Wessex Water

Wessex Water employs around 2,500 staff spread across a wide geographical area.  Staff training is valued highly within the organisation, for both ongoing professional development and regulatory compliance.  However, with such a large number of staff – many of whom work in the field – the cost and logistics of face-to-face training presented significant challenges.

The L&D Team at Wessex Water were keen to find a suitable eLearning platform that would deliver consistent high-quality training for all staff.

Wessex Water’s Vision for Online Training

There were some key requirements that needed to be met, for a training platform to be right:

• Easy to use
  With varying levels of IT competency across the organisation, the platform needed to be easy and intuitive to use.  The platform would facilitate learning for all staff, not obstruct it.

• Customisable content
  The platform would allow the L&D team to easily build and manage rich learning content and training programmes tailor-made for Wessex Water and its staff.

• Engaging
  The site would be branded for Wessex Water, and would have a modern, engaging feel.  Learning resources and activities would be delivered in a rich, engaging way.

• Blended assessment
  Some tasks would be automatically assessed within the platform, while others would require a manager to manually assess a learner’s evidence.

• All devices
  Training would be accessible on any device, anytime, anywhere.  The user experience would be intuitive and engaging whether on a PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet.

• Reporting
  Insightful reports would be available to the L&D team, in order to inform the strategic direction of organisational learning.  Managers would use reporting to support staff.

• Scalable
  Any platform would be a one-stop-shop for all staff training within the organisation.  Compliance training, manager training and end-to-end induction programmes would all be delivered through the platform.

Wessex Water worked with Frog to realise this vision and to roll out a platform truly built for purpose.

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Staff Training

Wessex Water has always had training and staff investment at the heart of the organisation and were looking for a technology partner that could help realise this vision in a secure, online environment. Since the development of the Online Training Platform, Wessex Water has created hundreds of courses. Underpinned by Frog, there are now three major training solutions in use across Wessex Water.

• iLearn
  iLearn is the main training portal. Delivering compliance-related training courses for all staff, iLearn covers everything from Financial Management, Equality & Diversity and Anti-Bribery, through to practical compliance courses such as Working at Height, Electrical Safety, Manual Handling and Harmful Substances.

• iManage
  iManage is Wessex Water’s management development solution.  A range of classroom courses is complimented with various on-line learning modules in the Frog platform.  iManage is used to fast-track managers and to nurture the next generation of leaders.

• iStart
  iStart was developed by the L&D team at Wessex Water to structure and support the onboarding and induction of new staff and apprentices. iStart is an end-to-end solution in which pre-starters are allocated administration, learning and training tasks, and are led through their early journey in a structured way.

As a scalable platform, Frog will be used to create and deliver more courses within the iLearn, iManage and iStart environments.

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Strategic Communications

Coordinated Roll-out

The importance of staff training to the culture of Wessex Water required that any new training platform had a coordinated roll-out, ensuring no member of staff was left behind.

A roadshow took in all of Wessex Water’s seven regional offices, as part of the big launch. This enabled Wessex Water’s central team to sell the vision of the new training platform, while also ensuring every member of staff knew how to access and benefit from it.

The roadshow launch was supported by a structured launch plan that included coordinated communications across the organisation, once again ensuring the maximum buy-in from staff.

The training platform was piloted with the Information Services team and this controlled pilot phase allowed the L&D and Management teams to gain familiarity with the platform in readiness for a wholescale roll-out. The pilot phase was brief, and the training platform went live for the whole organisation within weeks.

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Working in partnership

Wessex Water has worked in partnership with Frog not only to structure and implement an e-learning platform, but to continue to develop the platform in line with the evolving needs of this large and dynamic organisation.

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