because we could log on and study whenever we had a spare hour.”
Lisa found one of the most useful courses was an IT course in PowerPoint. Several of the management team also took the course, and it has since opened up a range of opportunities for the company.
Thanks to the skills gained Checkmate Guarding now intend to use PowerPoint presentations in its own in-house training and is planning to offer Learndirect courses to employees throughout the organisation.” |
