Devon County Council saves 5,000 in 6 weeks using online training
Printer friendly
By using GoToWebinar to help 50 staff, the Council has saved an estimated £100 per person in a six- week period by reducing travel, venue and refreshment costs. The Council has also increased productivity of its staff by eliminating time spent travelling and it has been able to reduce carbon emissions, a key part of its Greener Devon Policy.
Following a series of budget cuts in January 2009, Devon County Council was faced with the unexpected, large-scale restructuring of a department with over 150 people. The Council's Learning and Management team needed a way to quickly and effectively communicate with the affected staff. GoToWebinar enabled them to hold instant online training and personal development courses to help employees understand the impact of the restructuring and prepare for job applications and interviews.
'The restructuring happened very quickly and we didn't have much time to get the educational programme in place,' explains Barry Wilding-Webb, Senior Workforce Development Advisor at Devon County Council. 'GoToWebinar really came to the rescue, allowing us to very quickly and cost effectively respond to the situation with high quality support and advice to all affected employees. GoToWebinar is incredibly easy to use and has a number of really useful features. The Webinars were very well received by the staff, who received timely advice when they needed it.'
The hosted, web-based tool offers a full range of features which enable Devon County Council to instantly plan, present, record and analyse as many Webinars as they want, for one flat monthly fee:
• Webinar Dashboard – gives the presenter the ability to monitor Webinar attendance and interest levels using at-a-glance dashboard charts and metrics that identify participants who open other windows or begin checking email
• Question & Answer and Poll Windows – encourages interaction by allowing attendees to ask questions with the ‘raise hand' button or participate in polls
• Webinar Administration – manages sign-ups and issues reminders to attendees before the start-time
• Post-Event Qualifying – ranks attendees based on interest levels with information stored in a CRM system for easy follow-up
Devon County Council is now looking at other instances where it can use Web Presentations across the organisation to engage its workforce of over 20,000 in learning programmes and as alternatives to off-site courses and face-to-face training to reduce costs.
'As a local government authority funded by public money, we have a duty to review our budgets and ensure we are spending wisely and making savings wherever possible. GoToWebinar's flat-fee pricing structure allows us to manage our budget effectively and with the feature-rich tools, we can offer training and support online, without compromising on quality,' adds Barry Wilding-Webb.
Related links to this article:
Devon County Council
- Login or Register to comment
- Add to a social bookmarking site
Editor's Manifesto: Tony,meet Bill - don't mention the mainframe
"In an attempt to do the famous 'Charm Thing' with a certain Bill Gates, Tony Blair “got all [his] terminology mixed up”. Whichever Oxbridge-educated candidate ends up heading [fill in appropriate temporal adjective] Labour come the end of September, let's hope they'll be worrying less about the right nomenclature for enterprise computing platforms and more about policies that might get some more wealth-creating industry back in the country.”
Read more
The Dispatch Box: What the UK public sector could learn from Europe’s social media savvy
Neal Perry, Country Manager UK, Ireland & Middle East, at EPiServer talks about how some of the UK's European partners are implementing social media to strengthen citizen engagement.
"Across the World, governments created groups to explore the problems and the potential for strengthening citizen participation in local government. They then reunited the ‘champions of participation’ from countries in every continent to identify lessons and how sharing this experience might inform and shape policy and practice. Social media is one tool where organisations can embrace such initiatives and is an especially effective one when it comes to engaging the younger public." Read more
Innovation: A step too far in the austerity age?
Complete and enter our draw to win a free seat at the e-Government Awards. The public sector is already perceived to be lacking in innovation, but is that a fair assessment, and what role could it play in helping the government meet efficiency targets? What do people working on the frontline of ICT in public sector organisations think? Take part and share your views
David Mitchell Smith, research vice president & fellow at Gartner, discusses Cloud Computing.
Source: Gartner