United Response's e-learning programme comes out on top at Charity Learning Awards

22 September 2011

The national disability charity, United Response, has won a Charity Learning Award for reaching out to employees and developing their skills with e-learning.

United Response took the decision to introduce online learning last year, as a way of reducing training costs for its 3,000 staff, who are based in 200 locations around the country. Just eight months later, the organisation successfully launched its new e-learning programme, which it is offering alongside more traditional face-to-face training.

Judges from the Charity Learning Consortium were impressed by the well thought out marketing campaign, ran by United Response's Learning and Development Team, which helped staff adapt to the shift in learning culture and ensured take-up of the new programme. This included local roadshows; appointment of eLearning champions; IT training courses to boost computer confidence; and built-in flexibility, which means that staff can even complete training from home. This resulted in one frontline member of United Response staff recently tweeting: "I am LOVING the E-Learning that @unitedresponse has brought in. So much easier :D "

Martin Baker, CEO and founder of the Charity Learning Consortium said : "This is an inspirational example of what can be achieved with a well thought out campaign to market eLearning within an organisation. United Response realistically assessed the challenges that it faced, and then took positive steps to meet them."

Natasha Furness, Learning & Development Officer at United Response said:

"As a nationwide organisation it is often challenging to implement such radical changes, and we knew this. Because of the steps that we took to counteract this, our new approach to learning was received very positively from employees across the organisation."

Speaking about the benefits of elearning, Natasha added:

"There are certainly cost saving benefits to the organisation which mean that in this difficult economic climate, we are ahead of the game and prepared to continue offering the same quality of support."

"The time that eLearning has saved, as employees spend less time away from the work place, also means we can offer more support to our clients."

"It is important to recognise however that eLearning alone is not the solution - the learning we offer still requires a blended approach and face to face training is always going to be a vital means for delivering some training."

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